A closer look
Before YouTube tutorials existed, the game itself was your teacher—if you actually bothered to watch it instead of blindly slamming quarters into the slot. The original Pac-Man's "attract mode" wasn't just a screensaver; it was an active demonstration of the underlying code. It subtly revealed that the red ghost chases you directly, the pink ghost aims for where you are going, and the orange ghost wanders randomly. It was a subliminal crash course in artificial intelligence, heavily rewarding the loitering mall rats who treated the glowing cabinet like an object of academic study.
