I was fortunate enough to grow up during the golden age of video arcades. When I was fortunate enough to go to one, I knew there were numerous electronic machines more than willing to take my money and challenge my game-playing skills. (To this day, I love going to the numerous retro arcades near where I live.)
In 1982, Pac-Man was not just a fad, it was omnipresent. From board games to breakfast cereal, Saturday morning cartoons to sweatshirts. In that sea of power pellets and monsters came "Pac-Man Fever," a novelty single from Jerry Buckner and Gary Garcia. Released at the end of 1981, it became a top 10 hit for the duo - and, if there had been justice in this world, would have been allowed to fade into obscurity along with the numerous clones of the game that came out.
But, no. Someone at Columbia Records came up with the idea of issuing an entire album of songs based upon popular videogames. What could possibly go wrong?
And that, kids, brings us to Pac-Man Fever, the original release from 1982. (Due to Columbia's reluctance to allow the album to be reissued, Bucker & Garcia re-recorded it for CD release in 1999.) Capturing lightning in a bottle is one thing; trying to recapture the magic for 33 minutes over eight tracks is, putting it nicely, untenable.
Look, if we're 100 percent honest with ourselves, the original song "Pac-Man Fever" wasn't great stuff - I mean, we're not going to hold it in the same echelon as "Bohemian Rhapsody". But, for its time, it was cute and catchy - hell, I proudly owned the 45 of this one when it came out. People who were our age when this one came out might not appreciate the song for what it was, but for those of us who crowded around these machines, quarters lined up for next plays, it does capture an innocence of the time that, regrettably, was lost due to the passage of time.
That doesn't mean that the remaining seven songs on Pac-Man Fever have that same kitsch power. "Ode To A Centipede", with its spoken-word interludes, makes one want to hit the DDT bomb and put an end to everything. (And, yes, I'm aware that was in Millipede, not Centipede.) "Do The Donkey Kong," what was meant to be the follow-up single, just falls flat right out of the gate - and the false ending only stretches out the torture.
And, some of these games weren't really meant to be immortalized in music. "Mousetrap" was a souped-up Pac-Man clone that wasn't nearly as much fun as the game it was based upon. Why we needed a song that essentially told people how to play the game, I'll never understand. Frankly, like many of the songs on this disc, it sounds forced and contrived, stuck in a bygone era.
That isn't to say everything is weak on this one. "Froggy's Lament," an ode to the classic Frogger videogame, is cute in its own way, and remains a guilty favorite of mine. If only there were more moments like this.
When I want to revisit my childhood, I travel to one of the aforementioned retro arcades, pay my $20, and play as many games as I can before my wrist starts hurting. Pac-Man Fever, regrettably, is not an ideal way to travel back in time to remember the coin-eating machines we grew up with. Maybe someone at Columbia back in the 1990s realized, "Christ, we never should have put this out in the first place."
Maybe someone should have come to that realization in 1982... just because one can do something, that doesn't mean one should do it. Save your quarters, and pass on this one.