A little while back I got an e-mail from Eric, GR's head robot asking if I played Pac-Man. At the time it seemed like kind of a random question, but there was an ulterior motive. New York -Tokyo, a media and events company here in NYC was sponsoring an event with Namco and Uniqlo where they invited teams from a whole bunch of magazines and media companies here in the city to compete against each other in a Pac-Man competition. I soon found myself as Captain of Team GRNY. The initial rounds were held online, but the finals were held today at the Uniqlo flagship store in SoHo. I met Dennis, my teammate at Uniqlo, where they had the landing between the second and third floors set up for head to head Pac-Man competition. The stairs and floor were completely decked out in Pac-Man decals, with an arcade cabinet on either side, with giant screens set up behind us to watch the action. We all gathered around, shot the breeze, and I engaged in a little friendly trash talk. There was a rumor that a Kidrobot team was going to be there, and I was getting myself mentally psyched for a Pac-Man war of the robots, but no such luck. As I mentioned earlier, preliminary rounds were played online with a downloadable version of the game. Pac-Man totally sucks on a computer; you really need a joystick to play with any proficiency, so I was good and ready to hit the arcade cabinet. We also got thrown a bone: the contest play consisted of a 3 minute round in which you tried to get the highest score possible. I thought it was going to be some Billy Mitchell clearing boards and memorizing ghost patterns type play, but I was confident I could go 3 minutes and rack up points. I had a great practice run, and Dennis and I talked strategy. He went first, had an amazing round and got the high score, 18,410. It was his birthday, and luck was on his side. His 3 minutes at play put Giant Robot into first place and into the finals. My trash talking was going to bear fruit! After Dennis' round there was a short intermission during which I was really antsy to play, especially now that we were in the lead. The arcade cabinet was a 3-in-1 on which you could play Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, or one of my all time old school favorites, Galaga. I figured I'd jinx myself by playing a practice round of Pac-Man right before my tournament play, so I jumped into some Galaga. And I was playing well. Really well. "Holy sh*t!", said a guy behind me while another filmed me button mashing. Then suddenly, it was competition time, and I had to throw my Galaga game and get back into Pac-Mode. Long story short, I played like crap, and blew the lead Dennis had built for us. The sad thing was that the other team played like crap as well, I was just that much worse. We could have gone all the way, but NOOOOOOO, I had to play Galaga and ruin my mojo. Anyway, below are some pictures from the event. Thanks to Taeko at New York-Tokyo, Uniqlo, and Dennis for being the good half of our team.