This Saturday the iconic arcade game hero Pac-Man with the pie slice-shaped mouth and unsated hunger for pellets that contain power, officially turns 30, To celebrate, Namco has organized a birthday bash in Los Angeles and released new versions of Pac-Man Championship Edition for both the iPhone and iPad.

New York City will have its own unique celebration of sorts: Chris Scott, who finished 5th in last year’s Uniqlo Pac-Man Challenge plans to play a few games at the Chinatown Fair Video Arcade on Mott St. And Jonathan Schnapp, 37, winner of the 2009 Uniqlo Pac-Man Challenge, will be playing Ms. Pac-Man machine he bought for his West Village apartment. Hopefully he’ll share that – in some way – with the rest of us.

Pac-Man is the creation of Namco video game designer Toru Iwatani. He created the game in 1979, not knowing how powerful, how popular and how much of an influence it would have on pop culture.. Some of that influence? Guinness World Records calls Pac-Man the "most successful coin-operated game" ever.

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