Featured Essay: Pac-Man Fever

by David Buck

There’s something to be said about the power of old video games and novelty music. As a kid, video games were few and far between in my household. We thrived on the power of imagination. Ok. We were poor. We’re talking tinfoil-wrapped-around-cardboard-swords poor. We liked He-Man, Ghostbusters, Transformers, and arcade games. But we didn’t have any home consoles until my dad bought an Atari 2600, with a copy of Pac-Man. Yeah…it was the worst version of the game that everyone hates. THAT version of Pac-Man. 

Pac-Man was all the rage when it came out. It’s arguably one of the most popular and best-selling arcade games of all time. Heck, it’s still popular in 2025. Players have always been trying to find ways to conquer the game, and it became such a big part of our pop culture that it inspired a cartoon, a ton of sequels, toys (and other junk), and, of course, a song. The song inspired an album and the rest is, well, obscurity. 

Back in 2019 (which, if I’m being completely honest here, feels like a lifetime ago), I wrote a piece about how Pac-Man and its famous patterns ignited the trend of mastering video games that continues to this day. The big thing about mastering the game is knowing and devising specific patterns for each level. They should be easy to remember, easy to execute, and allow you to grab as many available points as possible. The song “Pac-Man Fever” is kind of like that. The song is an earworm for sure. It gets stuck in your head and just loops over and over again, sort of like those patterns I mentioned. The song is simple. If you look at the sheet music (yes, I have official “Pac-Man Fever” sheet music), the song is just a simple blues-boogie in the key of C. Also, there’s a Bb in there somewhere. At least that’s how I play it.

It was a novelty. Back in the ‘50s and ‘60s, novelty music was all over the place. You couldn’t turn on the radio without hearing something like “Alley-oop,” “Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the Bedpost Overnight,” “The Purple People Eater,” “Black Denim Trousers & Motorcycle Boots,” or “The Monster Mash.” And that’s just off the top of my head. At some point, the novelty craze died down and such records, poof, evaporated. Until “Weird Al” Yankovic came along, novelty music was virtually gone. But some folks (like me) absolutely loved it. I still do. It was my love of novelty music and arcade games that led me on a quest to track down the “Pac-Man” Fever album. 

I’m a big fan of Weird Al, who did, in fact, make his own song about Pac-Man (ask me about my collection sometime; I’ve seen him in concert 17 times). But it was The Dr. Demento Show that really made an impact on my life. I learned about the song “Pac-Man Fever” from the show. Its writers, Jerry Buckner & Gary Garcia were songwriting partners but didn’t really make anything you’d be familiar with, unless you visited a lot of Waffle House restaurants. They did like to write novelty tunes and managed to have a hit with their take on the Pac-Man craze. The song led to an album of eight different tunes based on arcade games.

People must have liked it, because it went gold. But in the early days of gathering vinyl for my collection, that LP was kind of hard to find. I used to spend a lot of time searching for vinyl, cassettes, and CDs at flea markets. I could usually find some gems among the bargain bins for $1 or 2. That’s how I found They Might Be Giants’ Flood and Factory Showroom. I picked up a couple of Frank Zappa cassettes for a few bucks. My aunt snagged “Weird Al’s” Off the Deep End for me at one. There was plenty of spoken-word comedy stuff available, too, at extremely low prices. But no Buckner & Garcia. The folks at the record stores (back when we HAD record stores) had no clue what I was talking about. 

I began building my collection in the early 2000s, when the internet-as-we-know-it was more fun. It wasn’t about filling in a collection or finding “other things you might like.” It was about questing for rare and unattainable records. They didn’t have to be valuable. I thought the concepts of “hidden gems” or “guilty pleasures” were stilly. I still do.

While you might go on Discogs or eBay today to find your favorite records, I didn’t have that kind of access at the time. Discogs wasn’t a thing. We had GEMM, which stood for Global Electronic Music Marketplace. And that was FINE, but it was a little bit overpriced for a jobless teenager living just below the poverty line. eBay was similarly out of bounds for my search. Living in a small town certainly didn’t help. Social Media didn’t exist, and have you ever used Yahoo! Auctions? Yikes…

Even Hastings, THE entertainment superstore, didn’t have it either, although that’s where I bought most of my early records. Eventually, I found myself in a Salvation Army store. Among the stacks and stacks of discarded, warped, faded, and trashed vinyl, I found it: a damaged blue jacket, with a Pac-Man maze on the cover. The inner sleeve had maze patterns on it. And the record itself, although a bit dirty, was basically brand new. It was like Indiana Jones finding the Holy Grail. It was just this innocuous little thing hiding in plain sight.

Over the years, I managed to collect an instrumental version of the song, a club version, and some sheet music. One year (1999, if memory serves), I requested it multiple times using the then very new Dr. Demento website, and it somehow made the Funny 5 on one of the October episodes. It was the show for October 10, 1999. I looked it up on DMDB.org.

Sure, it’s a one-hit wonder. Yeah, it’s an obscure track at this point. I fully understand that it’s a dated novelty. I know; Buckner wrote a new video game-themed song for Wreck it Ralph in 2012. Honestly, I don’t know how I feel about a gritty sci-fi game based on Pac-Man coming out. It seems out of place. But that’s not the point. The record will always have a special place in my collection for not only the songs, but the journey it took to acquire it and how it inspired me professionally later in my career. 

I never did pick up a copy of the 1999 version of the album, where Buckner & Garcia re-recorded the entire thing and released it on CD. I’m more than happy with the original version, although it’s not something I listen to much anymore. That happens with things you loved as a kid. As we get older, our tastes change, and Pac-Man Fever doesn’t make it into the rotation much anymore these days. 

The title track, “Pac-Man Fever,” sounds like a couple of middle-aged guys having fun with guitars, synths, and sound effects. “Froggy’s Lament” has a fun guitar lick at the beginning, with an infectious chorus and some fun rhyming. The “frog-in-the-throat” vocals wear thin by the second verse. Track three, “Ode to a Centipede” is almost six minutes long. Its minor chords set against Atari noise sound effects makes this one a bit hard on the ears. Vocally, it’s fine and feels right at home on a generic soft rock radio station that specializes in playing sappy songs. The album goes on like that.

It’s not something I see myself listening to again. Given the lengths I went to track it down in the first place, it might seem surprising, but I don’t think so. My tastes changed, but I still have some nostalgia for the record.

I think that’s part of what makes collecting novelty and obscure records such a draw. Even when you don’t listen to it, it’s still a part of collection and my musical life. And in a world where things just seem to grow bleaker and bleaker, music (even if it’s funny music) is something that we can always fall back on to lift our spirits and make the world better, three minutes at a time.

David Buck is a former radio and TV guy whose work has appeared on Tedium, How To Geek, SyFy Wire, Nerdvana Media, and Vice. He’s a writer, researcher, podcaster, and musician who writes about the absurdity of our modern world and other offbeat topics. He loves weird music, the old web, retro video games and tech, and researching strange, yet interesting things. Currently working on a variety of music, web, and writing projects. Visit me on the web at https://whistlingnose.neocities.org/ or check out my portfolio at https://djbuckfreelance.neocities.org/

previously by David Buck: A Guide to Zappa Albums