Yellow Moleskine Pac-Man Edition

Time to start writing in a new diary notebook. To start a new one is always extra fun to me, because it feels like a fresh start.

Also, it’s time to admit it: I am a geek. A notebook geek not the least…

I went ahead and bought myself two large yellow Moleskine plain notebooks. Yes, a it’s a yellow Moleskine! Isn’t it quite cool? The Moleskine Company have very smart people in their marketing department. They proclaim Moleskines to be the notebook for artists and writers, saying it was used by Hemingway and other famous people etc.

They also publish a few Special Edition notebooks to the world, making a plain notebook a collectors item to look for! I remember playing this game many times but the reason I bought the yellow Moleskine was because it was on sale for 145 sek (21 usd) instead of a whopping 190 sek (27 usd) that the plain black always costs here in Sweden!

The yellow cover has the classic pacman maze embossed on the cover. You have to eat all the dots before you get a new level, all the while chased by evil ghosts. I get sweaty just thinking about it! At Moleskine’s site you can read:

Thirty years ago, Japanese gaming house Namco created Pac-Man, the hungriest video-game hero of all time. Not just an international smash hit, but a pop-culture icon of the Eighties. Moleskine celebrates its anniversary with a limited edition series featuring cover art and mini-stickers. […]

The hard cover notebooks are decorated with pixilated imagery that includes Pac-Man, ghost characters, fruit imagery and classical video game lines such as “Game Over”, “Insert Coin”, and “High Score.”

Yup, that’s right. In the very useful back pocket there are special edition stickers! I love stickers.

The yellow notebook is plain, the black one had lines so I skipped that one. But as I said, its not the colours I like but the price! I might even cover it up later, but for now, I’m geeking out a bit more…

Did you know that…

Pac Man is an arcade game developed by Namco and first released in Japan. After it’s release in the US it became very popular. Pac-Man is widely considered as one of the classics, a game people love to play.

When Pac-Man came out, most arcade games in the US were primarily shooters such as Space Invaders and Asteroids. Pac-Man succeeded by creating a new genre and is often credited with making a mark in video game history.

A perfect Pac-Man game is when the player completes all 256 levels with maximum points without losing a life. The first person to do this was Billy Mitchell on July 3, 1999, it took him 6 hours. To get the maximum score of 3,333,360 points it is necessary for to eat every fruit, pellet, blue ghost and dot for 256 boards.

Very much pop-culture

Just how darn pop-culture Pac-man is might be evident in just how much geek world embraces its imagery… I have seen the pacman icon numerous times on craft sites as wall art and as cakes, quilts, embroidery, appliqué, jewelery, and bags…

Talking about those marketing folks, they make pretty sweet video commercials for their products too. I loved the video of the notebook and some pack-mans eating through it that was posted on YouTube. But imagine listening to that sound for six hours straight… Ugh!

Well, if you are feeling geeky and joyful right now, watch this video – a song about the history of video games mind you:

History of video games video by Jonathan Mann, it is #709 of his Song A Day-series. [found via Laughing squid]

I will use my yellow moly as a writing diary in the new year. I think I may need the Monster bookmark for it, it is a crocheted and very cute pacman-looking monster (pattern in Swedish)!

But for now: Game over!

More about the Notebooks I love here.