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No you're not in an 80s timewarp... Pac-Man really is all the rage again.

The world's most successful arcade game is celebrating its 30th birthday by taking the world by storm for a second time.

More than one billion people are thought to have played Pac-Man in the past three days after Google turned its logo into an online version of the game to mark the milestone.

The internet giant said the launch of Pac-Man marked "a significant moment in popular culture".

Landmark Its official blog read: "Pac-Man seems like a natural fit for the Google homepage.

"They're both deceptively straightforward, carefully hiding their complexity under the hood. There's a light-hearted, human touch to both.

"We can only hope you find using Google at least a quarter as enjoyable as eating dots and chasing ghosts."

Pac-Man - or Puck Man as it was originally called - was released as an arcade game in Japan on May 22, 1980.

The game features small yellow Pac-Men travelling around a maze, gobbling up dots while trying to avoid the ghosts. It quickly became the most popular computer game on the market and led to a string of copycat releases.

Maker Namco changed the name to Pac-Man when it was released in the US the same year.

Since then there have been more than 50 versions and industry experts reckons over 10 billion games of it have been played.

The game was the brainchild of Toru Iwatani, who is now a professor at Tokyo Polytechnic University.

The 55-year-old came up with the idea in 1979 as he ate his lunch.

His goal was to make video games appealing to women rather than just computer geeks.

He revealed: "I was quite hungry and ordered a whole pizza.

"I helped myself to a wedge and what was left was the idea for the Pac-Man shape. Around the time that we launched it, video arcades were filled with games where you shoot aliens. It seemed very dark. It was for men, it wasn't fashionable at all.

"I realised that if women and couples were going to come to game centres, they had to be cheerful places.

"When you think about things women like, you think about fashion, or fortune-telling, or food or dating boyfriends.

"So I decided to theme the game around eating - after eating dinner, women like to have dessert."

The game was not officially launched on May 22 - only put into a public arcade to gauge reaction.

Mr Iwatani added: "Since it was the first time the machine was shown to the general public, we consider May 22 to be Pac-Man's birthday. After that, we made revisions and improvements based on the results of the location test and it was released in July.

"The women and couples were very happy about the machine.

"They played it, and they were more or less satisfied - they figured out how to play it. But we didn't think it would be a major hit.

Success "I didn't think that the US and Europe would take it up, because it's a rather slow relaxing game."

American fans spent more than $1billion on Pac-Man games in the first 15 months after its release.

It went on to spawn its own family including Ms Pac-Man and Jr. Pac-Man. Only one person - celebrated player Billy Mitchell - has played a perfect game of Pac-Man.

The Google version of the game was removed from the company's home page last night. But you can continue to play the game by adding the Pac-Man Gadget on to your iGoogle.