(Photo courtesy of Come Out & Play Festival)
On Friday, July 18, a relaunch of the live-action version of the classic video game, Pac-Man, will consume DUMBO streets. PacManhattan is an interactive event in which costumed players will join into teams and chase each other through the neighborhood streets, decked out as Pac-Man and Ghosts.
PacManhattan will kick off the Come Out & Play Festival, an annual festival of street games that will turn the city into a playground on August 18 – 19. Players will be guided via cell phone over a nine-mile course, starting with a chase through the neighborhood’s cobblestone streets. This year’s game is the 10th anniversary of the first PacManhattan game, which took place among the streets of Greenwich Village in 2004, organized by New York University students.
Game designer Pete Vigeant, one of the original NYU game creators, is looking forward to the shift from Manhattan to Brooklyn. “The entire grid is filled with amazing micro and macro views of what makes NYC an amazing place,” Vigeant told DumboNYC, “and the players will get to soak it up as they transform the space into a gameboard. Our goal is to make urban environments magical and I can’t wait to add to the magic that’s already pulsing through DUMBO.”
The game will be held from 3:00 to 8:00 PM on Friday, with tickets for each session needed from 3:00 to 6:00. Games are first-come, first-served from 6:00 to 8:00.
“It’s a really amazing team effort and results in this high-tech mash-up of capture the flag and tag, with a video game flair,” Vigeant explained. “And everyone wears costumes, which is pretty fun as well.”
Interested in getting your Ghost on? A limited number of tickets to PacManhattan are still available, and if you miss the chance to join in on a team, there will surely still be plenty to see.
(Jessica Thurston is a DUMBO resident and contributor to DumboNYC. With a background in environmental sustainability and urban planning, she loves learning about everything going on in the neighborhood – and drinking iced coffee from One Girl Cookies.)
