Ken Uston is the man. Mastering Pac-Man is a fun little book to read.
Interesting triva. Here's Uston telling how he got into Pac-Man.
Ken Uston said:
It's nice living in Atlantic City--about four months of the year. It was 1981 and for the third summer in a row I found myself in the oceanside town, walking the "boards," playing jazz piano in local clubs and just basically hanging out. I had some legal work to do as well--to force the casinos to allow me to play.
The Playboy casino had just opened. Hefner and company had flown in a bevy of bunnies from Chicago and New York to help train local girls to be bunnies.
The Playboy Club was at the corner of Florida Avenue and the Boardwalk. Right down the street is a bar called Easy Street, where the bunnies hung out after work. I had never before seen such a collection of puchritude in my life. For obvious reasons, I, too, hung out there.
By chance, Easy Street had two Pac-Man machines. I played the game for hours on end.
Pac-Man's a lot like blackjack (mathematicians would say, "Both are deterministic"):
--In blackjack,the dealer must play the hand exactly in accordance with the rules, hitting until the house total is 17 or greater.
--In Pac-Man, the little monsters are programmed to react in a pre-determined way, in response the the way the player moves his smiling yellow disk around the board.
After about 50 hours playing the game, I started to become familar with how the machine was programmed. I drew charts and schematics of the various "boards" until, after another 200 hours or so, I had developed patterns which, when followed, would allow the player to win so steadily that he could play one game indefinitely.
An Easy Street waitress suggested I write a book about Pac-Man. I followed her suggestion and then contacted a New York literary agent.
Three days later the called to tell me that New American Library (NAL) wanted to publish the Pac-Man book, and had offered an advance of $25,000.
I went to New York to sign the contract. A snag developed. Bally, who manufactured Pac-Man, heard about the forthcomming book and called NAL, asking for a copy of the manuscript. Hoping they'd endorse the book, we sent them a copy of the manuscript immediately.
Two days later, my agent called.
"Ken, the president of Bally read your book. He said 'The book is too good--we can't allow it to be published--people'll be playing forever on one quarter.' Bally's going to sue if the book is published."
Now consider the irony of this. I'd been thrown out of New Jersey casinos for playing blackjack too well. One of the casinos was Bally's Park Place.
This same company was now telling me I couldn't publish a book about a video game because it would help the customers play too well. I saw red (a few months later, I got to vent my spleen about this absurdity on national TV--while playing Pac-Man with Jane Pauley on the Today show. That show got NAL worrying about a libel suit, to boot.)
NAL, God bless 'em, went ahead.
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