Run from Ghosts in Real Cemeteries with Google Maps Pac-Man

Running from ghosts around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris through the Google Maps Pac-Man function (all screenshots by the author for Hyperallergic)

Today is a glorious one for your idle time, as Google Maps has made a function available to turn any street view into a game of Pac-Man.

Well, not ANY view, as you have to be somewhere with enough streets for a fair fight between hungry yellow orb and colorful ghosts. The Spiral Jetty, for example, is off-limits for the version of the 1980s game, alas. However, much of the world is your arcade oyster in the pre-April Fool’s Day platform, from the Sculpture Garden at the Walker Art Center to the clandestine spaces of Gramercy Park. The Pac-Man option follows Google making its logo into a Pac-Man game back in 2010, and Google Maps transforming into a Pokemon hunt last year as another April Fool’s Eve hack (apparently they always like to be one day ahead of the rest of the internet pranksters).

Personally, I found it addictive to track down those winding, nonsensical 19th-century cemetery maps available on Google Maps, such as the looping Victorian roads of Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, the treacherous maze-like roads of Père-Lachaise in Paris, or the hellish conflagrations of roads in Boston’s Mount Auburn Cemetery. Running from ghosts in a cemetery is suddenly such fun. Whether it’s the grid of NYC or the Haussmann lines of Paris, just be sure you’ll have plenty of fleeing room and intersections to get away from those sinister specters. You don’t want to find yourself at a dead end.