“There’s no need to look so nervous,” says a beaming man in a radiant yellow suit, inside what is essentially a darkened warehouse.
Perhaps my game face is betraying my bewilderment. I’m only loosely familiar with the concept of Pac-Man, having played it a handful of times. There is something about being relentlessly pursued around an inescapable maze that I’ve always found quite stressful and I am fearing that the real-life experience will be that but on steroids.
Manchester’s Pac-Man Live, which opened on Friday, is the latest in what is becoming a rapidly blossoming market for live experiences, following the success of immersive nostalgic exploits such as the Crystal Maze and life-size Monopoly.
A total of 45 years after Pac-Man launched, the game has chomped its way into our cultural hall of fame and there is no doubt the live version will be incredibly popular.
The game can accommodate up to eight players at a time – there are seven of us from the Guardian’s Manchester office – and we’re pitted against each other in a hyper-competitive high-energy arena with giddy lights and a barrage of sounds.
Our vibrant host introduces himself as Wakka Wakka Bob, a name I assume he wasn’t born with. He says we can call him Bob.
We don what is perhaps best described as a digital tabard, with a yellow lit-up Pac-Man on the front, and we’re handed an iPad to enter our names, which then appear on our backs.
Only one of us is imaginative enough to put in a nickname, “Jess-Man”, which prompts our host to jokingly ask in a mock-Geordie accent: “Are you from Newcastle, like?”
“Yes I am actually,” comes the reply from the Guardian’s social affairs correspondent, Jessica Murray.
Bob explains the rules, which are broadly the same as the traditional arcade game: each player aims to eat as many pellets as possible, collecting fruit and avoiding ghosts, which are projected on the ground.
He then gives a dizzying list of different types of fruit and explains the points values associated with them. I remember cherries are 100 points but after that I’m lost.
Strawberries are worth something, apples are worth more. The big one is something that looks like a grapefruit. And then there’s a key and a bell? I soon realise I should probably have paid more attention to the details.
Each ghost has a name, says Bob, but I don’t have the brain capacity to learn them. The only bit that sinks in about the ghosts is that the red one is the worst one. I make a mental note to avoid that specific one.
We stand in our spots in the maze. There’s a dramatic countdown. And the game begins. Suddenly, I am no longer Robyn Vinter, the Guardian’s north of England correspondent. I am a small yellow chomping machine. I am Pac-Man. Any loyalties to my colleagues are gone. It is me, alone in the maze, with a desperate hunger for fruit and a crippling terror of ghosts.
Gameplay comes in the form of short rounds, each a few minutes long. Rests are built in, with water available (and gratefully received).
The tabard buzzes constantly, I assume as a result of my many infractions, which include walking into the maze’s walls, colliding with other players and, of course, being eaten by ghosts. Every time it does, I’m unable to score any points for a couple of seconds.
I work out fairly early on that the fruit mostly appears at the centre of the maze. But that is also where the ghosts are, and after a while, I can’t help feeling I am particularly appetising to them. My cavalier, and frankly, reckless, gameplay puts me in constant contact, particularly with the red one.
Bob keeps telling us to pace ourselves – in theory it’s walkable but we are sprinting. Time is somehow going both slower and faster. Before we know it, it’s over and the final leaderboard is revealed.
“I ate so many ghosts,” says my colleague Hannah Al-Othman, uttering a sentence that does not make sense anywhere but here.
I am not ashamed of the sheen over my face. It is the pink, sweaty visage of a Pac-Man champion.
Pac-Man Live opens in Manchester on Friday 21 March, with tickets starting from £26 per person.
