In case the title isn't enough to convince you that this isn't a story about hookers, she-males or she-male hookers who I have no relationship with. There is a sultry mistress involved with this story, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

The bar that my friends and I go to most regularly has been hurting for a while now. About a year ago they took out Big Buck Hunter, leaving only the golf game and the pinball machine. Pinball is nothing to scoff at, but without Buck Hunter I soon stopped bringing change to the bar at all.

Things had been getting a little better recently, because they got one of those vending machines where you put in a dollar and try to grab a stuffed animal. Which is usually a wasted toonie, but this one is rigged so that you keep trying until you pull something out. The catch is that the big prizes are on the right, and the smaller stuff is on the left. After your first try, you are restricted to the left side. I never keep these stuffed animals, I just pass them off to any lady I'm drinking with that night.

However, I think after last night's trip to the bar it's safe to say that it has restored its pride. Wedged between the Terminator 2 Pinball Machine and the Golf game was Ms. Pac-Man, an icon of retro gaming. I had to play. I've barely played Pac-Man in my twenty four years of life, but I did buy the Championship Edition on XBLA. I actually did very well, and it was when I really started getting the feel of the game that I realized that what I was doing was essentially the same as running away from the cops in GTA IV.



I had tricked the ghosts, and at one point they were all bunched at the bottom of the screen while I was bouncing to the top. They had no chance of catching up to me, and I realized in my drunkenness that if this were GTA IV then I would be escaping their red circle momentarily. It's a similarity that never occurred to me before; the original GTA resembles Pac-Man without the imminent threat of the Ghosts. The perspective has changed in the recent games, but I think the similarity remains unchanged. Are the streets of Liberty City any less of a grid then any particular level of Pac-Man?

This begs the question; is Pac-Man an open world game too?

Which makes me wonder, is Pac-Man an open-world game?