Ever wonder what the the all-time high score on Pac-Man is?

Only 11 people in the world have achieved it.

Arcade Lore

For younger readers, a bit of history.  In the early 80s, arcade game machines – those big refrigerator-sized systems – kept track of the last 10 or so high scores and showed them after every game and periodically during the between-game animation.  If you won, you could use the joystick to select three letters for your name and it would appear with your score (e.g., “JSG 85670”).

A popular goal was to “wipe” the scores by replacing all existing scores with your own by outscoring everyone else.  Your initials would be all 10 of the top 10 and you would be king of the arcade.  To be honest, looking back, investing probably hundreds of dollars worth of quarters to achieve this goal was…well, it was the 80s.

Pac-Man Mastery

The highest possible score in the original Pac-Man arcade game is an astonishing 3,333,360.  To achieve that, you need to eat all the dots, ghosts, and bonus symbols (without dying, of course) and make it all the way to the 256th board.  Only 11 people have achieved this, most recently Jake Goldberg from Pennsylvania, who completed all 256 levels in 4 hours and 12 minutes2.

You can watch a complete 3,333,360 game here:

Interestingly, the designers apparently never planned for this, because after maxing out, the game shows what looks like memory corruption.

Can You Achieve That?

You don’t even need to invest a single quarter!  Enter RackNerd’s Winter Giveaway and get in on some of these cool prizes:

• An Arcade 1UP PAC-Man Deluxe Arcade
• An Apple 9th Generation iPad!
• 5x 2 TB Gen4 NVMe
• 5x RackNerd KVM VPS! 4 GB RAM, 105 GB SSD, 9 TB Monthly Transfer. First Year FREE for 5 lucky winners, renews @ $43.88/Year (no obligation to renew)
• 10x $30 RackNerd Account Credit

Be sure to check out their most recent offer to get in on a cheap VPS for only $11.29/year in datacenters across North America (and now Dublin, Ireland, too!):

Bonus Codfe

Enter code 3333360 (the all-time high score, without any commas) and you’ll receive 10 bonus entries!  Good luck.

Here’s the Gleam entry form.  If you don’t see it, you may need to disable your ad blocker.  Good luck everyone and thanks to RackNerd for the cool prizes!

raindog308

Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.