Buckner and Garcia - Pac-Man Fever

This is the type of record that doesn't happen very much anymore: the gimmick and/or novelty record. Of course we all wish this ridiculous non-musical auto-tune trend would dry up and blow away, but that's a jab unrelated to the review of this record.

Buckner and Garcia's Pac-Man Fever is surprisingly good for a novelty record. As a longtime lover of all things Atari, this record is right up my alley. Each track puts a different Atari game to music. While "Pac-Man Fever" is the most famous song on the album, I actually found that "Froggy's Lament" was the better song. "Do the Donkey Kong" also provided a lot of fun, especially for my wife and I who have a friend who invented a dance called The Donkey Kong.

While many of the songs focus on Atari games you probably know (Pac-Man, Frogger, Centipede, Donkey Kong, Defender, Berzerk), there are others which are a little more obscure (Hyperspace, Mousetrap). Between writing the last sentence and this one, and went and checked and found that I own every single one of the games featured on this album. So there's that.

In addition to the kitschy fun of the music on this album, the record sleeve includes patterns for evading the ghosts and picking up the fruit bonuses for each level. It makes me want to play a little Pac-Man just to see if the patterns hold up. Anyway, this is a fun album. It's not the greatest thing I own, but my wife and daughter had a little dance party when I put it on. I highly recommend this record to Atari dorks and collectors of kitsch.