Pac-Man at 35: Why you love him more than ever In a fierce competition that lasted the entire weekend, Mitchell and Fothergill went head-to-head. Mitchell, who knew Fothergill to compete wearing a red Canadian flag cape, decided that he’d arrive patriotic himself, donning a necktie bearing an American flag. On July 3, 1999, Mitchell and his Canadian competitor Rick Fothergill faced off at Funspot, a historic arcade in Weirs Beach, New Hampshire. So there became the race for the perfect Pac-Man game.” “To allow someone else to come and get credit for the perfect score in front of me, was not acceptable. “These Canadian guys were on the line, claiming they had the ability to get a perfect score in Pac-Man,” Mitchell recalled. But in the late 1990s, Mitchell received a call, and on the other side of that call was a threat to his legacy. His hot sauce business took off he got married to his wife, Evelyn, and had three kids. “It was the beginning of a metamorphosis from arcade games to home game systems.”įor the next decade and a half, Mitchell rarely touched arcade games at all. The industry of arcade games was also beginning to change,” Mitchell said. “When I was 20 years old, I realized I couldn’t play arcade games forever. As the popularity of arcade games began to wane in the mid-1980s, he redirected his focus into taking over his dad’s restaurant, kicking off his own hot sauce business and starting a family. At the same time, Mitchell knew when it was time to take a break.

Golden age of pacman