Norwegian scientists have turned Pac-Man, the classic 1980's arcade video game, into a real world game of life-and-death where microscopic organisms try to outwit each other to survive.

The unsettling game named "Protozoan Pac-Man" was developed by scientists at the University College of Southeast Norway to better study real-life hunting conditions among single-celled animals.

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It features a 3D maze a scant one millimeter in size that looks similar to one in the video game. In this microscopic game, Pac-Man or Pac-Men, in this case unicellular "euglena" and "ciliates," try desperately to avoid being eaten by a horde of multicellular "rotifers" representing the hungry Ghosts. And yes, there are more than four Ghosts in this real-world game.

Euglena is a single-celled flagellate that is the best known and most widely studied member of the class Euglenoidea, a kind of algae. Rotifers are microscopic, multicellular aquatic animals whose prey consists of unicellular algae; dead or decomposing organic materials and other phytoplankton.

The Norwegians explained the Pac-Man maze consists of tiny channels filled with a nutritious liquid. They said their maze has a lot in common with the environments in which these microorganisms usually hunt, and permits better observation of more life-like behaviors compared to a Petri dish. The maze was built and filmed the maze with the help of filmmaker, Adam Bartley.

You can view a video of Protozoan Pac-Man here, but the Norwegians are all speaking Norwegian (of course). The game speaks for itself, however. There are two Protozoan Pac-Man games presented in the video.

Pac-Man, the arcade game, was developed by Namco and first released in Japan in May 1980. It was created by Japanese video game designer Toru Iwatani. In the U.S., the game was licensed for distribution by Midway and released in October 1980.

TagsPac-Man, Protozoan Pac-Man, euglena, rotifers, University College of Southeast Norway