Wednesday cover: "Pac-Man Fieber" by Gerald Mann (Germany)

This is the international cover version that classic video game fans in general have known about the longest, as photos of the front of the 45's picture sleeve showed up on the early Web.

You can see that, similar to the Finnish and Australian releases, Atari sponsored this version of the song to promote their Atari 2600 version of the game. Nikolaus Esche was hired to translate the lyrics. The B-side is a song Mann co-wrote. (Photos courtesy Discogs.com.)

But the best part is they made an official music video!

Week 52: Gold record

The final item for 52 Weeks of Pac-Man Fever is Jerry Buckner's "Pac-Man Fever" gold record. As discussed before, the single went gold in March 1982. Back then, that meant selling 1,000,000 copies. (Today, only 500,000 is required.)

Apart from these clippings from Radio & Records, I could not find a photo of the gold record awards. (Yes, the album went gold too.)

From Radio & Records, 16 Apr 1982

From Radio & Records, 2 July 1982

But here are photos of Buckner's gold single award! He was kind enough to take some for me when I asked him.

While I haven't seen photos of the actual, RIAA-issued gold records much, there have been a couple related oddities to pop up online. First is this gold record award apparently for Columbia Records president Al Teller. It can be yours for just $600.

There's also this award commemorating 1,000,000 copies of the Pac-Man Fever album. It was apparently presented to Shulman Record Co. by Listening Booth, a now defunct chain of record stores. This is odd, because even Buckner believes the album only sold around 900,000 copies.

Aside (courtesy Wikipedia): Until it got complicated in the digital age, albums required 500k copies for gold and 1,000,000 for platinum.

Originally singles required 1,000,000 copies for gold and 2,000,000 for platinum. Starting January 1, 1989, those numbers were halved.

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This is not actually the end of the 52 Weeks of Pac-Man Fever project! I had planned to end with something special for a grand finale, but it turns out just doing the project took up too much time to do that. So look for that by the album's 41st anniversary in January.

Also, due to me pausing them while looking for files for a particular one, there's still one more Wednesday cover coming this Wednesday. And I missed the events of March 20, 1982, which I'll have to write an entry for.

Finally, my followers over on Twitter have voted to keep Off-Topic Tuesday going. I don't, however, plan to keep cross-posting those to this blog. But look for those other entries I mentioned in the near future.

Wednesday cover: "Pac-Man Fever (Aerobic)" from Diet Pepsi Aerobic Program

And here is the third aerobic album with "Pac-Man Fever." This one sadly lacks any credits for the band. And there's no version without the exercise directions.

But it does come with a nifty poster showing some of the moves for each song. Thanks to Ron "Boogiemonster" Gerber for playing this on his radio show, Crap From the Past, from which I extracted the audio and uploaded it to YouTube.

Off-Topic Tuesday: "Old School Games" by Buckner & Garcia (feat. Danny Jones)

I'm not certain, but this may be the last song to date credited to Buckner & Garcia. The subject matter is appropriate and Jones provides lead vocals again. It's sometimes credited to Buckner-Garcia Band (feat. Danny Jones) instead.

Week 51: "Pac-Man Fever (Eat 'Em Up) 2015 by Buckner & Garcia feat. Jace Hall

Do you remember "Pac-Man Fever Redux" by Jace Hall that we covered in March? It was a rap song that used Gary Garcia's vocals in the chorus. Here's a reminder.

Well, what if you took "Pac-Man Fever", added a modern, driving beat, and used a verse from "Pac-Man Fever Redux" as a rap break in the middle of it? Well, you'd have this song.

But, wait! What if you also got the creators of the viral "Pac-Man: The Movie" trailer to help make a music video for the song? Well, then you'd get this.