Buckner & Garcia
Puc-Man Fever (Japanese Version)
Buckner & Garcia’s “Pac-Man Fever” is kind of an infamous track at this point, but I think it gets a bad rep. Sure, it’s not the best song ever written and its definitely not a song you’d want stuck in your head for more than 10 minutes. But as song about video games go, it’s pretty damn good. And yes, there are other songs about video games. Who could forget Gary Wright’s “Dig Dug?” (The answer is, of course, literally everyone.)Don’t forget, this song was a Billboard Hot 100 top ten hit single, peaking at number nine.

But the song wasn’t only a hit in the states, it saw an official release in many other territories too, including Japan. That makes sense, Pac-Man was just as big (if not bigger) in Japan than it was in the states, so why not release the song there?

Well, one problem with that, in Japan, Pac-Man was still officially Puck-Man.

I’m sure a large portion of my audience already knows this, but Puck-Man was Pac-Man’s original name. It was only changed after someone realized that Puck-Man looks and sounds way too much like Fuck-Man, with the graffiti and vandalism possibilities too horrific to even imagine. So “puck” became “pac,” and most of world never realized that the little yellow guy was supposed to be shaped like a hockey puck.

Anyways, back to the song. When the time came to release the song in Japan, Buckner & Garcia apparently went back into the studio to re-record the chorus of the song, changing every instance of “Pac” to “Puck.” If you ever wanted proof that record companies just had fucking millions to burn in the early 80s, there you go.

I highly doubt this version of the song ever got any other official release aside from the Japanese 7″ single. The album itself was never issued in Japan. Hell, the original version of “Pac-Man Fever” has never been re-issued on a proper Buckner & Garcia CD or digitally (any CD or iTunes version is a re-recorded take from the 90s). So I feel safe in assuming that this is a proper rarity.

Here’s an idea for Record Store Day 2019; completely remastered “Pac-Man Fever” 7″ single using that dope as fuck Japanese art, with “Puc-Man Fever” as the B-side. Someone get on this now.