PAC-MANIA!!

After the success of the iconic Space Invaders watches, RJ-Romain Jerome is once again taking you on a crazy round of video games with a limited series of 80 watches designed after the cult PAC-MAN.  In association with NAMCO BANDAI Games, RJ-Romain Jerome is bringing the famous yellow character back to life with four different models of 20 pieces each — paying tribute to the flagship Eighties icon.   Bravo to RJ CEO Manuel Emch for reviving these video game icons!  If you love Pac-Man (who doesn’t love Pac-Man!?!?) — you’ll want to see these watches!

The most colorful model features Pac-Man, the Ghosts (Blinky-red, Pinky-pink, Inky-blue, and Clyde-Orange) and a pair of extra point Cherries!

Romain Jerome uses a very sophisticated production process to create the characters and fruits on the PAC-MAN watch dial — each of the three dial levels is engraved with a pixelated matrix, resulting in a crisp three-dimensional view.  The lower two levels are beadblasted, while the upper level features straight-grained edges.   Machined piece by piece, applied by hand and gem-set, they are subsequently lacquered with different colours or with black superluminova “green emission”, thus recreating actual game sequences.  An official PAC-MAN logo is also placed near the 6 o’clock position.

Pac-Man, Blinky, Pinky, Inky, and Clyde

The case of this watch is inherited from the RJ Moon Invader collection — an alloy of steel and fragments of Apollo 11 — 46mm black PVD coated, with polished and sandblasted surfaces.  The four ball-and-socket joints at the corners of the case are functional and designed like the legs of the lunar landing module in American lunar expeditions.  On the back of the watch, a disc made of RJ’s proprietary “Moon Silver^“ – a low-oxidation silver fused with moon rocks – reproduces the surface of the Moon.  RJ-Romain Jerome uses automatic mechanical Concepto movements (a movement producer I have discussed before).

The watches will be exclusively launched at the Colette store in Paris on September 3rd, and then at other Romain Jerome retailers starting on September 10, 2012. Price for the Romain Jerome PAC-MAN watches is $17,900.

Pac-Man and the “Extra Point” Cherries

Did You Know?

Created by Toru Iwatani, a game designer of NAMCO, and released by NAMCO LIMITED, the predecessor of NAMCO BANDAI Games Inc., in 1980 in Japan, PAC-MAN followed the huge success of SPACE INVADERS by touching an even larger audience and which for the first time featured women.

In June 2005, the Guinness Book of Records awarded PAC-MAN as the “most successful coin-operated game machine”.  When the game came out in the United States, its popularity overtook that encountered in Japan, resulting in an unprecedented craze called “PAC-MAN FEVER”. With over 300,000 arcade game units sold all over the world, this is one of the most popular games of all time.

The official PAC-MAN web site is available at http://pacman.com/.