Today should be a national holiday.

Today marks the 30th anniversary of two legendary geek milestones:

1. Namco released the first build of Pac-Man to arcades throughout the United States.
2. Lucasfilm and 20th Century Fox released The Empire Strikes Back, which is the crown jewel of the entire Star Wars universe.

These are two events that, for better or for worse, helped shape my childhood and played a significant role in the adult I would become.

When I was a child, Pac-Man was one of the first games to really capture my attention.  It was everywhere, and I thought I was pretty good at it.  Sometime in 1986 or 1987, before I’d ever touched an NES, I started to learn some of the ghosts’ patterns and personalities.  I found ways to traverse each map to ensure that I’d eat four ghosts for every power pellet, eat every fruit that came onto the map, and keep myself in the high score slot on the machine at our local laundromat.

If you haven’t played the latest Google doodle, head over to Google.com and click on the “Insert Coin” button.

A few years later, I would be introduced to the Star Wars saga.  This was when they were still referred to as “Star Wars”, “Empire”, and “Jedi”. There was none of this “Episode IV” or “A New Hope” nonsense.  Han shot first. Lucas hadn’t yet gone back to revise (and, in some ways, destroy) his original masterpiece.  Master Yoda taught us to “do, or do not”, because “there is no try”. Han Solo taught us that the most badass response possible to “I love you” is “I know”. We learned what really happened to Anakin Skywalker.

Tonight, I’ll watch The Empire Strikes Back on DVD, despite the revisionist changes that George Lucas has made, and I’ll be drooling over one of those Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga cabinets released a few years ago.