Adaptation Decay 12: Pac-Man Fever

You can't help but feel a little bad for Buckner and Garcia. They wrote a fun song about an arcade game they liked, and ended up being forever branded as a novelty act and a one-hit wonder. The record label railroaded them into making an album full of video game songs to take advantage of the popularity of their single, "Pac-Man Fever". What they ended up creating was a very strange beast: full of overly literal lyrics about gameplay and embarrassingly dated musical genre sendups... but also full of catchy hooks and well-used samples.

It's a bit of a stretch to call this album an adaptation, but it's a memorable time capsule from the arcade boom of the early 80s. Also, we really like talking about music.