EXPOSÉ: Adam Jones ruined my life

“You wanna know why I look like this?” he asks as he slumps on his aged leather sofa, bottle in hand. You can barely see his bright, yellow face; it is now covered by thick facial hair. As for that trademark smile? It’s long gone. It’s been turned upside down. He hasn’t eaten a ghost in months.

“I look like this because of Adam Jones.” He can see the confusion - who is Adam Jones? “You probably know him as Pacman Jones, but he’s not Pacman. I’m PAC-MAN!”

It’s been quite a fall for Pac-Man since his 1980 North American release. Yet he doesn’t blame hot new game systems like X-Box and PlayStation 3. He doesn’t blame the alcohol. He blames Jones. “That punk is out there using my name and throwing money at strippers,” Pac-Man told SSNN in an exclusive interview. “I’m sure he never stopped to think that people might hold his actions against me.”

The one-time CGI icon can no longer find work, thanks in large part to widespread confusion over which Pacman has been arrested repeatedly and was recently involved in a night club shooting. Sadly, it’s not just the video game industry that has abandoned him; many of his friends refuse to speak to him.

“If you think Pacman Jones was the first Pacman to make it rain at a strip club, you’ve got another thing coming,” said Blinky, the red ghost. “That guy was out of control in the ’80s, and honestly I think he’s had this coming for a long time.”

“It’s unfortunate, but my given name was actually Hideyuki Pac-Man Jones,” the once-cheerful video game superstar said, adding that he changed his name to “just Pac-Man” over twenty years ago. “People see in the paper or on TV that Pacman Jones got arrested, and they just assume it’s me. It’s awful - my phone starts ringing off the hook with angry parents. They love to blame video games for the delinquency and perversions of their children.”

Pac-Man has threatened a lawsuit against Jones, but has yet to see any results. He insists that all he wants is for Jones to be stripped of his nickname and clear the Pac-Man name. For now he is left jobless, his good name besmirched, defending himself to former friends and complete strangers, and gorging himself on little white dots. “I’ve tried to tell everyone, there’s no way I could have been at that seedy, nasty Vegas strip club. I never left my reserved table at the Admiral in Chicago - just ask Sunshine, Traci and Cookie.”

It’s going to be tough for this sport to sweep any nations, but it’s still pretty frickin’ cool!