Twenty-five years after issuing Take Off Your Pants And Jacket, Blink-182 are taking a notably different route than standard anniversary campaigns. Rather than stopping at the usual music reissues, the pop-punk trio have partnered with Namco's most enduring mascot. Visitors to the group's official website will now find a fully playable, browser-based edition of Pac-Man, created to commemorate the 2001 record.
The band intentionally shaped the website to recreate the visual feel of the early 2001 internet, matching the exact era when the full-length first arrived in stores. Mechanically, the game functions just like the arcade original. Players navigate a maze, eat power pellets, and dodge colorful ghosts, with the added twist of gathering custom collectible icons tailored to Take Off Your Pants And Jacket. The presentation mirrors a bygone era of web culture, when musical acts routinely used self-contained desktop minigames to entertain their audiences between promotional pushes.
This browser release represents the continuation of an alliance established between Blink-182 and the Pac-Man brand earlier this year. The crossover initially surfaced at San Diego Comic Con, where the group launched a line of collaborative merchandise to introduce the anniversary project. Among those items was a specialized vinyl pressing of the 2001 album produced by Blood Records, paired with a variation of the Pac-Man and 7-Eleven shirt that bassist Mark Hoppus wore during the band's reunion appearance at Coachella in 2023. The relationship also carried over into media, with the musicians making a cameo appearance in an episode of the animated short series Pac-Man: Snack Breaks, supplemented by co-branded clothing sold through their online store.
Alongside the video game crossover, the group has kept physical and digital formats in focus for longtime listeners. Back in June, Blink-182 shared an expanded twenty-fifth anniversary edition of the record across streaming platforms. That collection augmented the original thirteen songs with six b-sides, accompanied by a dedicated vinyl pressing made available for pre-order.
These historical tie-ins arrive while the trio continues to tour on current material, having put out their most recent studio album, One More Time..., in 2023. Looking ahead to next summer, Blink-182 have plotted an extensive run across Europe scheduled for June. The routing includes major festival billing at Rock Am Ring, Rock Im Park, and Rock For People, flanked by their own headlining arena shows in Berlin, Paris, and Milan. Meanwhile, listeners continue to wonder whether the band might secure their first headlining slot at Download Festival next year.
By pairing archived tracks and international tour bookings with an arcade game, Blink-182 have kept the observance of their third straight major release energetic. Honoring a milestone through browser games and vintage merchandise lets the band pay tribute to their turn-of-the-century catalog on their own straightforward terms.
