A strange little side quest
Here is a rabbit hole for the next loading screen in Gold Miner Tom: Pac-Man went on sale in 1980, and its creator Toru Iwatani famously linked the character's shape to a pizza with a slice missing. The timeline takes another interesting turn: Space Invaders, released in 1978, helped push video games into mainstream popular culture. So a round of Gold Miner Tom is not just a quick distraction; it is a tiny stop on a much longer arcade history timeline.