This week, Oreo cookies announced a new tie-in with arcade legend Pac-Man. Fans can use their phones to scan any of the six different Pac-Man themed biscuits in the packet which gives them access to a neat mobile version of the classic maze game – each cookie provides a different maze layout. In the interests of research, I acquired three packets, and while the game is pretty good, it was tough to get my phone to recognise the cookie and it sometimes took so long I'd already eaten it. Anyway, the offer is a sign of how immensely popular Pac-Man remains, more than 40 years after his debut. At the time of the game's launch, the circular hero was almost unique, a lovable character in an industry dominated by spaceships, cars and guns.

It's almost unthinkable now, but from the 1970s until the early 1980s, vinyl records were explored as a means of storing computer data – including video games. Some magazines of the time tucked code-packed flexi disc inserts into their pages: paper-thin plastic records that could be fed into home computers from an ordinary turntable, magically manifesting a game on screen. Long before Travis Scott was attracting 12 million players to a gig hosted in Fortnite, there was a coming together of a British game developer, a magazine and a pop act that marked the beginning of the intersection between the music and games industries. The Thompson Twins Adventure Game came cover-mounted on a 1984 issue of the beloved magazine Computer & Video Games, the first UK magazine devoted to games. Almost everyone involved in the project – a promotional item linked to the release of the single Doctor Doctor – admits the game was imperfect. It was a weird text adventure garnished with incidental visuals, in which the members of the Thompson Twins had to locate the ingredients of a potion to be made by the song's eponymous medic.

In simple terms, it is the language of computers.