In Pac-Man: Pills & Ghosts (3.5” White), Arlo Sinclair reimagines one of the most recognizable icons of arcade culture through the fragile, obsolete medium of a floppy disk. The hand-painted label features Pac-Man mid-chomp, accompanied by the cheeky caption: “EAT YOUR PILLS & RUN AWAY FROM YOUR GHOSTS!” This playful reframing transforms the classic game into a satirical life lesson, where the pixelated pursuit of pellets becomes a metaphor for contemporary struggles with consumption, escapism, and haunting pasts.

Sinclair’s decision to use a 3.5” floppy disk as the substrate intensifies the irony. Once indispensable for digital storage, the disk is now a cultural fossil—incapable of holding even the smallest fragment of the game it claims to contain. Its scuffed surface and distressed label, rendered with meticulous painterly detail, further emphasize the ephemerality of technological progress. By presenting the disk within a pristine white frame and numbering it individually, Sinclair elevates this disposable relic into a collectible artifact, bridging nostalgia and critique.

The work operates simultaneously as parody and homage. Pac-Man, a game rooted in endless cycles of pursuit and consumption, is recast as commentary on the anxieties of modern life. The floppy disk, long since discarded, becomes a vessel for reinterpreting those cycles through the lens of obsolescence.

Like much of Sinclair’s 2024–2025 cycle, Pac-Man: Pills & Ghosts fuses humor, nostalgia, and critique, transforming mass culture into enduring iconography. Signed and carefully finished, each edition underscores Sinclair’s ability to turn the ordinary into the monumental, and the forgotten into the unforgettable.