Pac-Man just got turned into a luxury watch — and it costs a fortune

Independent Swiss brand Krayon has taken one of the most niche complications in watchmaking and somehow turned it into a tribute to Pac-Man. The result is the Pac-Man Anywhere, a limited run of just 15 pieces, each one unique, each one made from platinum, and each one costing somewhere in the region of £170,000.

At its core, this is still Krayon’s Anywhere watch, an impressive bit of kit that tracks sunrise and sunset based on your exact location. It’s the type of thing that’s usually reserved for serious collectors who like their watches complicated and on the nerdier side.

What Krayon has done here is swap out the usual astronomical display for something a lot more playful. Instead of the sun moving around the dial, you’ve got Pac-Man doing the rounds, marking the transition from day to night as he goes.

It sounds gimmicky, but the execution is anything but. The dial sits on a polished onyx base, with a barely-there maze design that only really shows itself when the light hits it properly. Floating above that are tiny, hand-painted elements, ghosts, fruit, dots, all placed on rotating sapphire discs that shift depending on the length of the day.

When midnight hits, the ghosts turn blue, just like in the game. On equinox days, the whole thing balances out into a perfectly symmetrical display. It’s clever, slightly mad, but it does look class.

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Under the hood, it’s just as serious. The manual-winding movement packs in over 400 components, with a 72-hour power reserve and all the mechanical complexity needed to track daylight cycles in real time.

The watch is certainly nostalgic without being tacky and just self-aware enough to pull it off. Each of the 15 watches has a slightly different layout, too, so no two are the same, which only adds to the sense that this is more of an art piece than an accessory.

Will you ever see one in the wild? We wouldn't have thought so. But as a concept, and as a reminder that watchmaking doesn’t always have to take itself so seriously, it’s hard not to like. You can see more of the watch on the Krayon website and even enquire.

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