Tom Petty’s Love of Pac-Man Gave Him an Eye-Opening Injury 

TL;DR:

• Tom Petty once hit a wall and got a hand injury that made it difficult to play guitar.
• Tom Petty hurt himself while playing Pac-Man.
• His music has appeared in video games. 

While Tom Petty spent much of his time touring and recording music, he packed hours of his free time with video games. He explained that he began spending so much time on his gaming system that it began to frighten him. He had to swear off Pac-Man altogether after realizing he was dedicating too much time to the game. Petty explained that he played the game so much that he injured himself. 

Tom Petty once had a hand injury that put his music career in jeopardy

When Petty was working on his album Southern Accents, he grew so frustrated that he left the studio and hit a wall. While he hadn’t intended to hit it that hard, he did severe damage to his hand.

“[The demo] was so much better than what we were doing,” he explained in the book Conversations With Tom Petty by Paul Zollo. “And I was so pissed off that I couldn’t get the track as good as the demo that I slugged the wall. And completely shattered my hand. I shattered it. To powder.”

Doctors expressed doubt that Petty would ever be able to play guitar again. 

“I suddenly had a hand as big as Mickey Mouse. It was really scary. I went to the hospital. And they said, ‘You’re going to have to go to a specialist.’ And I went to the specialist, and by that point my hand was so big, it had swollen up so bad. The guy said, right away, with me and Tony there, ‘Well, I’ll tell ya — if you were a carpenter, or a plumber, I wouldn’t be concerned. But I’m not sure we’ll be able to get your mobility back in your fingers.’ People said, ‘He’s broken his hand and he’ll never play again.’ And I didn’t buy that. I thought, ‘I will play again.'”

After a complicated surgery, Petty was able to play guitar again, but he never regained the full range of motion in his hand. 

Tom Petty got another hand injury by playing Pac-Man

Several years before this, Petty began avidly playing video games.

“I read the other day that video games are taking 15 billion dollars directly out of the record business,” he told Playboy in 1982, per The Petty Archives. “As far as I’m concerned, I’d rather put seven dollars’ worth of quarters into a Pac-Man machine than into some dip-s*** album.”

Petty, like many others, was fascinated by video games, sometimes to a point that frightened him.

“I’ve got a home system, and I’ve gotten real addicted,” he said. “It frightens me. I feel weird after 30 minutes of smashing electronic rocks.”

He said that he had to swear off Pac-Man altogether because of how often he was playing it. 

“I used to have a Pac-Man game at my house,” he said. “I played it until my hand got f***ed up and the skin rubbed off. I finally went, ‘What have I been doing eating dots for hours?'”

His music has appeared in video games

In the years since Petty got rid of his Pac-Man machine, his own songs have appeared in video games. Per IMDb, Petty’s songs have appeared in Rock Band 3, Guitar Hero 5, and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Petty likely would have enjoyed video games even more if he could listen to his own music while playing.