Almost two decades ago, a parlor game called "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" became an unlikely grass-roots phenomenon among movie buffs and foretold today's social web of online connections. 

Maybe the only one who was not amused by the game was Kevin Bacon himself. 

"I was horrified by it. I thought it was a giant joke at my expense," said the prolific actor Saturday during a talk at the South by Southwest Interactive festival here. "I appreciate it now. But I was very resistant to it (at first)." 

The game, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, requires players to link celebrities to Bacon, in as few steps as possible, via the movies they have in common. The more odd or random the celebrity, the better. For example, O.J. Simpson was in "The Naked Gun 33⅓" with Olympia Dukakis, who was in "Picture Perfect" with Kevin Bacon. 

Inspired by "six degrees of separation," the theory that nobody is more than six relationships away from any other person in the world, the game was dreamed up in 1994 by Brian Turtle and two classmates at Albright College in Reading, Pennsylvania. They were watching "Footloose" on TV when it was followed by another Kevin Bacon movie, and then another. 

"It was just one of those lightbulb moments," said Turtle, who joined Bacon onstage at SXSW. "It was like, 'This guy is everywhere! He's the center of the entertainment universe.' " 

After it spread among their friends, Turtle and his co-creators, Craig Fass and Mike Ginelli, managed to get booked on Jon Stewart's then-MTV show to explain the game. 
how many years has the game been in existence at the time of the article?
Almost two decades ago, a parlor game called "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" became an unlikely grass-roots phenomenon