Pac-Man's enemies: Ghosts, Monsters, Ghost-Monsters?

[Flojomojo]

Personally, I call them MONSTERS, just like all the other kids of the early 1980s. In one intermission, Blinky gets his leg bloodied by Pac-Man.

 

"Ghosts" is an Atari invention to explain away the horrible flickering of the VCS version. Unfortunately, the name stuck. The (awful) Hanna-Barbera cartoon split the difference and called them "ghost-monsters."

 

What do you think?

Edited March 10, 2009 by Flojomojo

[BSA Starfire]

They will always be ghosts to me as I played the 2600 version long before I saw the arcade machine. Arcade machines were few and far between where I live back in the day.

[Linkz1]

They have always been ghosts to me, and they will forever be ghosts.

[Nukey Shay]

Personally, I call them MONSTERS, just like all the other kids of the early 1980s. In one intermission, Blinky gets his leg bloodied by Pac-Man.

 

"Ghosts" is an Atari invention to explain away the horrible flickering of the VCS version.

 

If the game in question includes that intermission (or the one following it), they can hardly be considered "ghosts". They are just shy

 

Tho it's leg isn't bloodied. It's just revealed from it's "sheet" being torn.

[Shawn]

They are ghosts to me. BUT alot of folks do catigorize ghosts in the same pile as monsters.

[Wickeycolumbus]

I always call them ghosts.

[Inky]

We prefer to be called "Your lord and master," thank you very much.

[PacManPlus]

The original Instruction card on Pac-Man called them Monsters. That's enough proof for me.

[GameGirl420]

Personally, I call them MONSTERS, just like all the other kids of the early 1980s. In one intermission, Blinky gets his leg bloodied by Pac-Man.

 

"Ghosts" is an Atari invention to explain away the horrible flickering of the VCS version. Unfortunately, the name stuck. The (awful) Hanna-Barbera cartoon split the difference and called them "ghost-monsters."

 

What do you think?

 

 

 

I've always called them Ghosts but knew people who called them Monsters too...

 

 

I always trip off that one intermission in Pac-man for 5200,during the key levels where Blinky looks like he turned into a slug and crawls on the floor. That actually creeped me out when I was little lol. Maybe they are Monsters?? I always wonder if there's any intermissions I have'nt seen yet. How far does that game go?? I made it very far the other night,the later levels are a trip because you can eat a power pellet and the ghost-mosters would stay frightened throughout the whole level.

Edited March 11, 2009 by lushgirl_80

[pinball22]

We prefer to be called "Your lord and master," thank you very much.

 

 

Yes sir!

[ProperRogue]

The original Instruction card on Pac-Man called them Monsters. That's enough proof for me.

 

 

^This... but oddly enough , the rear of the Pac-Man flyer refers to them as ghost-monsters.

Pac-Man flyer

 

Keeping with the inconsistency , by the time Pac-Mania rolls around , they're officially labeled ghosts.

Pac-Mania flyer

[+Random Terrain]

They are monsters wearing sheets that look similar to the classic ghost costumes that kids wear on Halloween, except they couldn't find white sheets in the house, so they grabbed the expensive colored ones instead. Totally pissed off their mom. If you want to call them ghosts because they are wearing ghost costumes, that's fine. If you want to call them monsters because they are monsters under those ghost costumes, that's fine too. Do you want to know what they look like under the sheets? Here's a rare shot of three of them out of their ghost costumes:

 

 

It's really hard to get a shot of the fourth one out of costume because he's very shy.

[AtariLeaf]

Yes sorry I'm bumping a two year old thread but I was just wondering this the other day, thinking about the reason WHY game designers chose the characters that they did. The idea that they're "ghosts" really didn't make sense to me even as a kid since you can't "eat" a ghost, but generic monsters I guess just makes more sense within the world of pacman. They aren't ghosts in the traditional sense anymore than the monsters in Dig Dug turn from monsters to ghosts to move through the dirt and back to monsters again, even though they're described as turning into "ghosts". I've always looked at the creatures in many of these games as simply alien monsters who have special powers to transform themselves.

 

Maybe I'm just over analyzing and need a break

[atarigal]

As kids in the 80's, we called them ghosts, and we called the killer squares in Maze Craze "fart monsters." To this day I don't know what, if any, official name those have.

[PAC MAN FEVER]

Ghosts, thats the way i've always called them and that was before i played atari 2600 pac-man

[raskar42]

don't know why, but i call them ghost-monsters.

 

must have heard the term in my formative years and it stuck.

 

never could figure out if they were half ghost half monster or monster ghosts (like monster trucks) or ghosts of monsters or what.

[Rex Dart]

The original Instruction card on Pac-Man called them Monsters. That's enough proof for me.

 

 

The original instruction card wasn't in English. (I'd like to see the original japanese one, too... I bet it they translate more closely to ghost-monster than to either individual term.)

 

They're ghosts to me, ever since I first saw 'em.

[AtariLeaf]

As someone mentioned above, in one of the original pacman intermissions, one of the "ghosts" gets his sheet ripped revealing a leg. Makes me think they're monsters or creatures wearing sheets. Certainly not "ghosts" in the traditional way we see them. I'd be curious what the games creator meant for them to be, if the Japanese word isn't properly translated as ghost.

 

I thought I remember the original term simply being "enemies" but I can't find that link anymore.

Edited April 19, 2011 by AtariLeaf

[NinjaWarrior]

I call them Ghost or Ghost Monsters

[onmode-ky]

At Pac-Man's Japanese Wikipedia page, the term used is "Monsters." I don't mean the Japanese word for "monster" (化け物, "bakemono") but rather the English word "monster" transliterated into katakana.

 

Personally, I always called them "ghosts," not because I played the 2600 port but because they looked like (colorful) ghosts. It was not until many years later that I ever saw the intermission with the ripped sheet.

 

Incidentally, those segments in the game that we call "intermissions" in English are called "coffee breaks" in Japanese (as demonstrated in that Wikipedia page). Once again, it is the English phrase "coffee break" rendered in katakana.

 

onmode-ky

 

P.S. I don't see anything wrong with edible ghosts, AtariLeaf.

[Nukey Shay]

As mentioned by ProperRogue, they could be called either. If it's anybody's fault for applying the word "ghost" to them (and also giving eyes to Pac-Man), it's Midway.

[Tr3vor]

I saw the arcade before the atari version, and they look very much like ghosts

[Jess Ragan]

They were called "mon-su-taa" in the original Japanese instructions, but "ghost" is used so frequently that I've just stopped fighting it. I think the designer even described them as "ghost-like monsters," so I suppose ghost is acceptable.

[AtariLeaf]

I still say that the pacman intermission is the definitive answer - monsters wearing sheets to look like ghosts

 

Edited April 23, 2011 by AtariLeaf

[BrianC]

I'm used to calling them Ghost-Monsters because of the cartoon.

 

I just thought of a related question. What do you call the things that turn the enemies blue, Power Pellets, Power Pills, or Energizers?

Edited April 24, 2011 by BrianC