Ghosts (Pac-Man)

Ghosts
Pac-Man characters
Pac-Man title screen featuring the ghosts and their names. Below is their appearance when they are edible.
First game	Pac-Man (1980)
Created by	Namco
Voiced by	(see below)

The Ghosts, primarily Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde, are the ghosts chasing the player in the Pac-Man franchise.

The enemies in Pac-Man are known variously as "ghosts," "goblins," and "monsters". Despite the seemingly random nature of the enemies, their movements are strictly deterministic, which players have used to their advantage. In an interview, creator Toru Iwatani stated that he had designed each enemy with its own distinct personality in order to keep the game from becoming impossibly difficult or boring to play. More recently, Iwatani described the enemy behaviors in more detail at the 2011 Game Developers Conference. He stated that the red enemy chases Pac-Man, and the pink and blue enemies try to position themselves in front of Pac-Man's mouth. Although he claimed that the orange enemy's behavior is random, the game's code reveals that it actually chases Pac-Man most of the time, but also moves toward the lower-left corner of the maze when it gets too close to Pac-Man.

In the Pac-Man cartoon, with the male Ghost Monsters wearing various styles of hats and partnered with a new ghost named Sue (who was purple and wore earrings), the Ghost Monsters work for Mezmaron who assigns them the job of finding the Power Pellet Forest. Just as Pac-Man could "chomp" the Ghost Monsters to devour their "suits" after gulping down a power pellet and thus turning the Ghost Monsters blue — with their disembodied "eyes" floating back to Mezmaron's lair — the Ghost Monsters themselves, whenever Pac-Man hadn't been able to consume a power pellet for a time, could likewise "chomp" Pac-Man to defeat him. The episodes "Chomp-Out at the O.K. Corral" and "The Greatest Show in Pacland" featured the Ghost Monsters' 3-year-old cousin named Dinky who was bratty, which greatly annoyed all the male ghost monsters.

In the 2013 TV series Pac-Man and the Ghostly Adventures, the four Ghosts come from the Netherworld. Though they are ruled by Lord Betrayus, they are actually good-natured spirits and often supply Pac-Man with information about Lord Betrayus' plots, while ensuring Betrayus doesn't catch them in the act. It is also suggested that they could be reunited with their bodies and brought back to life, though their 'living' forms are unknown. There were also some Ghosts that were exclusive to the TV series like Cyclops Ghosts (a race of heavyset, horned Ghosts with one eye), Fire Ghosts (a race of orange Ghosts who can emit fire from their body), Tentacle Ghosts (a race of 4-eyed purple-black Ghosts who look similar to jellyfish), Guardian Ghosts (a race of large Ghosts who guard the Netherworld), and Aqua Ghosts (a race of light blue Ghosts with fins on their head).