Other than that initial reversal of chasing Pac-Man, their movement is randomly decided at each intersection they reach. They immediately move away from Pac-Man’s position – and at a much slower speed than normal. When a Power Pellet is eaten, the ghosts immediately change their movement patterns, regardless of whether they were in their pursuit or scatter modes. There are four Power Pellets in the maze when Pac-Man eats one, the ghosts turn temporarily blue – signifying that they can be eaten by the hero! This last for just a short time the ghosts start flashing between blue and white to demonstrate that they are about to turn back to their normal, dangerous colours – in later levels, the period of time to get your revenge is so brief as to be almost imperceptible. This is also the area he patrols during scatter mode, making the bottom left Clyde’s Corner! How do you fight back against the ghosts? Though Clyde does chase Pac-Man (in much the same way as Blinky), when he gets within eight spaces of Pac-Man, he starts to retreat into the bottom-left corner of the maze.

Poor Clyde – always the outsider! His behaviour reflects this too, cleverly – unlike the others, he just doesn’t seem to have much interest in chasing Pac-Man. Pokey – more commonly known as Clyde – is the one ghost whose name doesn’t rhyme with the others. You know those moments where you get trapped between two ghosts and can’t get away? That’ll usually be Inky and his random behaviour getting you cornered! Who is the orange ghost? During scatter mode, Inky will patrol the lower right corner of the maze. He’ll patrol an area dependent on where Blinky is at any given time – and will become more random the further away from Blinky he is. This is a strange one – though unpredictable, Inky’s behaviour is actually linked to the position of the Ghost Gang’s leader, Blinky. The most unpredictable of the four ghosts, Inky is dangerous because you can’t always know exactly what he’s going to do next! What pattern does Inky follow? The cyan ghost’s ‘official’, original English-language name was Bashful, but his nickname – and like the others, the name he’s known by now – is Inky. During scatter mode, Pinky heads for the top left corner and moves in an anti-clockwise, circling motion around the corner walls. Pinky moves around maze walls in an anti-clockwise pattern, but also roughly follows Pac-Man’s movement – targeting four spaces ahead of where the player is headed, which is designed to get out in front of them and cut them off. Like the other ghosts, she has her own, very specific patterns of movement. However, she’s more commonly known by her nickname, Pinky. Oddly – despite Blinky being the ghost known to speed up – the pink ghost’s ‘real’ name is Speedy.

He’s a very tough enemy to outrun, especially as he follows Pac-Man closely once he’s on his trail – and doesn’t even cease his relentless pursuit during periods when the other ghosts enter scatter mode. With 20 dots remaining in the first maze, Blinky gets faster – but in subsequent mazes, he speeds up even sooner. Unlike the others, Blinky speeds up as Pac-Man eats more dots in the maze. Blinky is perhaps the leader of what’s known as the Ghost Gang he’s definitely the most deadly ghost – and almost certainly the most likely to catch our little yellow hero. All of this are things that you may not even notice during play, but we’re here to shine a light on each ghost and reveal what it is they do! Who is the red ghost in Pac-Man?Īccording to one of the attract screens on the English language version of the arcade game, the red ghost is named Shadow – and his nickname is Blinky.įor some reason, it’s the nicknames that stuck with the ghosts, so in general, this one is just known as Blinky. They sure do! Considering Pac-Man was originally released in 1980, it may surprise you to learn that each ghost in Pac-Man has their own behaviour and patterns that they follow, as well as behaviour that they adhere to during what’s known as ‘scatter mode’. There are four ghosts in the original Pac-Man (which we rated as top of the best Pac-Man games!): a red ghost, a pink ghost, a cyan ghost and an orange ghost. What happens to the ghosts when Pac-Man eats them?.How do you fight back against the ghosts?.

Pac man images to print