Sympathy for the ghosts

I’ve spent a fair bit of time playing Pac-Man, and even more by watching it. I didn’t do it for fun, but for the sake of research. Honestly. I would never play Pac-Man for having fun, as it bores me to tears. There are sooo many better games to waste my time in a funnier way. However, for reasons unclear to me, Pac-Man was extremely popular a few decades ago, and is still pretty popular (which was partly the reason for doing research in it).

It is comforting to see that many guys have wasted way more time on Pac-Man time than me. To get a taste, check the First Church of Pac-Man. Or the wikipage of Billy Mitchell, who was the first to obtain maximum score on the original Pac-Man (in 1999, 19 years after the game release!) All you have to do for this is learn some patterns. And spend some years practicing… Ms. Pac-Man is non-deterministic, but that’s no obstacle, either.

But let’s not forget about the ghosts. They have their own personalities (the very first examples of a “game AI” ever!) Blinky gets aggressive easily, Clyde likes to wander off, and Inky moves erratically. And today I found a video that made me realize the misery of their (after?)life. Watch their heart-gripping drama:

I will never play Pac-Man any more.