Headscratchers / Pac-Man

• The green ghost in Pac-Man Vs. I mean, you have a four player game, where each player is assigned to a ghost and periodically play as Pac-Man. Red AKA Blinky, blue AKA Inky, and pink AKA Pinky are there, but Nintendo uses green for a ghost instead of the canonical orange ghost AKA Clyde! No love for Clyde! =(
  • Maybe Clyde got his color changed...
    • Given that some versions of Pac-Man do give Clyde that Adaptational Dye-Job, that seems like a probable explanation.
  • Maybe he's Funky from Pac-Mania?...
• In Pac-Man World 2 and 3 (not sure about the first), Blinky and Clyde's names are swapped around. In the original game, Blinky is red and Clyde is orange; now, Clyde is red and Blinky is orange. The personalities also keep with color; the red ghost is the leader and the orange ghost is the coward. I'm not really looking for a justification; it's just a strange and seemingly unnecessary change.
  • It's probably just an error. I don't know how they could have possibly forgotten the correct names for their most famous characters, or how they could have done this twice, but that's the most likely explanation.
  • What especially bothers this particularly anal retentive troper is that if they hadn't switched the names in Pac-Man World 2, they would have been fought in the order Clyde, Inky, Pinky, Blinky — the reverse of the original order! As is, it's no order in particular.
  • The Red Power Ranger is the leader, so why not the Red Ghost? ... still, it bugs me as well.
    • See above problem, but not the answer. In other words, the Red Ghost IS the leader!
  • This also happened in Pac-Man Arrangement — again, the red ghost was still the aggressive one, and the orange ghost was still the dopey one, but their names had switched. The only justifications I can think of are either that they thought the Odd Name Out was more suited to the leader, or they wanted Added Alliterative Appeal for "Clyde in the Caldera". (By the way, the first Pac-Man World didn't have the original four ghosts, just a bunch of generic ones.)
    • If they wanted Added Alliterative Appeal, they should've gone with "Blinky in the Boiler".
  • This is, apparently, a recurring issue.
• Anyone else noticed that the non-nicknames (Shadow, Speedy, Bashful, and Pokey) in the original game aren't very appropriate? Pinky is called "Speedy", but Blinky is the one who's faster than the others (when he goes "Cruise Elroy"), and Inky is called "Bashful", when Clyde is the one who backs off when Pac-Man is near! (That said, Blinky does shadow you, and Clyde is awfully pokey getting out of the Ghost House.)
  • Some of the context of their names may have been Lost in Translation from Japanese. This article is by no means the only one analyzing the ghosts' behaviors, but it is a quick read and has some unique art that made it stick in my mind.
  • This should help explain the names and mentions quite a few relatively unknown names.
• Why doesn't Pac-Man eat the eyes of the ghosts? If he did that it would keep them from regenerating.
  • There are things that are inedible? He can't just eat through the walls either.
  • Then the game would get easier until no threats remain. No challenges, no fun.
  • Pac-Man is a game about how pills are the only things keeping the ghosts away. No matter what happens, the ghosts will always return.
  • Maybe it has something to do with how eyes are the Windows of the Soul? And since ghosts are already souls, well...
    • On that eye = soul line of thinking, maybe that would allow the ghosts to take control of Pac-Man?
• If Pac-Man is just celebrating his 20th birthday in Pac-Man World, how is his son, Jr. Pac-Man (appears to be around 5-10) not an infant/toddler? This raises a few speculations.
• Why is Pinky a boy instead of a girl in the TV series?
  • The people behind the TV series must've gotten confused since in the original game the ghosts were visually palette swaps.
  • Pinky being female wasn't established back then.
• Why hasn't Ms. Pac-Man made any game appearances as of 2020?
  • AtGames. Just AtGames.
  • To explain the above answer, there has been an ongoing dispute over who owns the rights to the character “Ms. Pac-Man.” Bandai Namco has effectively replaced Ms. Pac-Man with Pac-Mom until the issue is settled.
• Why does Pac-Man gain the ability to jump in Pac-Mania and then immediately lose it in Arrangement?
  • His ultimate punishment for what happened in Los Soledad was for Mario to take his jumping powers away.

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