Pac-Man Ghost Behavior: How Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde Chase You

The four Pac-Man ghosts chase you in four different ways. Blinky (red) aims straight at Pac-Man. Pinky (pink) aims four tiles in front of him, to cut him off. Inky (cyan) aims at a spot worked out from both Pac-Man and Blinky, so he is hard to read. Clyde (orange) chases Pac-Man until he gets within eight tiles, then turns away to his corner. On top of that, all four take short breaks called scatter mode, when they go back to their own corners. Below: each ghost’s rule, the timing of chase and scatter, how long they stay blue and how to use all of it. The rules are those of the 1980 Namco arcade game, as worked out by Jamey Pittman in The Pac-Man Dossier.

The four ghosts and their names

In Japan each ghost has a character description and a nickname. The English names that most players know came with the Midway release.

How each ghost chases you

The ghosts do not look for the shortest path. At every crossing, a ghost picks the direction that brings it closest, in a straight line, to one target tile, and it never turns back on its own. The only thing that differs between the four is how they choose that target.

• Blinky targets the tile Pac-Man is on. That is why he is so hard to shake once he is behind you.
• Pinky targets the tile four tiles ahead of where Pac-Man is facing. Because of a bug in the original code, when Pac-Man faces up the target is four tiles up and four tiles to the left.
• Inky takes the tile two tiles ahead of Pac-Man, draws a line from Blinky to that tile, and doubles it. When Blinky is close behind Pac-Man, Inky closes in from the other side; when Blinky is far away, Inky’s target is far away too.
• Clyde targets Pac-Man while he is eight tiles or more away. Within eight tiles he switches to his scatter corner at the bottom left, so he often turns away just as he reaches you.

So the ghosts are not random. Pinky and Blinky together form a pincer: one behind you, one in front. Pinky’s target also means that turning to face her as she comes at you can make her turn off: her target is now behind her.

Chase, scatter and blue

The ghosts switch between three modes. In chase they use the targets above. In scatter each one heads for its own corner (Blinky top right, Pinky top left, Inky bottom right, Clyde bottom left) and circles there. In frightened mode, after Pac-Man eats a power pellet, they turn dark blue, slow down and wander, and you can eat them.

From level 2 the third chase lasts more than 17 minutes and the last scatter only one frame, so in practice the ghosts never rest again. Every switch between chase and scatter, and every power pellet, makes all the ghosts turn around at once, which is a handy warning. The clock pauses while they are blue and starts over when you lose a life or finish a level.

• How long they stay blue: 6 seconds on level 1, and they flash five times before they recover. The time gets shorter on later levels, and on level 17 and from level 19 on, a power pellet no longer turns them blue at all.
• Points for eating them: 200, 400, 800 and 1,600 for the first, second, third and fourth ghost on the same power pellet. All four ghosts on all four pellets adds up to 12,000 points.
• Cruise Elroy: when only a few dots are left (20 on level 1), Blinky speeds up, and at half that number he speeds up again. In that state he keeps chasing you even during scatter.

Who is faster

Eating dots slows Pac-Man down, so a ghost behind you gains on you in a row of dots and loses ground on a path you have already cleared. The side tunnel slows the ghosts but not Pac-Man.

Seven tips that use the ghost rules

1. Clear dots away from Blinky. He follows you exactly, so lead him onto empty paths where you are faster than he is.
2. Use the tunnel. Ghosts move at 40% inside it; a chasing ghost falls well behind.
3. Turn toward Pinky. Her target is in front of you, so facing her as she comes often sends her off in another direction.
4. Do not trust Clyde, but do not fear him either. Close up he turns away to his corner, so he is rarely the one that traps you.
5. Watch for the turnaround. When all ghosts reverse at once, a mode has changed; on level 1 the first chase starts after 7 seconds.
6. Save power pellets. Eat one when three or four ghosts are close, for 200 + 400 + 800 + 1,600 points.
7. Learn the red zones. In two small areas of the maze, which the Dossier calls red zones, ghosts cannot turn upward during chase and scatter. Paths that run up out of them are safer escape routes.

Where to play

You can play Retro Games Pacman, an HTML5 remake of the maze chase, free in your browser. It plays the same game, but a remake does not always copy the arcade timings to the frame. Ms. Pac-Man is the original 1982 arcade sequel: its ghosts move partly at random, which is why the patterns that work in Pac-Man fail there. The differences are in Ms. Pac-Man vs Pac-Man.