In video games, a ghost is a feature included in time attack or time trial modes allowing the player to review their previous rounds. In racing games, for example, a ghost car may follow the last or fastest path a player took around the track. In fighting games, the ghost is an opponent that the computer AI player can train against outside of normal player versus player or story mode.
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Ghost cars in racing games generally appear as translucent or flashing versions of the player's vehicle. Based on previously-recorded lap times, they serve only to represent the fastest lap time and do not interact dynamically with other competitors. A skilled player will use the ghost to improve his time, matching the ghost's racing line as it travels the course. Many racing games, including Gran Turismo, F-Zero, and Mario Kart, offer a ghost function. Some also show ghosts set by staff members and developers, often showing perfect routes and lap times.
On Elite Beat Agents and Osu! Tatakae! Ouendan! games multiplayer mode, you can choose to use your saved replay data instead of playing the game yourself.
Philip Sandifer, in a conference paper, looks at the phenomenon of ghost data as an example of the demo in video games. He argues that the demo, generally speaking, represents a "pure act of play" that creates a pseudo-player Sandifer calls Player ε — the null player. This allows a hypothetical dynamic of play, as opposed to one that is bound up in an actual physical contact between a real player and a real video game controller.
In the case of ghost data, Sandifer argues that the game uses ghost data to create a Player ε who exists at the exact threshold of the actual player's ability and the theoretical "ideal player" that all video gaming fantasizes about being. When the ghost character is finally overtaken, Sandifer claims that it gives "the feeling of breaking through the constraints of a particular and flawed performance of the implied player into a sense, albeit a false one, of perfect harmony with the game. This perfect harmony is then, at the end of the race, literally encoded into the game as the next Player ε when the player’s run becomes the new ghost data." [1]