Talk:Ghost

Merge Ghost (Wario Land II enemy), Ghost (DK series), Ghost (Luigi's Mansion series) into a single "Ghost" article

This talk page section contains an unresolved talk page proposal. Please try to help and resolve the issue by voting or leaving a comment.

Current time: Friday, May 17, 2024, 22:29 GMT

This is quite possibly the biggest disambiguation on the entire wiki. Nintendo got really lazy when it came to their ghost characters, huh? This isn't a case of the English localizers slacking off, either: I've counted a total of four creatures that are all named either named yūrei (ユーレイ, the Japanese equivalent of our ghosts) or obake (オバケ, sometimes used as a synonym for yurei), and there's also the unnamed ghost from Wario Land 4 who is referred to as a yūrei.

Now, some of these have scraped by for having some semblance of creative design, like WL4's ghost being a pirate and stuff, and the Yoshi's Story ghost being... unique, let's put it that way. However, the Wario Land II enemy ghost and the DK series' ghost are pretty clearly intended to just be generic ghosts, based on the combination of confirmed generic names and (in my opinion) unremarkable appearance.

With that laid out, my intent with this proposal is to try to merge these with the Luigi's Mansion series ghost page, since those games use a similar stock concept for ghosts. It just so happens that there are a lot of types of ghosts in that franchise. The end result would be a ghost page, similar to the frog page that encompasses a wide variety of generic frogs, and the disambiguation here would go to Ghost (disambiguation)

Addendum: Turns out, the ghosts in the DK series were named ポワン (literally, "Point", some kind of French name) on the official Japanese King of Swing website. They were seemingly just called obake in dialogue in Jungle Climber, but with that said, there is a Nintendō Kōshiki Guidebook for DK: Jungle Climber, if anyone has it and is able to confirm they were still named Point.

Proposer: DrippingYellow (talk)
Deadline: January 29, 2024, 23:59 GMT

Merge all

#Dark-Boy-1up (talk) Per all.

1. DrippingYellow (talk) Per booprosal. Secondary choice, since I'm not as confident in the DK series ghost's generic name anymore.
2. Super Mario RPG (talk) Per proposer.
3. MegaBowser64 (talk) Ghost.

Merge WLII ghost enemy with Luigi's Mansion series ghosts, leave DK series ghost

1. DrippingYellow (talk) Per addendum.

Merge Wario Land II & DK series' enemy ghosts, leave Luigi's Mansion series ghosts

1. Dark-Boy-1up (talk) Okapii has a point about luigi's mansion ghosts being they're own thing. I don't want to drop the quality in the LM ghosts page. Per all.
2. SolemnStormcloud (talk) At the very least, these two are generic ghosts that look similar enough.

Do nothing

1. Okapii (talk) idk I feel like the Luigi's Mansion ghosts are clearly their own thing, and clogging their page with generic ghosts from outside that series would bring down the page's overall quality. I very much doubt either the Luigi's Mansion or the DK King of Swing devs were designing their ghosts and went "you know, like the ones from Wario Land"
2. Hewer (talk) Per Okapii, and I'm not sure what you're getting at with zombie since that article just covers one enemy from the Wario Land series.

Comments

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the DK one's intended JP name is "Powan," with DKJC calling them "ghosts" or "yurei" in a "this island's full of ghosts" bit of dialogue. Doc von Schmeltwick (talk) 01:33, January 15, 2024 (EST)

I figured that they were originally called "Powan" but renamed to just "Ghosts", since "ghost" was in katakana so I assumed it was its proper name. Looking into it, though, katakana seems to be moreso used as italics or something similar to help make the text easier to parse? Not entirely sure now. DrippingYellow (talk) 11:18, January 15, 2024 (EST)

@DrippingYellow I think its funny that you referred to the frog page because there is already a debate about it happening right now. I voted that the frogs all stay on one page. I think that just like in the frog debate, simplicity matters. So that's why I am voting that these ghost pages get merged. -- Dark-Boy-1up 11:56, January 15, 2024 (EST)

This proposal is kind of the inverse of that proposal's view on the frog, come to think of it. The main arguments for the frog were that it has a unique Japanese name and has differences compared to other generic portrayals of frogs, whereas here I'm arguing that pages be merged because they're just generic portrayals of ghosts and have generic names in both English and Japanese. I included the Luigi's Mansion usage of "ghost" because it is moreso an umbrella term that calls back to the same stock concept of spirits beyond the mortal plane. To me, they're about as different from generic ghosts as the two Super Mario RPG frogs are from normal frogs. DrippingYellow (talk) 13:01, January 15, 2024 (EST)

@Okapii "I very much doubt either the Luigi's Mansion or the DK King of Swing devs were designing their ghosts and went 'you know, like the ones from Wario Land'": That is not what I was getting at, I was saying that they are not their own species, they're both just ghosts. I might be having second thoughts about the DK: Jungle Climber ghost, but the Wario Land II ghost is almost definitely a generic ghost, just look at both its English and Japanese names. "idk I feel like the Luigi's Mansion ghosts are clearly their own thing": I disagree with the notion that the Luigi's Mansion ghosts are their own kind of spectral being. They follow the same logic as stereotypical ghosts: they are the souls of people or creatures who have died, as evidenced by the LM1 portrait ghosts, they have the ability to float through the air as well as pass through walls, and generally only obey the laws of physics in certain instances. If they're just called "ghosts", then they're not some weird variety of spirit or anything like that: they're ghosts, simple as that.

@Hewer My rationale behind the comparison with the Zombie was that it has a generic name, even in Japanese, zonbi (ゾンビ, literally "Zombie"), not unlike how the Wario Land II ghost enemy is just named yūrei. DrippingYellow (talk) 16:04, January 15, 2024 (EST)

But the zombie comparison doesn't really support your point, seeing as that article isn't a collection of generic zombies like you want ghost to be, it's just about a single enemy from Wario Land. And as for "If they're just called "ghosts", they're ghosts, simple as that" - you're only trying to merge three of the at least 12 things called "ghost". Hewer (talk · contributions · edit count) 17:14, January 15, 2024 (EST)

The point of bringing up the zombie wasn't to illustrate an example of a collection, it was to point out that the ghost having a generic name and design was not an outlier in the Wario Land series. ...Which, to be fair, probably doesn't support my point. But I think you're misreading my "If they're just called ghosts" statement to apply to all of the enemies called "ghost", when I felt I was pretty clearly referring to the Luigi's Mansion ghosts specifically. In the top of the proposal I specified that I limited the scope of this proposal to these three because they had a shared generic name in both English and Japanese and (in the case of the DK and WLII ghosts) a generic design. DrippingYellow (talk) 17:31, January 15, 2024 (EST)