A dark evil lurks within perfect dark

Well, ladies and gentlemen, it seems we actually have a bit more than just another unsolved mystery on our hands this time, the enigma up for examination here is perhaps the first genuine Perfect Dark urban legend. Is Perfect Dark haunted? Is there any truth to the bizzare tales of killer ghosts roaming through its many levels?

First off, the basics. In the past few months, message boards have been buzzing with talk of strange, unexplained deaths in Perfect Dark. Guards being murdered by invisible assassins, screams and gunshots eminating from empty rooms and hallways, dead bodies appearing in strange places, sudden multiplayer deaths with no player or Sim recieving credit for the kill, even Joanna herself being killed in the midst of solo missions by invisible or cloaked attackers. Some of the more wild tales even have dead bodies with crossbow bolts lodged in their backs being discovered in levels where neither Joanna or any of the guards have access to a crossbow!

So how do you see a ghost? That's the problem, really. You can't. At least not reliably. The one thing all Perfect Dark ghost stories have in common is that they all seem essentially random. None of the encounters are consistantly reproducable. This makes any kind of regular scientific study impossible.

So what could this mean? Is a mysterious supernatural killer on the loose? Well, maybe. Before you check the yellow pages for an N64 exorcist, let's look at some possible explainations.

1. Some cases of unexplained deaths among guards can undoubtedly be explained by a glitch that has been noted in Perfect Dark's program. Specifically, random guards in solo and co-op missions may sometimes decide to defect, joining up with you and killing their fellow guards much like a co-op Simulant Buddy or a guard under the effects of the Psychosis Gun. The popular term for one of these these characters is a Janus, coined in honor of a double agent character in movie and game GoldenEye 007. Many unexplained corpses are no doubt generated by this glitch, as a Janus makes it his business to attack and kill other guards in the level.

2. Some of the unexplained corpses do indeed have an explaination. The rocket launcher holding guard in Area 51: Infiltration and the slain guard in the bathroom of Carrington's Villa are examples of these. They begin the level alive, and are then automatically killed by the game program, not by a ghostly assassin character. They simply drop dead where they stand. This is the same way that Cassandra de Vries is supposedly "killed" by the Skedar on the Attack Ship: Covert Assault level. If you set the enemy health setting high enough, between 500%-1000%, some of these characters, such as the Area 51 rocket launcher guard, may even still be alive when you reach the portion of the level where they normally appear.

3. Simple graphic glitches can probably account for still more. Sometimes, especially in multiplayer mode where ten or more characters can easily be on screen at the same time firing weapons and such, the game may slow down to the point where certain things have to be sacrificed to keep the game running smoothly. The framerate may slow considerably and texture rendering errors may occur. Simply put, the game may temporarily stop displaying the textures on some characters to help curb slowdown. This can result in characters, or parts of characters flickering or becoming temporarily "invisible" when the game lacks sufficient free memory to draw all of their textures on screen simultaneously. So, if you were ever killed my an "invisible" character, especially in multiplayer, this may be why. Of course, it could also just be an enemy you didn't see, or who just happened to score a miracle headshot from clear across the arena. Stranger things have definitely happened.

4. Let's not forget about the so-called "phantom guards." These are enemies that the game makes invisible and sticks in out of the way places so that they can be activated later, at which point they will become visible and act like normal. This is how the game stores enemies in its memory that aren't supposed to appear until later in the level. It's essentially a programmer's trick to reduce load times and simulate invading enemies flooding into the level from somewhere else. The guards that appear midway through some levels, such as Air Force One: Antiterrorism and Carrington Institute: Defense are of this type. Setting off explosives in some places can sometimes reveal these invisible guards. I can't think of a better source of mysterious corpses. It's important to note, however, that these guards are immobile and can't kill anyone while they are invisible and inactive.

When these four very broad and valid potential explainations are considered in addition to other, still unknown, glitches, I firmly believe that most, if not all of these so-called "ghost" sighting can be explained. And many others, let's face it, are probably just tall tales concocted by pranksters, attention-seekers, and general "lamers." So why is this still on the unsolved mysteries page rather than being listed among the solved mysteries? Well, it's like UFOs, I suppose. Even if you have 99% easily explained cases, there's always that final, defiant 1% that resists obvious explaination. So for now, the case is still open on this one.

What the fu-*POP*