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Do the enemy that appear in arcade game when running out of time have a canonical name?

Author

Emily Wong

Published May 05, 2026

Basically, several level-based games "back in the day" had a special kind of enemy appearing when playing the same level for too long. Bubble bubble had Baron von Blubba:

Baron von Blubba

Snow Brothers had a similar one (a weird pumpkin figure spawning invincible ghosts).

Does this kind of enemy have a canonical name? (Like "boss", but it's not a boss of course.)

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3 Answers

No, there is no canonical name for them.

However, I somewhat like the term Chase Boss this GiantBomb user has come up with, although it does not strictly limit the term to enemies appearing due to time constraints:

It's also worth noting that 1980 arcade game Berzerk probably featured the first enemy of this kind, fittingly named Evil Otto.

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I usually hear this referred to as the Soft Timer (I realize the enemy itself is not a timer, but this is still what people call it).

"Soft Timer" is opposed to a "Hard Timer", which causes you to lose immediately when it runs out.

Examples:

  • Here and here various users call the ghost in Spelunky the soft timer
  • Here some users refer to the Rebel Fleet in FTL as the soft timer
  • Here someone refers fire spreading during the Butcher in Diablo 3 as a soft timer

I don't think they have a collective name, but I like to name them Arcade Enrage.

The name comes from World of Warcraft when battling a boss for too long. The boss would then enrage, increasing damage by a lot, and death is inevitable.

Somewhat the same goes for those characters.