Pols Voice (huh?)

Perhaps the strangest and most inexplicable of all the strange, inexplicable monsters from Nintendo's "The Legend of Zelda", Pols Voice was a surprisingly powerful dungeon denizen combining the esthetics of a kangaroo and a jellyfish. Its name alone is weird enough for a rat-faced pudding pie, but the manual goes on to describe it as a "ghost".

A ghost? A ghost of what? Someone named Pol? How can all of them be the ghost of Pol? Is it one ghost with hundreds of bodies? Raising even more questions was their supposed vulnerability to sound, which actually only worked in Japan where the Famicom (their Nintendo) came equipped with a microphone.

Perhaps this Pol fellow was a legendary deaf-mute adventurer, and his desire to live in a world of sound manifested in death as an entire race of bouncing ear-monsters, ironically so sensitive to noise that they were forced to hide themselves in underground ruins, setting upon loud intruders with murderous abandon!

...Or it's just really, really easy to design an 8-bit blob with ears and call it a monster.

Either way, it's one of my favorite freaky video-game critters - even cooler and creepier than usual in the above tile from the little-known board game. Look at how ugly he is!    Sadly, the Pols Voice remains one of the only original Zelda monsters to never make an appearance in 3-d; though it did return for a couple of the Gameboy titles.

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