This game is not my first exposure to the series. In my youth a cousin I was visiting has Super Ghouls ‘N Ghosts on the SNES, and I remember us laughing non-stop at the fact that upon taking a hit the main character loses his armor and is stripped down to his chonies. We soon came to affectionately refer to it as the ‘underwear game.’ I picked it up eventually, and always assumed it was the first in the series. That is, until one of the neighborhood kids introduced me to Ghouls ‘N Ghosts on the Nintendo Entertainment System. I was never the type to bypass original installments in favor of newer releases, and I was eager to discover the roots of the series. Unfortunately I was just never a fan. The franchise is known for its unfair difficulty, but I was surprised to see that Capcom actually toned it down as they released the sequels. I decided to take a look at the original Ghosts ‘N Goblins again today for the first time in at least twenty years. Even with several years of video game skills under my belt this is still too frustrating to be fun.
So the story here is depicted in an opening scene. Arthur and Guinevere are hanging out in a cemetery of all places (the hero is in his underwear for some unknown reason) and his gal pal love interest is snatched up by a ghoul. He throws on the armor, and sets out to rescue her. From here you have six levels to play through with each featuring a boss at the end. Ghosts ‘N Goblins is a two dimensional platformer action game hybrid. I’m a big fan of game maps, and this one shows your current location, the end, and everything in between which is nice. Arthur himself can throw weapons (which are all projectiles), jump, and climb ladders. That’s the extent of his abilities here. Enemies spawn constantly on every screen, and the only way to fend them off is with the aforementioned offense tools. Unfortunately the roster is a little limited. You begin with a lance that shoot directly in front of you. The only others include a torch which is thrown at a trajectory, and when it hits the ground causes a brief eruption of flames. There’s also the axe which has a similar trajectory but without the fire effect. The next weapon is a shield that goes either left or right but has limited range. By far the best item is the dagger. This is extremely basic in that it is thrown only straight, but travels much faster and can therefore be used more rapidly. Only two of your projectiles can be used at a time and you generally have to wait for them to travel off-screen before you can throw more.
Unfortunately Ghosts ‘N Goblins is just too difficult. The first hit you take removes Arthur’s armor, and the second one equals death. One power-up restores your protection, but it’s rare and therefore you can’t really depend upon it. Meanwhile the enemies are absolutely ruthless. The zombies in the first stage are easy enough, but there are a lot of them which can be difficult to manage. Most of the other foes are airborne, and either change direction at random or constantly dive bomb you. These aerial enemies require multiple hits, and because of their speed and elevation (paired with the fact that you cannot throw weapons upwards) makes them tough targets to deal with. The most nefarious of the bunch are the red demons that appear in every single stage. These guys swoop fast, they’re tough to hit, and require a bunch of damage before they go down. What’s really infuriating is how useless most of the weapons are. The standard lance is okay for the beginning, but you’ll soon need the knife in order to hit enemies fast enough. Getting another weapon is the kiss of death later on because the others are largely ineffective against most of the enemies you will encounter. Sure, you can stand in one area and defeat foes over and over hoping they drop the knife, but you’re limited by a timer. To make matters worse your character falls back when he takes a hit. In areas with pits this can lead to very frustrating sequences when plummeting to your doom with one touch. This title is completely unfair, but at least you can continue infinitely even despite getting a game over.
While I normally welcome a challenge this game is very cheap. Unfortunately it doesn’t even try and make up for it with intelligent level design. There are only six stages, but they’re all a little boring. Generally you’ll traverse through areas with very little terrain aside from cliffs, hills, and moving platforms. Oh and there are ladders too, but these are the biggest and most dangerous obstacles that you’ll ever have to deal with. This is because you cannot use items, and cannot jump to dodge attacks. You’re basically helpless. To make matters worse the last two stages are based primarily on climbing these ladders. This also introduces enemies that drop projectiles on you and wander aimlessly on the upper floor. These guys will quickly become one of your worst nightmares, and even when you reach them they still come at you and require a ton of hits to defeat. The boss encounters are also quite unimaginative. The themes repeat themselves, and these giants require a ton of hits. This is yet another reason why you absolutely need the knife. It’s really disappointing that Capcom, the masters of boss encounters, designed such boring bosses. The most insulting part of this game is that you actually have to play through it twice in order to see the ending (which is a single screen of text). You can’t even face the boss unless you have the shield weapon.
Ghosts ‘N Goblins is not a very pretty game. The character models lack detail, and it’s hard to tell what the designers were going for with a lot of them. There’s an abysmal amount of background details, and these feature absolutely no animation. This is mostly a drab looking game, and even the original Super Mario Bros. is much more colorful which is sad. What’s most disappointing is the lack of character animations. As far as I can tell Arthur has less than ten different frames, and all of the enemies have just two or three. It’s just awful even by the system’s standards. On the plus side I really like the horror theme this title has going for it. The enemies may lack detail, but fighting zombies and demons is cool, and I imagine the concept was quite novel for the time. Unfortunately the soundtrack is also largely forgettable. There are only a handful of different tracks here, and these repeat throughout the adventure. The opening theme is the only one that’s memorable, and the rest represent a bad attempt to make the game ‘scary.’ The audio just isn’t compelling.
I’m a little surprised to see how often this is referred to as a classic. Ghosts ‘N Goblins isn’t awful per se, but it has a ton of problems. I’ve already harped on the difficulty enough, but the whole package feels uninspired to be honest. There are so many better action games to choose from on the system and many of them were even released before this. I much prefer the later installments because this one is unrewarding.
