October Magazine

etro
Celebrating 30 years in 2015 is the
spooky Ghosts and Goblins series,
otherwise known as Makaimura
in Japan. Released by Capcom in
September 1985 the first title in the
series, “Ghosts and Goblins” was a
hard as nails platformer, where the
knight Arthur must rescue the princess
from the evil Satan and his
army of monsters.
If a retrogaming challenge is what
you seek then look no further, as
the original “Ghosts and Goblins”
is diabolically difficult. The game
features six levels and a variety of
weapons that Arthur can use along
the way. As it is, he’ll need every last
one of them as it’s hard enough getting
through the first level let along
the whole game! Luckily our hero is
equipped with armour, though it is
rather flimsy and will fly off his body
in one hit. This leaves Arthur in his
underwear until he gets hit again and
dies. He can pick up extra armour if
he’s lucky enough to find the magicians
who supply it and defeat them.
The graphics are impressive for
its time and the controls aren’t too
loose. This is important for such a
difficult game as deaths, while they
may be plentiful, don’t feel cheap.
The spooky music plays on a loop,
but it’s not objectionable and suits
the feel of the game. The enemies
are plentiful and some of them will
leave you tearing your hair out in
frustration. The most famous and
frustrating enemy, Red Arremer, will
swoop on you, leaving you very little
time to move out of the way. More on
Red Arremer a bit later.
When you get through those 6 soul
crushing levels the game forces
you to repeat them all over again,
only harder. This is, of course, if
you bought along the right weapon
to defeat Satan with. Without that
weapon you get booted back to the
beginning of level 5 to allow you a
While the sequel was ported to as
many systems as possible, a stand-
GHOSTS &
GOBLINS!
chance to find it before confronting out version was on the successor
him again, then you get to replay the to the PC Engine, the Supergrafx.
game again at a higher difficulty. Never released outside of Japan,
the Supergrafx was an enhanced PC
The game was ported to most systems
that were around at the time. ible. Few games were released for
Engine that was backwards compat-
The NES port is regarded to be a the system, but an enhanced version
of Ghouls and Ghosts was one
decent version of the game, plus it
provided the player with a password of them. Though it’s priced at over
system which made things slightly $100AU on Ebay, I am happy to say
easier. The home computer conversions
were a bit hit and miss, for collection a few months ago. I still
I was able to add this to my personal
example, the Amstrad CPC version struggle to get past the first level, but
didn’t feature all of the levels and a the controls are solid and graphically
it’s a beautiful port of the arcade
single hit would kill Arthur.
classic.
1988 would see the release of
“Ghouls and Ghosts”, the advanced
yet just as difficult sequel. Arthur still
has a variety of weapons to use and
he still loses his armour upon initial
contact with an enemy, but with the
new game comes new features. The
ability to shoot up and down, as well
as different types of armour add a
new dimension to the gameplay. With
these new elements you might think
that the game wouldn’t be as difficult
as its predecessor, but if you thought
that you would be very wrong. With
harder enemies, more of them and
magicians turning you into ducks or
an old man the difficulty has been
cranked up a couple of notches.
Like the original game, once you
complete the game you have to
beat it all over again at a higher difficulty
level, plus you need the special
weapon to defeat the final boss.
Though it was noted for its similarities
to the previous title, “Ghouls and
Ghosts” received critical acclaim
throughout the video gaming press.
Though the series is defined by
those 2 main titles, the spin off series
“Gargoyle’s Quest” is also held
in high regard. These titles follow the
adventures of Red Arremer and take
place in the demon realm. The first
game was released on the Gameboy,
with its sequel being released
on the NES. The final game in the series,
“Demon’s Crest” was released