Ghosts and Goblins

In terms of pure playability, there are few games out there that can really top Ghosts and Goblins.  This game is hard, hard, hard, and thus addictive, addictive, addictive!  And, it has some slight nudity that is sure to titillate only the most sorry people on the planet.

Truth be told, Ghosts ’n Goblins is an extremely challenging platform uprising, and not really a rewarding one at that. You, the player, partake as Arthur, a knight in shiny armor who sets out to rescue his beloved spouse from the clutches of SATAN (Santana?), and his trusted henchman Red Devil - also known as Firebrand in the Gargoyle’s Quest-series, which made its debut on the original Game Boy-system... err.. not to mention Lucifer (How satanic), bearing more than a passing resemblance to abovementioned Devil, and responsible for the abduction in the first place.

The quest will prove an... Impenetrable one, as Arthur has to be one of the most ill equipped heroes to ever have graced... ANY SYSTEM. For starters... Arthur’s durability leaves much to be desired. Two hits from any of the game’s stock of enemies be it crawling zombies or the Red Devil himself, results in the showcase of the trademarked SYMBOL OF DEATH, a pile of good old bones. But what a sorry way to go... when Arthur absorbs the first hit, he is mercilessly deprived of his most treasured possession - his armor, revealing his ’mythological’ SEXY UNDERWEAR. How this astounding idea was unraveled back at Capcom is beyond me, but let’s just say I’m not one for complaining!

Ghost’s n’ Goblins is rather renowned for its increasingly accelerating frustration-curve, and justly that. It contains a world of hordes of enemies, seldom giving the player any chance to catch his breath, constantly keeping him at his toes, and repeatedly alerting his reflexes.

This leads to the stage that most definitely will leave some gamers screaming for the eject button; the game play of Ghosts ’n Goblins is excruciatingly unforgiving, and sometimes annoyingly cheap, as there’s absolutely no way one can escape unharmed from certain, usually terribly crowded, areas. Luckily this is not always the norm; it’s all about learning and tracking the movements of each and every target. Only then can the game be fully mastered. There really is no other way.

The bottom line: A classic, any way you look at it, and playing this game will put hair on your chest. This isn’t a game where you search every corner of the Mushroom Kingdom looking for secrets and coins; the one object of this game is simply survival. It’s worth doing all over again, if there’s any hint of masochism in you.