Daimakaimura - MegaDrive.Me

Overview

The valiant knight Arthur must battle his way through the haunted village to resue the inhabitants’ souls that have been stolen by Loki. One of these souls is also his lover, Princess Prin Prin, guaranteeing Arthur will rise to the challenge.

A (generally) side scrolling platform based game, Arthur collects weapons and bonus items dropped by the freshly despatched ghouls, and power-up’s his suit of armour by opening treasure chests.

Arthur will lose his suit of armour from the first collision with an enemy or projectile – leaving him running around in his boxer shorts – followed by his life on the next mishap.

Comment

If the earlier arcade ports of Altered Beast and Space Harrier II didn’t convince the gaming public of the Mega Drive’s technical prowess, Ghouls ‘n Ghosts made sure everyone took note. Another proclaimed arcade perfect port, the quality of the Mega Drive’s early software library was potent.

The game was incredibly faithful to Capcom’s 1988 arcade release (which was the follow up to Ghosts ‘n Goblins) right down to the game having to be completed twice to unlock the special weapon needed to take down Loki. Whilst this might not sound completely unfeasible, Ghouls ‘n Ghosts was a hard game. Doing it once was a tough enough challenge.

On revisiting, it’s obvious the Mega Drive wasn’t the arcade perfect port it was originally heralded as, but it does stand up well to scrutiny. The game is still unforgiving, and will present a good challenge for an evening’s gaming, but the feeling of knowing where to jump to reveal the chests is still rewarding, after all these years…

Notes

Ghouls ‘n Ghosts has to go down as one of the most ported games in video game history, with at least 15 ports – including a pixel perfect X68000 version – and even more appearances on ‘Classic Collections’.