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RETROspectives: Ghosts 'n Goblins
Hard games come in all shapes and sizes, Dark Souls is a huge open world experience whereas games like Battletoads has little room for exploration, the same is true for Ghosts 'n Goblins! I touched on this game when talking about Satan but now it's time to take a deeper look!
You play as Sir Arthur who must battle demons, ogres, zombies and more as you try to save Princess Prin Prin who was kidnapped by Satan. You must traverse 6 of the hardest levels the arcade had to offer and the home ports are considered some of the hardest games ever released! The sheer difficulty stems from the fact that Sir Arthur can only take two hits: one hit and he loses his armour and the next causes him to lose his skin! The weapons are also, on the whole, terrible! Half way through stage 1 you get a knife, you want to keep the knife as it's the most useful weapon in the game! Your lance can one hit anything but the stage boss takes a lot of hits from the lance but only 10 hits from the knife, to beat the stage in the time limit you need the knife!
The game, as most do, gets harder as you progress and by stage 2 you're in a mansion where you'll find a fire flower-esque item which acts more like the fire rod from Legend of Zelda, however the fireballs arc over all the enemies, and the boss takes forever to beat with the fire flower! You need to keep the knife but if you touch a weapon you lose your current one! The fire flower appears on the only staircase that leads down but it is spawned in if you try to grab one of the money bags abve the ladder. If you don't go for the money bag you won't spawn the Fire Flower. The money bags are used for points which add nothing to the end of the game or story so you don't actually need the points. Therefore, stay away from the bags or you'll spawn the fire flower and you can't avoid the fire flower when it spawns! If you do get the fire flower or any other item you have to restart to get the knife or make it to stage 6, but we'll get to that!
The Red Devils makes this game difficult as they swoop down and attack randomly, they're hard to hit and they can easily kill you! This is where most of the money in the arcade was spent before people gave up, on the home consoles they're no easier but if you die you don't have to pay for it! In level 6 you have to fight the previous level bosses as you climb the tower and face the Devil. In the level you'll find the shield, you can't defeat the enemies with a shield, not the bosses at any rate! When you face the Devil you'll realise only the shield can defeat the Devil and not the knife! You'll have to clear the entire stage with the knife and then go back for the shield! However, if you die at the Devil you keep the shield! Luckily there are special ghosts in this level that can drop the knife, but it means a lot of grinding!
Defeat the Devil with the shield and you'll be taken to meet Satan! Defeat Satan and you'll get one of the most infamous end screen in gaming history: the whole game was a trick devised, or deviseth as the game put it, by the Devil and now you have to beat the game again, on a harder difficulty! That means getting all the way back through some of the hardest stages in video game history twice! Once you beat Satan again you are given one of the other most infamous end screen with the classic NES misspelling "Congratulations" as "Conglaturations", a trend held dearly by the NES! It then tells you to "challenge again", it gets no harder so there's no point, unless you want the points this time and then there is a point!
