NES Games I Beat # 64: Ghosts N’ Goblins

                Ghosts N’ Goblins was an early Capcom game for the NES, part of 1986 lineup, right when the NES was moving beyond its Black Box Series of launch window games. This version is often referred to as a gimped port of the arcade version and as such its criticized for its sluggish play control and brutal difficulty, more on those later. This game is infamous among the gaming public and hated by many old school gamers. People put it with Battletoads, Mike Tyson’s Punchout, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and TMNT as one of the hardest games on the console.  I’ve personally never seen past level one until more recently when I decided to buckle down and dig in.

                Starting with the control, it does feel a tad sluggish. Jumping is slow, you don’t have a lot momentum so often your jumps don’t feel wrong, and enemies are speedy and shoot projectile attacks everywhere. Most people can’t even make it past the first red devil midway through stage one as his swooping patterns are swift and devious. He can be skipped, as can most, but eventually in the last level you’re forced to fight one amidst other chaos and I think this is sort of a brilliant thing from a design standpoint that right before you take on the penultimate boss (two satans with a similar pattern to the demons)  as it allows you to purge your fears and finally forces you to kill it and get that satisfaction.

                Honestly, the difficulty of this game is overstated quite a bit. It’s hard sure but Ninja Gaiden was a lot harder. While I beat the whole first 5 levels of the game in one long night, the 6^th and final level was the one that really kept me from beating this game. Each stage had their challenge, the platforming in level 2, the onslaught and marathon of devils that was level 3, the chaotic bridge and dragon of level 4, the endurance round of challenging and misleading paths in level 5, and of course the boss rush, the damn red devils, those jumping skulls, the trolls wasting your valuable time, those fucking randomly spawning ghosts and by God the weapons that if you grab your absolutely fucked because you need the shield to not be trolled back two levels. 3 hits, 3 minutes, no checkpoints, git good or give up. A bit of luck is needed too, you can get all the way to the end and have a ghost spawn on top of you or in the boss room and die, having to do it all over. When you beat it, you’ll have it down to a fucking science.

                This brings me to my main point, this game, like many hard games, is all about patience. You have unlimited continues, it’s you and your sanity’s fault if you pussy out. This game is beatable, you can do it! With a stage select code, something built into the game so I don’t consider it a cheat, this game is completely bearable. From a fun standpoint though, you’d do better to choose something else. This game has fun elements but ultimately the frustration kills any real want other than bragging rights to finish this game. It’s ultimately a rushed port and thus not extremely well thought out. There’s not really a balance of fun and frustration, its 85% dying in a lot of stupid ways like a bad jump, a relentless enemy, or a fucking randomly spawning ghost and the other part is somewhat enjoyable.

                Overall  this game’s reputation of being “one of the hardest games ever” isn’t really true. Anybody can best it with some practice and after all that’s how most old NES games were. It wasn’t that NES games were unfairly hard by any means (in some ways they were but still) they just expected you to have some time to invest so that you could master the mechanics and levels. This is a somewhat fun game, I liked pushing through it to some degree, but it’s incredibly flawed and feels very cheap at times. And yes, before I get a bunch of hate, I know I only beat it once but fuck doing it all again. I know it’s sort of a hard mode and gives you the real ending but I couldn’t be bothered, I’ve got other games to play. It’ll basically be the same experience anyway and well all know it’s one of the lamest gimmicks of all time to have to beat a game twice for the real ending.

                My final score is a 6/10.