Ghouls 'N Ghosts

The Good
Back in the day this was the greatest game around (the day being sometime in 1989). It was a great translation of the arcade without too many compromises or losses. Ghouls was the new standard in the side scrolling platform game. It controlled great, had a variety of weapons, and was extremely challenging. At the time the next best thing was Legendary Axe on the ill-fated Turbo Graphics 16.

Ghouls was actually better as a home console game than an arcade game because it was so immensely challenging that you needed to be able to play for a long time to get the tactics right. Unlike many arcade games of the day, most people hadn't gotten very far in this one in the arcade so when they bought the cartridge they were still likely to have a lot of the game left to explore.

This game also pushed the Genesis color display to the edge and you wouldn't have known that it could only display 64 colors at a time. This was true of most of the early Genesis games, but not of most of the titles released after 1990, which tended to be washed-out looking.

The Bad
In some places the control was quite unforgiving. Especially, for a pre-teenager or a child. Only an adult mind could really get the timing down on a lot of the jumps and strategies you needed to use to get farther than the first 3 levels of the game.

The game was also exactly the same length as the arcade game and could have used a few more levels. Unfortunately, at the time it was pushing the limits for how much memory a cart could use. It was a 5 or 6 megabit game when most games were 1 or 2 megabit.

The Genesis motorolla 68000 processor was not capable of duplicating the Capcom CPS1 games such as Ghouls'N Ghosts (especially not at under 8 megabits). However, Sega still managed to pull off some amazing translations with Ghouls'N'Ghosts, Strider, Forgotten Worlds, and later Street Fighter 2 and Final Fight. However, when I played these titles I was keenly aware that they were graphically inferior to the arcade (with the exception of Strider).

The Bottom Line
Its a great game that can be a little too frustrating for younger players. Ghosts'N Goblins, Super Ghouls'N Ghosts, and Demon's Crest will also interest fans of this title. If you want the original arcade it is available on the Playstation 2 in the "Capcom Classics Collection".