Halloween Games - Daimakaimura / Ghouls 'n Ghosts

Halloween is fast approaching! I'm depressed about it actually...the best part of Halloween is October 1st through the 25th. After that all I can think about is that soon it will have come and gone and then what will I have? Thanksgiving? Get that shit out of my face.

So as usual I didn't have time to do all the stuff (photos, posts, comics, label designs) that I had planned for October but if I only get one more blog post this month I might as well make it about one of the best, most Halloween games ever--Ghouls 'n Ghosts.

Yeah, two Makaimura posts in a row, I guess I've been a bit obsessed with it this month. Ghouls 'n Ghosts improves on the original Ghosts 'n Goblins in every possible way: Arthur feels more maneuverable, he can attack upward and downward, enemies have more detail and character, and there is even an awesome Gold Armor powerup that gives the player a charge attack (sadly Arthur isn't wearing his silver armor underneath the gold--take a hit in gold armor and you still go back to your underwear).

Screenshot credit: VGMuseum.com

I really have nothing new to add to the Ghouls 'n Ghosts discussion when there are such excellent writeups on the subject already, so please enjoy the spooky photos. As you can see, my candles + blacklight obsession has been upgraded with the purchase of a fog machine! I'm confident that these are, to date, the most dramatic and heroic photos of the Ghouls 'n Ghosts packaging available online.

Bonus photo that had great fog effects, but not enough light on the subject.

Halloween Games - Makaimura / Ghosts 'n Goblins

We join our hero as he finds himself surrounded on all sides by the horrors of hell!

With the possible exception of Splatterhouse, you can't get any more Halloween than Capcom's Makaimura/Ghosts 'n Goblins/Ghouls 'n Ghosts franchise. Each game follows the forever put-upon knight Sir Arthur on his journey to save the unimaginatively named Princess Gwynevere (equally unimaginatively named Prin Prin in the Japanese version) from the undead forces of darkness--in the series' original iteration, literally led by Satan himself. Later games have bosses named after other judeo-christian figures like Astaroth and Samael, which makes one wonder how the hierarchy of the demon world works. 

 The Reaper's bony grip is closing around our beleaguered Makaimura, when suddenly...

This game's legendary difficulty needs no introduction; even with mid-level checkpoints and infinite continues I have yet to beat this piece of shit. And let's not fool ourselves, it is a bad game compared to the arcade version. Unfortunately, Capcom's first few Famicom games were not actually ported by Capcom but rather the developer-for-hire company Micronics, who were also responsible for Athena, Super Pitfall and the DRRRREADFUL Ghostbusters on NES.

 A tall, gray savior appears! The forces of good prevail!

Though the 8-bit version pales in comparison to its arcade cousin (and especially the multiple excellent sequels on SNES, Genesis, GBA etc.) this game holds a special place in my heart. Challenge yourself with Ghosts 'n Goblins this Halloween!

Oh no!

OH NO!!

Halloween Games - Gargoyle's Quest 2

That's right, there is a franchise of horror themed action RPGs featuring THIS asshole:

Left: Gargoyle's Quest 2 (NES). Center: Ghosts n Goblins (arcade). Right: Demon's Crest (SNES).

 Red Arremer, the near-undefeatable enemy from the Ghouls n' Ghosts series, is the protagonist and he still does that same infuriating walk. I'm getting ahead of  myself, though. This is Gargoyle's Quest 2!

The first thing you will notice about this game is that it is, ostensibly, a role playing game. RPGs were so hot in Japan that all sorts of games would adopt superficial trappings of the genre, and if there was ever a game that didn't need it this is one of them. You collect items to progress, but they sit in your inventory as unusable story triggers--basically, go to one place and clear a sidescrolling stage to get something that another character wants. On rare occasions you can actually select the item in your menu to use at one specific spot, but the main attraction, and what Gargoyle's Quest 2 deserves praise for, are its action stages.

By the time Gargoyle's Quest 2 was released the Super Nintendo/Famicom was well established both in Japan and  North America and developers (particularly top notch developers like Capcom) had learned to squeeze every drop of performance out of the nearly decade-old NES/Famicom. That isn't to say that the game is particularly complex, but graphically it's one of the most impressive on the system (Coincidentally, the sequel Demon's Crest/Demon's Blazon is for my money the most beautiful SNES game ever made).

Some of the boss characters are impressive to look at but unfortunately very predictable and easy to beat.

 The game looks great and as much as I love to hate Red Arremer, he's fun to play as. Beating a boss or progressing in the story will earn you enhanced jumping ability, flight duration, physical defense and projectile attacks. By the end of the game you have the power to jump ridiculously high and hover indefinitely! It would be fun to wreck things in Red Arremer's final form but at that point in the game you only have a single stage and a very underwhelming end boss to defeat.

Gargoyle's Quest 2 is getting more expensive on the secondary market...I got my copy last year for about 30 bucks and it seems to be trending around 60-70 on eBay lately. It's not particularly difficult either--I beat it in about 2 hours and I've seen speedruns of around 30 minutes. Assuming you don't get stuck at a certain terrible jump in Gaza Valley like I did, it's a fun, spooky Halloween game to breeze through this month. Especially if you're a Ghouls n' Ghosts super fan like me!

 

Yes, I built a rendition of Ghosts n' Goblins stage 1 for my cartridge to hang out in.