Hi guys, over the past few weeks I've been jamming to three very difficult games, when I was told about their difficulty, I wanted to share so here it is and I hope you enjoy.
Ghosts N Goblins (1985)
As I played the 1985 arcade classic, I began to notice many similarities between this game and Mega Man which is why I began to enjoy it so much. There are many differences as well that make the game much more difficult such as not able to control the jump pace like you can with Mega Man. The firing is a lot slower if you are using jousting sticks rather than daggers or the short ranged shields.
When playing this game is a real learning process, it takes having to learn how to fight the imps that fly into the air before you hit them, if they go into the air then you’re in trouble. In the first games the bosses were an ogre, a flying Japanese dragon, Evil Elmo (Red Arremer boss and the greatest boss of all time), and Satan.
The bosses are not really the ones worth talking about in this game; most of them except for Evil Elmo come off pretty easy in this game, pretty easy compared to the overall difficulty in this game which was difficult upon no end.
I played the arcade version and some of the NES version on the first stage and the difficulty is the speed of the enemies, difficulty being harder on the NES version because the patterns are unpredictable.
At some point I don’t understand how this game was overshadowed by Super Mario World in 1985, I say this because the graphics for this game are much superior than Mario for the arcade and the music for this game was memorable, they talk about the intro for this game being the most memorable, I think the boss music in the last two stages was one of the greatest things I’ve heard, the boss fight interesting, I can imagine Arthur the first time going “IS THIS A HAPPY END?! C:” only for it to say
“This room is an illusion and is a trap devised by Satan.
Go ahead dauntlessly!
Make Rapid Progress!”
GAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!! ><
The rest of the game is no sweat since you pretty much know the entire layout of the game now, you go through it much quicker than the first time which is amazing because instead of dying for a couple of hours, you die only a couple of times to make it back to the boss but the only problem is fighting twice the Evil Elmo’s as before! >< Compared to the other games that came out in 1985 and I was born in 1987 but it’s not like he was ever a mascot so I’m assuming that he was underrated because of his difficulty and the world is made of casual gamers.
Ghouls N Ghosts (1989)
This game is truly a worthy successor as it does the requirements to make it a sequel, it doesn’t have to be better than the first one, it just has to be its equal and I believe this game does it because it changes some things while making it the same game. The bosses in this game are also memorable, especially the huge first boss which took me by surprise compared to the boss ogres and dragons I fought, you have a separate boss for each stage where in the first game, they had 3 bosses (one stage used the same boss twice) and the 1 master which was Satan. In this game, all the stages each had their own boss which I believe were more difficult than most of the bosses EXCEPT for Evil Elmo!! It was thanks to him that I loved the game so much =)
Controls in this game were great, people complain about the jumping but that’s part of the mechanic of learning how to play this game, especially when you’re getting chased and you have to leap forward turn around while throwing jousting sticks or the weapon of your choice ( since I would die so much, I would switch from fight to fight, at the very last stage before getting goddess bracelet I would use the axe and those daggers kill)
The new features are able to throw your weapons up and down and able to get your super weapons in which you could charge up ( which I’m sure this was the inspiration for Mega Man 2’s heat man’s attack)
But like the first game, the bosses aren’t too difficult even though these ones would give you more trouble. What made this game awesome was that It would be Princess Prim Prim herself that would cheese you off that would tell you go back from the beginning. Mario has nothing to complain about, just imagine that Mario finally came to Peach and he points at her and says “Sorry Mario, you cannot save me without the goddess mushroom! You must start from the very beginning, in the mean time I will be in another castle!”
Red Aremmers were also evil in this game as well, they play nearly exactly the same at the first game with a different pattern but for me, would require the same way to kill them.
Now what made this game so awesome was the last master, when I see him I was ready to crap my pants, he was huge and he was naked he made Satan from the first game look like a meatball! He even had a finger that could shoot lasers! Now that is the requirement for any true boss! This game came out just a month after the very original Mega Man, the only thing I can say Mega Man has over Ghouls N Ghosts in terms of difficulty is the platforming, I believe Mega Man, especially Gutsman stage has more of a challenge, Ghosts N Goblins also had a very challenging platforming in the 2nd and 3rd stage which rivals to it more than Ghouls N Ghosts.
Super Ghouls N Ghosts (1991)
My least favorite of the three games but least favorite doesn’t mean that I didn’t like this game, quite the opposite I love this game and is a worthy successor but the problem for me and this game is that it was the easiest and by no means should you believe just because it is the easiest should mean the game is easy, quite the opposite. Unlike the other two games, this game has continues but they are irrelevant really because you get more continues once you gain enough points during the stage which is an easy requirement and when I say easy, it’s not too hard if you try to snatch points from killing and getting money bags.
The reason why I say this game is easy is because of the armor, once you become Green Arthur you inherit his upgraded weapons which made it easy to kill them. When you get gold armor, you additionally inherit his super attack that you charge up in the same fashion as you do Mega Man but what makes this so nice and makes the game easy is once you hold the button down and let it go, you gain temporary invincibility which is contrary to the original Ghouls N Ghosts because if you used your super and was hit, you would lose your armor regardless and your shield didn’t provide you immunity from projectiles.
The bosses in this game because of the upgraded weapons made it so much easier, but even if you were just heart wearing underwear Arthur you could still beat them with careful movement and mapping. Evil Elmo would be disappointed.
The double jumping also causes more easiness to the game and we have that to thank that it’s in Marvel vs Capcom 3 as well. It made platforming so much easier, a little too easy in some cases because you could save yourself, in some situations it would make it a challenge because in certain platforming you had to double jump just right otherwise you were going to die such as landing on narrow pillows and remind you about Ghosts N Goblins, you can’t control the how far or how close Arthur leaps like you can with Mega Man, once you diagonal jump forward, you’re landing from point A to point B with no exceptions unless you get hit which will cause a rebound.
From all three games they all pay homage to the final boss which was Satan ( though they changed his name ) but still the same character and it’s just funny how his movement is in the last two games and every time you fight him he has a different mechanic of how to defeat him ( he also feels bigger in this one )
I don’t know why people complain about having to go through the game the 2nd time, to me it’s much easier having to go through it the second time because you pretty much lost and died the first time so well that you mastered your flaws and I’m laughing my ass off on how I’m so awesome.
Well guys, this is just an update of the three games I’ve covered with Ghosts N Goblins, my next project is to cover Ultimate Ghosts n Goblins for the PlayStation Portable, go back and beat the 2nd version of the original Ghosts N Goblins ( I played a glimpse of it it was glitched so it wouldn’t play like the first game, felt like Arthur was moving slower but I did manage to get to the last stage and let met tell you, that last stage is even harder and Evil Elmo is even evil’er ) and plan to play the Regular Nintendo Ports and if possible, like to play the 3rd party ports which don’t look hard at all from what I’ve seen.
In memory of Evil Elmo
Seriously, a demon that throws devil stars as his chubby little body comes to take a dive at you? That is just awesome! He's my top boss in this game, he was difficult in the first arcade version I played ( he may look normal if you just watched the first version on youtube ) but the second version, they have more hp than the ogres and while they're throwing devil stars and worrying about them, his body coming to swoop at you makes him one of the most difficult bosses I have ever played and to this day I still have not beat the 2nd version because the game glitched out before I could finish.