Ghouls N Ghosts

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Arthur, the brave young Knight and the main character in Ghosts n' Goblins fought multiple creatures of the underworld and finally succeeded in rescuing his beautiful princess. But once more, those blood-thirsty creatures have risen again and took his love interest away for a second time. Now Arthur is called again to grab his shiny armor and his lethal daggers and kill enemies, fight with bosses and also avoid traps. The game is played the same way like its predecessor. It is a classic side-scrolling action game with quite a few platform elements that add to its intensity! The main idea is to run, jump and shoot up to the end of all five levels, survive and take out the ferocious end-of-level guardian (boss). On the final level you have to confront the leading Demon and rescue your princess. Arthur's energy level is not shown anywhere and the programmers had the brilliant (and funny) idea to grant you with a few lives and, each time you get hit, your energy drops by 50% and you lose your armor, continuing your quest wearing nothing but your underwear (just like in Ghosts N' Goblins)! My only complaint here is that the game continues to use one of the most frustrating aspects from its predecessor: When you lose a life, you are thrown back about ten screens and start over again! Other than that, Ghouls N’ Ghost is a great game to play and keeps your interest high to try and try again.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The CPC version features nice, colorful graphics with smooth sprite animation, though the game runs on a flick-screen mode (in contrast to the C64 and ZX Spectrum versions!) and the action is a bit slower. The level details are quite good (and better compared to ZX version) and offer some of the original (arcade) touches. Sonically, Ghouls 'N Ghosts has a great intro music but unfortunately no in-game music. The action is accompanied by sound FX only.
Note that the Commodore 64 version features an awesome intro music and an unforgettable in-game music that features a 'chip-tune' synthesized score (similar to the Atari ST!)