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 X68000 has the advantage of powerful hardware, nearly identical to Capcom CPS boards, so it's no wonder this is the most faithful conversion to the arcade. Ghouls 'N Ghosts on the Sharp X68000 includes all the background details from the original while the sprites move fast and smooth on screen, with flawless animation. The game uses more than 100 colors on screen and each successive level has a very different look, introducing new traps and enemies. The Sharp X68000 conversion offers all the original tunes along with a variety of sampled sound effects during gameplay (an aspect that's missing from the ST and Amiga). Soundwise, the Sharp's conversion's sounds add a lot to the already creepy atmosphere of the game!