Ghouls 'N Ghosts is an action platform video game, also known as Daimakaimura in Japan, developed in 1989 for the arcades and later converted to almost every home gaming machine. It is the sequel to the first Arthur's adventure, Ghosts 'N Goblins. Both games gained critical acclaim worldwide for their uniqueness of the time, as well as their high level of difficulty.
Review
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 PC Engine version is awesome and technically very close to the Nintendo SNES version (and superior to the Sega Megadrive!) The game features wonderful graphics with numerous details taken from the original and fluid sprite animation. The game's sound is almost identical to the arcade, offering the original in-game music and sound effects. Ghouls 'N Ghosts is probably one of the best arcade conversions ever made for the PC-Engine/Turbografx-16 game console and among the most difficult games in its library.
CPU: HuC6280 8bit at 3.6MHz MEMORY: 8KB RAM GRAPHICS: Dual 16-bit GPUs (HuC6260 Video Color Encoder, HuC6270A Video Display Controller), 64KB VRAM, 482 colors at once out of 512, 64 hardware sprites, Supports: 256 x 256 to 320x256 flicker free interlaced screen resolution. A 512x256 mode is possible through fiddling with registers, but not SOUND: Capable of generating clear digitized sounds and harmonized music. Use of "Turbo Booster" add-on, could generate stereo sound.