Ghost Manor (TurboGrafx-16) Playthrough
128A playthrough of Turbo Technologies' 1992 action-platformer for the TurboGrafx-16, Ghost Manor.
An ancient evil, Orb Gamut, has resurrected the dead in order to enslave the small village of Anoraff. The villagers have asked Arthur to scale the nearby mountain, gain entry to the mansion that sits at the top, and defeat the evil that lives within. Spooky, spooky!
From the MacVenture titles to the Sherlock Holmes series, Ghost Manor's developer, ICOM, was responsible for several celebrated adventure games in their time. But, as the 16-bit console generation was kicking into high gear, ICOM was shifting their focus toward more action-oriented fare, and they quickly became one of the TurboGrafx-16's more prominent third-party developers. A couple of their platformers (like the CD version of The Addams Family) turned out reasonably well, but many (like Yo Bro, Camp California, and Road Runner's Death Valley Rally on the SNES) were, at best, dubious propositions. Action games were not their forte, but they didn't let that deter them.
Ghost Manor has a lot in common with The Addams Family. Both games feature a world that's centered around a giant mansion and made up of interconnected areas, and most of your time in both is spent searching for keys and whacking bad guys. They both have slightly floatly yet comfortable controls, nicely detailed graphics, and unexpectedly short run-times.
The major differentiating factor is the quality of the level design. Ghost Manor's foundation is reasonably sound, but most of what's built on that foundation is not. The first couple of levels are filled with endlessly respawning enemies placed to knock on you on to slopes that send you skidding back to the beginning of the stage or into a pit, and the middle set of stages are obnoxiously large and empty labyrinths. One area even has a trick door that sends you straight back to the beginning of the game. How fun! You often can't tell which things in the background you can stand on, and there are obstacles that you can walk in front of, but the instant you jump or an enemy knocks you into the air, you're dead. When you kill some flying enemies, they split into smaller ones that can't hurt you, but they'll block your shots, providing another enemy the opportunity to run into you, knocking you into a pit.
I think that when this was being designed, somebody must've asked everyone in the office, "what things irritate you most in a platformer?" They then compiled all the responses into a bulleted list titled, "Keys elements of a great platformer," and went on to painstakingly implement every single one.
The music also sucks, and the player character's sprite is soooo off-putting.
It's October, Ghost Manor is a "spooky" game, and there's no denying the sense of horror its design embodies, however unintentional. It had the potential to be decent, and I felt irrationally obligated to play it, if only to experience something that I hadn't had any interest in playing before. Now I know better. Hopefully, so do you.
Why did you find it so hard to stay in your own lane, ICOM? You were capable of so much better than this!
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