Ghouls N Ghosts (Amiga) - A Playguide and Review - by LemonAmiga.com
83Ghouls 'N Ghosts is an arcade platform shooter, created by Capcom and released in the arcades in Oct 1988. This home conversion came out a year later. So is this a good conversion or just a lazy ST port? History seems to be unkind to this game, so Lemon took a rose tinted look at it.
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Production Notes:
Recorded: 24 October 2022 (cheat), and 2nd February 2023 (loading)
Narrated: 21st February 2023
The idea behind this video came during my play of Lollipop, on the 22th of October 2022, when I made it as far as the Haunted Ghost level, and heard the music for the first time. The music reminded me of the very great music in Ghouls N Ghosts, and this nostalgia made me want to cover the game, as it was one I owned back in the day. So on the 24th of October 2022, on the same date as I recorded Lollipop for season 7, I loaded this up and completed it with the cheat on.
Fast forward to February 2023, I realised I'd only recorded enough material for 23 games in the series, which meant I was one game short of my quota. The final game was supposed to be the 9K subs special, but we are still a couple of months away from that target, so this left a gap to fill. So I got the idea of using this game. The footage was already pre-edited, but as I wanted to talk about multi-loading times. On Feb 2nd, I used the latest version of WinUAE and the scanlines option to try to get as close to what I remember the game loading experience to be like. Hence a long black screen at the start. This sequence also had the disk drive clunking away in the original edit, but I removed that when it became inaudible due to the music I found - which I extended to cover this blank gap.
The music of Ghouls N Ghosts was the main reason to review it, so I put in lots of red panels in the edit, to tell me to shut up during those parts of the video, so the music can come through to the audience. The narration went well, until I realised only the first 22.3 seconds of the the 22:35 video had been recorded, due to me putting in a full stop rather than a colon in the time, so I had to do it all again. After a short break I did it again, but half way through, I went blank on what I needed to say Vs what I had already said in the lost first take. So some points towards the end may have been lost. Luckily, I didnt repeat myself on anything, and didn't miss out anything important.
Danscore:
Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the arcades became a place where the future was clear to see. 256 colour graphics, ultra smooth and responsive, and with chart-quality music. This type of experience was rarely converted faithfully into peoples homes, when the machines of the day were severely lacking the hardware to reproduce those games. Coming from a ZX Spectrum or a Commodore 64; where loading times were sometimes longer than the game play itself, the Atari ST and Amiga seemed half way between a games machine and a Personal Computer. When I first got my Amiga 500, it came with U.S Golds Demons and Drivers Pack, and I had this also on my C64, so it wasn't long before I booted this up. The graphics immediately felt like a huge step up, even given what they would become with the likes of Ruff N Tumble and Pang later on. The music was just mind blowing; and I had never heard Gaelic/Celtic drums and flutes in a video game before, especially not with the quality of this multi-textured operatic epic by Tim Folin. Everything about the machine just seemed easier, and more accessible, and back in those days it clearly felt like 'the future'.
As we know, video games got better and better on the Amiga as the ST ports started to dry up, and we got games dedicated to the bespoke hardware. So that's why the re-releases of this game got a thrashing from the magazines of the day, basically because it felt like last years technology. I recently managed to get far in this game without the cheat on, after practising, so it's not impossible, but it does require a lot of luck and compliance from those skull lobbing plants on level 1. The music still captures the atmosphere enough to forgive most things, and its still a fun experience to jump into it, even with the cheat. Unlike so many other games which rely on pixel perfect jumps and leaps of faith, this feels like a straight up adventure - something like Medievil on the PS1. So it becomes difficult to score it with any certainty. With my normal head on, I'd say it is worth a 5 out of 10; as an average game with lots of random unfairnesses. But back in the day I would give this 7.5 without issues, and that's not bad compared to U.S Golds other games such as Strider, Thunderblade, and Turbo Outrun. But they looked great on the box!