The Haunted Hoard: Ghoul School (NES)
Ghoul School, despite its name, has no ties to the similarly named Scooby Doo movie, but the story it does establish for itself is at least a bit cartoony. The protagonist is named Spike O’Hara, has a spiky mohawk, and goes to a school called Cool School High, so he’s already a bit of a ridiculous character, especially when we learn his first instinct when finding a glowing skull in a cemetery is to take it to a teacher at school the day before Halloween. To little surprise, this skull begins to cause issues, unleashing an army of monsters and ghosts on the school, turning anyone inside into monsters themselves. Spike manages to miss the event and seems pretty unconcerned about the whole affair until he learns the captain of the cheerleading squad is being held captive, so even though a Ghostbusters knock-off team and the entire school’s supply of jocks failed in saving her first, he walks in with nothing but a baseball bat to try and rescue her.
Unfortunately, this kooky set-up is probably the best part of the game, and it’s not even that exceptional.
The titular Ghoul School is the first problem players will encounter due to its unusual and convoluted design. The game starts you off in a hallway and at first progression seems easy enough. When you enter a new area, it tells you what the number of the room is, even if it’s a hallway, but very quickly the straightforward numbering system gives way to outrageous jumps, where you can go from a room with a single digit number to one in the nineties and hundreds. The hallways themselves almost follow a more reasonable numbering system, but you can still go from Room 9 to Room 14 by walking straight forward, and this all ties to the school’s confusing arrangement. Plenty of unmarked stairways connect the hallways, and since your progress in this game is not about just a straightforward progression, you will end up treading back and forth in search of wherever the game expects you to be. You have no guidance or clue about what your first destination should be, and the way the games tries to funnel you into it is by making most your other options at the start entirely pointless or overly deadly. The non-linear design is meant to open up as you find certain items that can overcome roadblocks, but going through tons of identical hallways in the hopes you bumbled into the right one isn’t a very interesting approach to exploration, especially since all the important items are kept behind closed doors.
The doors on the side of the hallways are, save for the few rooms of import in the game, almost entirely not worth the trouble. Almost all of them use one of two designs and the only reason to stay in one after you’ve seen what is inside is that one of those two formats has a healing apple in it that usually involves you losing a bit of health to even get to it. Many hallways have multiple doors that lead to these pointless diversions, and while the rooms with items or weapons you need have unique layouts, it doesn’t really challenge the platforming angle of the game. Ghoul School is technically an action platformer in that you are capable of jumping during the action, but very rarely is it trying to test your jumping skill, making most rooms flat expanses with some school appropriate decor for areas like the gym, nurse’s office, or cafeteria. Jumping does find a bit of usefulness in combat though, but that’s because it’s your only real option for avoiding damage besides a slow run. Fights with monsters are almost always a chore since they always seem to be designed to be one step ahead of the player. At first, the game gives you a weak bat you must get in close to do any damage with, and enemies don’t want to stand still and take it. Ghoul School does give you a gradually stronger repertoire of weapons to swap between as you explore the school and find where they’re hidden, but before you do, the game makes sure you’re actually unequipped to deal with certain threats. Certain really tiny enemies can speed across the hall to attack your feet over and over, the player unable to do anything to retaliate until they get weapons that can aim at the ground, after which you still have to time it pretty well or else the small enemies will get in close and refuse to back up enough to be hit by your new weapon. Something similar happens with the basic giant eyeball enemy that is at first challenging not because it’s smart or really dangerous, but because you have to get in close to attack it, but once you do get your first long range weapon to help deal with it, the eyeballs you encounter from then on now have fast-firing projectiles to ensure they are still nuisances.
Ghoul School doesn’t seem to want you to enjoy any of your weapons. They can often sweep up the weaker enemies that you no longer have any reason to see again after earning them, but progression will take you into areas where the weapons are now barely able to scrape by. So many enemies can hit you from areas of safety, essentially making taking damage mandatory to progress as you need to squeak by and grab the new items you need. This is all made worse by the game giving you a limited amount of lives before it hits you with a Game Over and you have to restart from the beginning. The game gives you a brief glimmer of hope with the lockers in hallways being billed as hiding places when you encounter enemies, but if you pop in one, the enemy usually just stands around outside it waiting for you, meaning you’ll take damage when you pop out and try to make a legitimate escape. In fact, the most useful thing the lockers seem to do is playing a part in an invincibility glitch, which could remove much of the game’s unfairness if used but also not leave you with much to do. You do have a bit of health to each life to try and make pushing through the enemies a bit easier, but the game also likes to spring instant death moments and abrupt difficulty spikes on you without warning. As a player progresses they might encounter a green man in the hallway and think they can fight him, only to see that if he touches you, it will do damage equal to almost your entire health bar. Getting around him requires first breaking a green clock that looks like its just part of the decor and is the only real moment you need to use your baseball bat on something in the environment, and trying to use any other weapon won’t break the clock either. The game also expects the player to seemingly guess they can get to the top of the school by fiddling with elevator to go beyond the floors it even says exist. While experimentation can be expected with weapon use, the game seems to expect the player to intuit they can suddenly perform certain actions without any indication they were ever even on the table.
It almost feels like an obligation to mention the two types of shoes you get that are meant to open up the path deeper into the school but don’t have a lot to them outside that role. Spring shoes will make you jump higher and suction cup shoes let you walk on the ceiling if you can reach it, but the opportunities to use it outside of areas solely designed to block you unless you have them are minimal. The weapons have some more utility, primarily because certain enemies have certain weaknesses. The incredible short range and slow Spinal Zap weapon is great for skeleton enemies, and sandwiches deal with zombies pretty quickly, but it’s hard to say the fights ever really advance beyond an enemy trying to rub itself up against you and the player hoping they have the weapon that can handle the situation best. Even the bosses, who could have been an excuse to shift up this formula, are mostly either longer versions of this concept or just get creamed provided you’re packing the right equipment.
Confusing area design and forced damage might tempt the player to use a fan-made map and the invincibility glitch to overcome this game, but that would make for just hollow execution since there would be no real challenge left in the game. It’s difficulty is derived solely from crowding you with enemies you’re ill-equipped for and making it hard to get around and make meaningful progress, and it’s not like there are many interesting sights to take in. Maybe you might find it amusing there are monkeys working in the auto shop, although that is ruined by the fact they can quickly move into areas where its impossible to hurt them but they can deal heavy damage to you. Perhaps the living music note will tickle your fancy, but it jumps in your face until you can hit it enough times to make it stop. The janitor enemy is cute, in that he’s just doing his job, but if you attack him then you’re basically dead and down one of your precious lives for not knowing that a single monster in the Ghoul School is suddenly nice and shouldn’t be attacked. Even the smallest things to enjoy seem to come with some caveat that make them contribute to this game’s annoying and flawed design.
THE VERDICT: Ghoul School really doesn’t get much of anything right. Having limited lives pairs poorly with moments of mandatory damage and having to learn a foe is out of your league by being killed by it, and the fights with monsters you can handle often involve being rushed down as you try to make something in your unsatisfying arsenal put up a good fight. Moving around the school is dull due to constant background and room design repetition, and the odd numbering makes it hard to find the few areas that are different and important to find. Even if you had every advantage possible going in, Ghoul School wouldn’t have much left for you, since it seems to be counting on its unfair enemies and perplexing area design to pose a threat to the player.
And so, I give Ghoul School for the Nintendo Entertainment System…
An ATROCIOUS rating. If you think slogging through boring navigation and unrefined combat to see a giant eyeball wearing a chef’s hat is worth it, then maybe Ghoul School has something for you. It’s hard to say its slightly goofy visuals are really worth the effort though considering how many video games can do better in every regard including the visuals, so what Ghoul School is left as is a game that makes its setting a dangerous and twisted school but through all the wrong methods. Even the incredibly powerful Gamma Gun and the golden apple that make you stronger and more durable respectively only really crop up once they’re beyond most of their potential usefulness, and that powerful weapon isn’t even useful on the final bosses either.
Ghoul School has an all around sloppy design that pushes against the player not to challenge them, but just to make things annoying and sometimes ruthless. Very little progress feels like an earned achievement and its secrets are not really puzzles you feel smart for figuring out so much as inexplicable ways of advancing that might lock players out from ever completing the game.
It appears the game’s creator, Scott Marshall, agrees with many of the criticisms towards his game, so I won’t go so far as saying that Ghoul School needs to be condemned. However, the fact even he is down on its quality should be indication enough that this game failed in what it tried to do. You should definitely skip this school.