The Haunted Hoard: Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts (SNES)

Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts sits at an interesting point in my appreciation for the series. It is the first game in the famously difficult Ghosts ‘n Goblins franchise I played but I didn’t get particularly far in this action platformer when I did. Now though, I return to it after playing its two predecessors. The original arcade Ghosts ‘n Goblins almost put me off with its brutal design that doesn’t always play fair, but over on the Sega Genesis, the follow-up Ghouls ‘n Ghosts was such a marked improvement that I could see myself becoming a fan of the franchise. Ghouls ‘n Ghosts gave the player room to understand its dangers, but I recalled Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts not being so generous. After putting it off for a while, I figured it was finally time to find out if the series will make me a fan or if it falls back on the failures of the adventure that started it all.

After defeating the malevolent forces of the Ghoul Realm in his previous adventure and saving the princess, the stocky knight Sir Arthur cannot rest easy. Once more darkness falls upon the kingdom, Princess Guinevere snatched up by the Emperor of Evil Sardius as the monstrous undead make another bid for control over the human realm. While the princess is now better known as Princess Prin Prin and Sardius also goes as Samael, the general set-up for this adventure remains fairly similar across regions since it really is just a set-up for Arthur to leap into action once more and fight his way through a set of small but very difficult levels to save the princess, and much like its predecessors, it also wants you to run this deadly gauntlet twice over if you want to face off with the final boss.

Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts does not hold back when it comes to its difficulty, but it does give off a bit of a bad impression with its first level on how far it is usually willing to go. Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts does, unfortunately, give you only a set amount of lives and continues, although you can set it to provide nine lives on top of six continues for a somewhat reasonable set of 54 chances before you factor in any opportunities to earn extra lives or continues. Earning points for killing monsters and grabbing points items, particularly the bags of money, can help give you a little more buffer room for failure in your journey, but the first level in the game is oddly enough perhaps the cruelest. Before you’ve even had time to get used to Arthur’s double jump, you’re going to need to have some pinpoint landings and strong reactivity. Level 1, known simply as The Dead Place, starts with a graveyard where zombies constantly appear from the floor on top of other enemies like werewolves waiting to pounce or skeletal dragons eager to breathe fire on you. It’s a lot to pay attention to before you factor in the shifting ground, the floor moving in ways you can’t always anticipate until you’ve already seen it move in the past. Once you’re past that opening onslaught, you reach an area where a tidal wave will almost certainly kill you the first time it hits the ground. Once you know it’s coming, you need to stand on specific ground to avoid being instantly washed away as wave after wave crashes against the ground. The next area contains many enemies that appear out of the background as you contend with moving ground again, meaning The Dead Place’s name will likely feel appropriate since it is no doubt where you will die the most here just trying to understand the game.

It’s a rough first impression and a poor way to bring a player into the game, even the basics of movement and attacking having to be learned in a high pressure scenario. Arthur’s jump cannot be adjusted in air, only the double jump allowing you to alter its direction after you make the commitment. You do need to become a pro at it for some later jumps over lava onto tiny rocks and it is crucial to your success against many bosses, but after you get through The Dead Place, you are often given much more room to time and line up jumps or less pressure to do them perfectly under punishment of instant death. Even that lava only removes your armor, Arthur able to always survive a hit if he’s wearing some but it will reduce him to his undies and he will die on the next hit. Brief invincibility lets you push through after injury at least, but collecting more armor requires finding treasure chests that sometimes only appear when you’re near to them. Two hits to die makes this opening stage more unforgiving since you might not even have much room to learn what’s ahead yet, but once you do learn more about its surprises, you can start heading into the other stages Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts offers which are more conceptually interesting and better paced to provide tough challenges with the space to actually learn them, besides maybe the level timer feeling a bit tight in the later levels.

Most stages in Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts understand better how to design difficulty. For example, an icy area has icy thorns sprout from the ground to try and block your path, but if you are standing on where they will appear, there’s a grace period where it can’t hurt you so you can move in time to avoid damage. Other stages do have dropping platforms, enemies who appear from thin air, or other things that could be overwhelming if they didn’t always have some small tell and reliable placement. Even the ghosts who appear in the second major stage’s ghost ship will travel across the screen first as harmless wisps so you can anticipate their path and be ready to strike. An avalanche later in the game doesn’t kill you instantly but throws you back a bit, something you can account for, and even the dangerous raft rides in the ocean are more about timing your jumps over jagged coral while accounting for an enemy or two nearby rather than worrying much about where you’ll land. Some parts like a slow platform ride through a giant ghoul’s stomach will lead to injury if you don’t notice where you need to be quickly, but there’s perhaps only one real way left the game maybe oversteps its bounds in making something a bit too difficult.

Most things after The Dead Place play fair, but the Red Arremer Ace moves in reaction to the player to be particularly pesky. This flying gargoyle will fly out of the path of attacks aimed for him, moving out of reach with ease, and often times the only way to hit him is when he’s dive-bombing you in ways that can be hard to dodge thanks to the rules of your jump. If you try to ignore him, he follows along for quite a while and will start launching projectiles and minions your way, and in the final stages you may even encounter back to back Red Arremer Aces. There are some tricks to managing him, such as using your attacks to keep him flighty so he can’t set up a swoop, but the attacks that can harm him best are also not reliably found or retained, this particular foe also one of the bigger monsters that takes more than a single hit to dispense with. He carries on the infamous tradition of the difficult Red Arremer family, but he still feels like a break from design when other reactive large monsters have more feasible ways to guide their attacks and overcome them. There are moments of slowdown when too many enemies crowd the screen, but depending on how tough the foes you face are, it won’t often harm you to have a bit more time to plan your next action as the game chugs.

How hard enemies are to take out can change quite a bit over the course of the adventure though, because not only can you find armor replenishment and points items, but Arthur isn’t left flinging lances the whole time either. Your infinite spears can unfortunately only be thrown forward and back, but other available weapons have their own quirks that make them situationally better. The dagger is quick to throw making it almost an upgrade to the lance, but then you have other options like the scythe that can travel in more diagonal paths or the torch that will hit the ground and burn some enemies ahead of that spot. Angle or size is often what sets the weapons apart like the axe that covers the area in front of you better than the thinner throwing items. However, each weapon can also change how it functions if you grab Magic Armor or Gold Armor. Magic Armor will upgrade the attack, although what constitutes an upgrade is debatable. The axe gains an upwards arc before traveling forward, something that is not appreciated in tight spaces where it will just bonk the ceiling and disappear. On the other hand, the bow will upgrade to have three homing shots, something that can even overcome a Red Arremer Ace’s dodgy nature. Gold Armor though is able to greatly increase your odds of success. Hold down the attack button for a bit and you can unleash powerful spells. The scythe’s magic unleashes two tornadoes that will not only damage most enemies on screen but possibly hit them multiple times, while the dagger’s magic launches a fiery dragon forward. You can use these as often as you can charge them, meaning the reward for the right mix can be quite high, although some weapons don’t have great magic like the crossbow that only reveals hidden treasure chests.

Figuring out which weapon you want to use for a stage, learning where armor pick-ups are, and potentially going on a tear when you have a good mix is a satisfying learning process even if the game can be difficult enough to drain your plentiful lives. Nothing exemplifies the game’s successes better than the bosses though, as they feel like embodiments of the types of design that make this game work when it is embraced. Be it a giant cockatrice or a colorful hydra, most bosses in Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts only have around 2 or 3 attacks, but they follow certain rules. You need to identify how the boss moves, when it leaves its weak points vulnerable, and most of all, move confidently. You cannot afford to take risky jumps, but you can’t drag your feet due to the level timer. You need to act when you can and avoid being greedy, the attack patterns sometimes shaking up their sequence a bit to punish complacency. This is perhaps why the first level feels at odds with the rest of the experience. You can’t have confidence when enemy appearances are random and you don’t yet know about hazards like ground movement and tidal waves or where they will happen. The Red Arremer Ace even stands out because it doesn’t lean into this built up confidence but rather subverts it. Elsewhere, Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts knows to ramp things up better, so while you will die a lot along the way, you can start to apply your knowledge and acquired skill well.

As mentioned though, Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts does expect you to run through the entire game again to see its true ending, meaning beyond an unfortunate return to level 1, you also have to survive the rest of the game. However, there is a complication that can also been seen a benefit. To see that final boss, you must acquire the princess’s bracelet before reaching the penultimate battle. This requires you to have gold armor on when opening a treasure chest, something you can achieve quickly in The Dead Place despite its faults, and when you have the bracelet, you get one of the best attacking weapons in the game. Launching a large magic fireball at decent speed, the bracelet has no advanced magic but it doesn’t need it. It’s stronger than most standard attacks and can even take out Red Arremer Aces in two hits, something that is even better when you consider you often get a chance to get a free strike on the annoying gargoyle before it begins its attacks. Platforming on your adventure still requires finesse and you need to make sure you don’t grab a replacement weapon by mistake, but it does feel like a bit of a reward as you can take down certain bosses so quick they don’t even utilize certain tricks. The true final boss isn’t the best finale, a rather slow clash where it can be hard to determine where the danger is coming from, but the power trip of the bracelet can at least give you a reason to check out the second run even if you don’t care to see the ending.

THE VERDICT: Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts gets off to a discouraging start with a pretty poor first level that doesn’t reflect its design ethos well, but beyond some strict level timers and the ever pesky Red Arremer Aces, the rest of the adventure serves as a compelling test of moving cautiously but with confidence. You need to space and time jumps well to succeed in platforming and battle, many monsters and bosses being good tests of your reflexes and your growing knowledge that usually doesn’t require death to learn. You will die often, it is difficult despite having clear rules governing most of the obstacles to your success, but clearing the adventure can be triumphant once you’ve got its systems mastered.

And so, I give Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System…

A GOOD rating. Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts should have learned from Ghouls ‘n Ghosts in terms of letting the player have space to learn, abundant lives not the same as letting the player overcome any stumbles in level design through determination and grit. Mostly those stumbles are at the start at least, meaning once you’ve figured out The Dead Place you can restart, clear it with minimal losses, and then head into the meat of what proves to be a challenging action platformer with a good variety of interesting dangers to overcome. Conquering a level is rewarding because it requires skill and a good eye for when to act, but there are still little areas like the abundance of Red Arremer Aces in the back half that start to drain some enthusiasm. These noteworthy terrors would be easier to swallow in a game where you didn’t need to watch your life counter, the desire to continue the enemy’s legacy not gelling the best with a game that isn’t deliberately cruel in an arcade setting or able to soften that blow with infinite continues. It’s definitely easy to get caught up on the weak points of Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts, but with most of its levels sending you through new platforming hazards and enemies, you get to spend most of the time reacting to effective monster and stage design. The weapons and armor upgrades add an extra layer of experimentation, and some mixes like the gold armor with the scythe are powerhouses that can help you push through parts that give you trouble. The retread to face the real final boss doesn’t feel at home in a game with limited lives even if the bracelet is a great weapon to get your hands on, but limited lives do at least push you to take point items more seriously, trying to work in ways to grab bags of cash adding some extra substance to the levels once you’ve come to understand the dangers enough not to worry much about them.

Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts is difficult, not always in the best of ways, but often enough it plays well into the idea of approaching the area ahead with confidence but not ignorance. You do need to understand Arthur’s options well to succeed, and once you’ve got a hang of them, there are many rewarding moments of overcoming unique threats on your triumphant run to the end. While movement can feel stiff, it’s a deliberate part of the game’s equation. Even if you choose to tackle it on Easy difficulty, you’ll still find a rewarding fight awaiting you should you commit to understanding its trials and accept that The Dead Place is not indicative of the better game waiting beyond that bad first impression.