Tonight on the Halloween marathon: a haunting. This game has haunted me for the past seven years, as I'm sure it's haunted millions of SNES players for the twenty-seven years it's been out. This is not, to be clear, because the game scarred me or made itself a white whale of impossible difficulty. I cleared this godforsaken thing only a few months after first seriously diddling with it. I have told this story on the blog before, but I don't mind repeating myself for the sake of an article. We'll keep it brief. In 2011, on my way to my favorite scenic getaway of Grand Bank, Newfoundland, we drove by an imposing mountain. Having listened to a podcast mentioning the game earlier in the trip, it was at this moment that I made up my mind. I was going to beat Super Ghouls n Ghosts. Six months later I returned to Grand Bank having done so, and did so again between a wedding's reception and its dance. Powerful stuff, but it was far from my first foray. The experience of clearing that game, plus a foolish wager I took to clear the NES adaptation of Tom Clancy's The Hunt For Red October, taught me how to tackle hard games. Battletoads? It fell. Contra? Beaten the original, no death. Dark Souls? I'm a flame master. Yes, even the rest of the Ghosts n Goblins series fell to my apparent skill. I just call it dumb tenacity and pattern recognition, but some of you like to praise me for this stuff so I revel in it a bit. Hard Game Beater, indeed. Well, I did it again. I sat back this afternoon in my basement and beat Super Ghouls n Ghosts. I didn't intend on it, as I felt I said all I needed to say about the series two years ago with the first game... but fuck it. Here we are again. This is Super Ghouls n Ghosts, and this is the fresh hell I put myself back into.
It's not quite as good as the arcade sequel to the first game, Ghouls n Ghosts... but it's fairly solid with lots of neat innovations. Ghouls n Ghosts let you fire in four directions, added more weapons, and let you upgrade your armor to charge up for cool magic attacks. Super Ghouls ditches the vertical shooting, but it's still got lots of fun and deep mechanics with its upgrades. Green armor will power up your weapon, and gold will allow you to charge up for a cool magic attack depending on what weapon you've got. Of course, getting hit once will knock off all the cool armor... and that's where the extra cruelty comes in. See, you find armor in hidden chests, and what's inside depends on what you opened last and what armor you have. It's easy enough to memorize how things will go when you don't get hit (Weapon, Bronze, Gold, Shield) but the real shit comes with the trapped chests. Magicians will turn you into a weak and defenseless form if you open one of these... and guess what the first chest you always get when you're in your underwear is? Yep, this game fucks you over twice. Take a hit, and you get a booby trap while opening a chest to, you know, power your way back up. If nothing else, this game loves kicking you when you're down. How about those weapons? I must admit, there's versatility with a lot of them. Sure, the knife is a reliable standby and fires fast and hits hard and will generally help you, but there's other perks to certain weapons. The bow, for instance, is a great beginner's weapon. It fires upward at an angle and its powered up version is a homing shot. It's GREAT for killing those pesky goddamned Red Arremers, but it's not perfect for every situation. The pathfinding on the shots isn't perfect and you may find it missing the mark or hovering about uselessly at times. My actual emergency go-to for Arremer killing was the axe. Unpowered up, it swings in a wide enough radius that I could get close and whap them mid-air. Intermediate Arremer fighting strats.
I want to stress that I like this game... I think. I say this because I am about to unleash holy hell upon its ending requirement. In Ghosts n Goblins tradition, you have to beat the game twice. That second time, you have to defeat the two forms of the last boss with a weapon called the Goddess Bracelet. You only get it by opening a treasure chest while fully powered up, so getting hit at any time in the final level while trying to collect it means you may as well die and try again. It's a bit of a melee weapon in that it shoots a projectile that does more damage at close range... but the two bosses you have to fight with it are all focused on breathing fire and shooting lasers. Getting hit and losing your armor means your range and power is diminished... and you're on a strict time limit. You either play risky and die in this state, or play cautious and run out of time because you're doing shit for damage. It's intensely frustrating, but just fair enough that you won't quit. There are enough money bags in the opening of the stage to grant you a continue on three lives' worth of collecting them. You'll never run out. You're stuck here, in this hell purgatory, until you best these sons of bitches. The true final boss is a joke. I killed him in one try. The assholes before him are the real final battle, in my opinion. I could go on about how the princess's bracelet is the ultimate power and all that, but I think we're done here. Super Ghouls n Ghosts is a game I like. I think. It's hard to tell. I enjoyed the parts that weren't the final gauntlet! I understand if you'd rather not fire this one up, but it's horrifying in its own way, hm? Either way, enjoy the spooky season. Next time we might get really, spectacularly dumb.
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