31 Days, 31 Screams: Day 3 (Ghosts n Goblins)

I went with the Famicom box art for this one, because it's so
cute and goofy and I kinda love it.

Well, we have a true monster here today, and something that's more in our wheelhouse. Ghosts n Goblins, that game that nobody can talk about without screaming YOU HAVE TO BEAT THE GAME TWICE! Which, I technically just did so I'm keeping the trope alive. Whoops. What do we make of this beast, then? Released six days after Super Mario Brothers hit the Famicom, and eight days before me. In a lot of ways, it reflects the both of us, a true dark mirror unleashed to the world in the middle of the 80's. I'll refrain from talking about the series at large, although we might have passing mention there at the end. Right now we're going to laser focus on the original game... and I do mean "original". The admittedly kind of terrible NES port isn't what I played just now for this project. I fired up the PSP to play the actual arcade game. Well, I tweaked the difficulty down just a bit because I have beaten that terrible NES port and I've earned such dilution... but I have faced the monster. In fact, I've faced every monster this particular franchise has hurled at players. What's another tussle with a beast when you already are one?

Ghosts n Goblins, in the purest sense of the term, is an Agent of Chaos. You are given a protagonist who is an Agent of Order. Knight Arthur, himself named after the legendary King of the Britons, armed with two simple and basic abilities of video games: Shooting, and jumping. Shooting depends on your weapon, and each one works a different way. The lance shoots straight forward. The torch arcs. The knife is fast. The shield has short range but blocks projectiles. If you have a weapon, you know where it's going to do and what it's going to hit when you fire it. The only way to change things up is by getting a new weapon. The jumping follows this structure as well; rigid and committed. You will always jump the same distance and height every time, and trajectory cannot be altered once you've done it. Mario's fluid motion this is not. Order is strict, and must play out the same way. That's nice and all, but what rockets Ghosts n Goblins into the mythical stratosphere of Hard Motherfuckers In Video Gaming is that every goddamned enemy in the game is an unpredictable agent of Chaos... save for one, somewhat. Everywhere you go in this game, shit can and will spawn indiscriminately. You play and play and you know how your jumps need to go, but then just as you commit a little imp comes in and swoops to get you. It demands quick reflexes and plotting on the fly to complete, but it's still frustrating. All of your careful planning, your memorizing of the route, your choice of the right weapon, can be utterly derailed by the Chaos Code rolling a dice and deciding "yes an imp and two ghosts RIGHT HERE is perfect". The only fellow that offers some sort of predictable pattern is the one people hate; the Red Arremer. He shoots, he swoops, he dodges up if you shoot at him, he lands and marches if you don't. That's his pattern. Even with that in mind he still has chaotic movement, and it's a careful dance to deal with one of these guys alone. Let alone when you've got three other things and something spawning by sheer chance to deal with.

Say you endure, though. If so, you'll find that chaos gets more and more powerful the closer you get to the Chaos Lord's castle. You can't beat level 3 with your starting weapon. You just can't, because the dragon at the end of the stage won't take damage from it. The game is just changing the rules on the fly here. You need to compromise and switch up. This is nothing compared to the later tricks it plays. If you don't use the shield weapon to defeat stage 6, you are sent back to stage 5 and told to get it. Because the game said so. This, paired with the immunity rule, is especially grueling in the NES version. You need to fight the first two bosses at the start of the level, one after the other. The first one is immune to the shield, so if you died while you had it you have to switch to the lance. Then you fight the dragon again and he's immune to the lance, SO GET A SHIELD. There's no reason for this. Well, other than siphoning quarters for the Dread Beast GREED, but still. You get to the top, battle the Chaos Lord Astaroth in an easy final battle, and... Yes. Yes, it's true. It's all true. If you want a happy end, you have to beat the game twice. Nobody can shut up about it, and I can't shut up about it because of it. For this playthrough I just shut it off after I won that first loop. The other is exactly the same. It's blatant padding to siphon quarters that people still yell about 30 years later, and I'm not excluded because here we fucking are. If you dare go back and do it all again, you get a happy ending EXCEPT PEOPLE BITCH ABOUT THAT TOO! For their blood, sweat, and tears, they wanted a better ending than just a happy end! It was 1985, for god's sakes. Super Mario Brothers didn't have a 20 minute ending. We weren't quite at that stage yet, and by the time sequels to these games came around they did have longer endings with text and credits and junk.

Regardless, this is the terror that Ghosts n Goblins struck in the hearts of players.  30 years later we can't shush about it, and alchemical homages are still being cooked up. Maldita Castila, Battle Princess Madelyn, et cetera. Look up any countdown of hard video games on Youtube or elsewhere, and I guarantee with... 80% certainty that Ghosts n Goblins is on there. People still fear it, and we haven't really topped its chaotic difficulty in 30 years according to them. I cry bullshit, but then again I've topped all of those games. I guess I'm the king of Chaos now. Now, go back and read this entire post over again. Why? Because I said so.

Don't actually do that. I love you all. Maybe enough to share my fear with you.