This week in Video Chronicles, everyone dies
But most of all, Arthur dies. A lot. Yeah, it's Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts
Super NES Works has finally escaped the gravity well of Final Fantasy II and... has fallen immediately into a portal to Hell.
This week's episode covers the third entry in Capcom's Makaimura series to have hit a Nintendo console. We've already seen Ghosts ’N Goblins and Gargoyle's Quest, and now here's Super Ghouls ’N Ghosts. It is, as you'd expect, crushingly difficult. It trades out the randomized enemy spawns of the NES game for more fixed hazards, but that doesn't make it any easier; each enemy or trap has been deliberately placed to be as trollish as possible. This is a game that demands practice, practice, practice.
Or a cheat code.
This tends to be a real love-it-or-hate-it kind of game. Some people adore its unforgiving design, while others have better things to do with their lives than memorize every last wicked gotcha (twice). I'm on the fence, myself. There's a lot to like about it—it's gorgeous, for one thing—and something about it really is fun, despite its hateful design. But the game really needed a password feature or something so you don't have to slog through the whole cruel thing in a single sitting.
The game did appear on last year's Super NES Classic Edition mini-console complete with multiple save states (and it's also on Virtual Console with suspend states as well), so maybe there's a happy ending in store for Arthur's tale after all. At least until Ultimate Ghosts ’N Goblins, anyway.
