A demon swoops out of the night sky over a graveyard and carries off Princess Prin Prin. Her knight, Arthur, pulls on his armour and sets off after her, and within seconds the zombies are climbing out of the ground. Touch one and the armour falls off, leaving Arthur to carry on in his underpants. Touch another and he collapses into a pile of bones, his skull resting on top. That was Ghosts ’n Goblins, Capcom’s arcade game of 1985, known in Japan as Makaimura (“Demon World Village”). It was hard enough that few players saw the later stages without emptying their pockets, and when they did reach the end, it sent them back to the start to do it all again.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: Capcom; designed by Tokuro Fujiwara.
- Arcade release: September 1985, four months after Capcom’s Commando.
- Japanese title: Makaimura.
- Hero: Arthur, a knight who survives one hit in armour and dies at the second.
- The ending: beating the final boss sends the player back to the start for a second, harder run.
- Home versions: Elite for the Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Amstrad CPC (1986) and the Amiga (1990); later versions for the Atari ST and PC; Capcom’s own version for the Famicom and NES (1986).
- Sequels: Ghouls ’n Ghosts (1988), Super Ghouls ’n Ghosts (1991), Ultimate Ghosts ’n Goblins (2006), Ghosts ’n Goblins Resurrection (2021).
Fujiwara’s demon world
Makaimura was the idea of Tokuro Fujiwara, a young Capcom designer who had worked on Pirate Ship Higemaru, Commando and Exed Exes. “When I first began thinking about the sort of game I wanted to make I immediately looked back to my childhood for ideas,” he told Retro Gamer in 2006. “I imagined a game world filled with the sort of characters that had appeared in my favourite cartoons.” The enemies were drawn in that spirit: zombies, carnivorous plants that spat at Arthur as he climbed ladders, flying red demons, ogres and dragons. The red demon, Red Arremer, later got games of his own, starting with Gargoyle’s Quest on the Game Boy in 1990.
At heart it was a scrolling platform game, but Arthur fought with thrown weapons. He started with an endless supply of lances. Some enemies carried pots, and killing them left a new weapon behind: fast throwing daggers, a torch that burst into flame where it landed, an axe thrown in a slow arc. Arthur always took the last weapon he touched, so a careless step could swap a good one for a bad one.
Hard by design
Retro Gamer called it “almost impenetrably difficult”: only the most dedicated players reached the later stages “without pumping a wallet full of coinage” into the cabinet. Fujiwara did not see it as a trick to take money. “Arcade games first and foremost do need to earn money, but this was not our primary objective,” he said. “It was not easy for us to earn enough cash and still make Ghosts ’N Goblins difficult enough for the more skilled gamers out there. Personally I feel that the final difficulty level was indicative of the time.”
The last trick came after the final boss, Astaroth. Defeating him sent Arthur back to the beginning to play the whole game again at a harder setting, and to win the real ending he had to face the final bosses carrying the cross. “We never thought that we were being cruel when we were making the series,” Fujiwara said, “rather we were reacting to the desires of strong gamers to deliver titles that challenged their skills.”
Elite’s conversions
In Britain the game came home through Elite Systems, which had already converted Commando. In March 1986 CRASH announced that Elite would “continue their series of Capcom arcade conversions” with it, and Computer and Video Games explained that Elite had “taken a selection of the very best screens” from an arcade game so long that it doubted anyone had finished it.
The Spectrum version, by Keith Burkhill, cost £8.95. CRASH gave it 95% in July 1986 and called it “a genuine first rate copy of the arcade game”. Each section had to be cleared within a time limit, and this Arthur had nine lives. The reviewers praised the “beautifully smooth scrolling” and forgave the thin sound, which, one was told, was down to memory limits. Another admitted that the magazine had laughed at the deal as a “triumph of marketing over the possible” until the game arrived.
On the Commodore 64 the game was converted by Chris Butler, with music by Mark Cooksey, and cost £9.95 on cassette. Zzap!64 called it “the best to date” of Elite’s arcade conversions for the machine in September 1986, and its readers voted it to the top of the magazine’s chart the following month. The Amstrad version, an Amstrad Action Rave, caused an unexpected problem. It scrolled the picture with the machine’s hardware, and the result did not work through Amstrad’s own TV modulator: players using a television instead of Amstrad’s monitor got a black-and-white picture, even on a colour set.
Looking back in 2006, Retro Gamer reckoned that each version stood out for something different: “Lump together the gameplay of the Speccy, the graphics from the Amstrad and the cracking music from the C64 and you would have had probably the best arcade port of the time.” The Amiga version took longer. Amiga Action reviewed it in August 1990, noting that programming problems had delayed it until after U.S. Gold had already released the sequel, and found it “a decent platform game” with bright graphics but a jerky vertical scroll.
Nintendo and after
Capcom made its own version for the Famicom, released in June 1986 and later sold as Ghosts ’n Goblins on the NES. Retro Gamer called it “a fair effort” that “sold well”, although Capcom had raised the difficulty “to an insane level”.
The sequel, Ghouls ’n Ghosts, reached arcades in 1988 on Capcom’s new CP System board, and Super Ghouls ’n Ghosts followed on the Super Famicom in 1991. Fujiwara came back to direct Ultimate Ghosts ’n Goblins for the PSP in 2006, which Edge praised as a game “so adept at exploiting its own heritage that it can integrate modernity into its design”. In December 2020 Capcom announced Ghosts ’n Goblins Resurrection, a remake of the arcade game with hand-drawn graphics. It came out on the Nintendo Switch on 25 February 2021, and on other formats that June.
Sources
- Retro Gamer issue 29, 2006, pp. 35–39, Sean Smith, series feature with Tokuro Fujiwara and Hironobu Takeshita: Makaimura and its meaning, Fujiwara’s earlier games and quotations, Prin Prin and Astaroth, the weapons, the difficulty, the second run with the cross, the home and NES versions, the sequels, Gargoyle’s Quest, Ultimate Ghosts ’n Goblins. The same feature is reprinted in Retro Gamer Collection vol. 1, 2007, pp. 195–199.
- Capcom, “Corporate History” (web, secondary): arcade release in September 1985, Commando in May 1985, the NES version in June 1986. https://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/company/history.html
- CRASH issue 26, March 1986, p. 105: Elite’s Ghosts and Goblins announced. Issue 30, July 1986, pp. 28–29: Spectrum review (Elite, £8.95, Keith Burkhill; 95%; nine lives, the time limits, the reviewers’ comments).
- Computer and Video Games issue 56, June 1986, pp. 58–59: Elite’s “selection of the very best screens”.
- Zzap!64 issue 17, September 1986, pp. 18–19: Commodore 64 review (Elite, £9.95 cassette, £14.95 disk; Chris Butler, Mark Cooksey; “the best to date”). Zzap!64‘s readers’ chart for October 1986 is described in Reading the charts.
- Amstrad Action issue 12, September 1986, p. 44: Amstrad review (Elite, £8.95 cassette). Issue 14, November 1986, pp. 26–27: the AA Rave and the modulator problem.
- Amiga Action issue 11, August 1990, pp. 52–53: Amiga review.
- Edge issue 166, September 2006, pp. 69–70: Ultimate Ghosts ’n Goblins review.
- Wireframe issue 46, December 2020, p. 105: Ghosts ’n Goblins Resurrection announced.
- Daniel Tack, “Ghosts ’N Goblins Resurrection Is Coming To Nintendo Switch On February 25”, Game Informer, 10 December 2020 (web, secondary): the Switch release on 25 February 2021 and the other formats on 1 June 2021. https://www.gameinformer.com/the-game-awards-2020/2020/12/10/ghosts-n-goblins-resurrection-is-coming-to-nintendo-switch-on