Anyone who expected Capcom to convert its arcade hit Ghouls ’n Ghosts for the new Super Famicom got something else. “If you’re expecting a conversion of the original arcade game you will be in for a bit of a shock,” Frank O’Connor warned in Computer and Video Games in December 1991. Capcom had made a new game with the same hero, Sir Arthur, and the same plot: a demon carries off the princess, and Arthur sets out in his armour to get her back. It had new stages, new weapons, a new move and a new trick at the end. In Japan it was Chō Makaimura; in the West it became Super Ghouls ’n Ghosts.
The import magazines saw it as a reason to own the machine. Mean Machines thought “everyone knew this was going to be the big one”, and C&VG set it beside Super Mario Bros. and Sonic the Hedgehog as a game that would sell the machine it ran on. Capcom’s own list of its million-sellers puts it at 1.09 million copies on the Super Nintendo.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: Capcom.
- Japanese title: Chō Makaimura.
- Released: Super Famicom, Japan, October 1991; Super NES, North America, later in 1991, and Britain in 1992.
- Series: Ghosts ’n Goblins (1985), Ghouls ’n Ghosts (1988), Super Ghouls ’n Ghosts (1991).
- Sales: 1.09 million on the Super NES, by Capcom’s count.
- Later versions: Game Boy Advance (2002), with a “rearranged” mode; Saturn and PlayStation; Wii Virtual Console; the Super NES Classic Edition (2017).
Stages that move
The first stage sets the tone. Arthur crosses a graveyard, and Mean Machines warned that “Level one may look pretty simple, but it’s not”: halfway through, tidal waves “literally wash the scenery away”. Retro Gamer later remembered graves erupting from the ground and “huge pillars of earth” rising, with a giant vulture at the end that spat eggs and stretched its neck to peck. The second stage puts Arthur aboard a ghost ship that “starts to sink as soon as our hero clambers aboard”, and Nintendo Power reminded players that “you can’t swim wearing a suit of armor”. Later stages had snowstorms and a frozen climb.
The Super Famicom’s mode 7, the hardware that can rotate and scale a whole background layer, got its showcase in the fourth stage. “The entire background rotates when you jump on the platforms,” Nintendo Power wrote of the Big Cave. “You may very well forget which way is up!” Mean Machines singled out “the tower level too, where Arthur runs around a rotating tower”.
The effects came at a price: Retro Gamer noted “some slowdown in places”, though Mean Machines judged at the time that the game “doesn’t slow down much”. Both magazines agreed about the music, which Mean Machines called “a kind of orchestral remix of the original Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts theme”.
The double jump
The new move changed how the game played. “Jump once, and while you are in the air, jump again,” Nintendo Power explained, calling the double jump “one of the keys to success”. Retro Gamer saw a trade-off. The double jump made Arthur far more agile, but he could no longer fire straight up or down as he could in Ghouls ’n Ghosts, and the game “felt more like a traditional platformer” than its run-and-gun predecessor.
Armour and weapons
Arthur starts in steel armour, which, as in the earlier games, shatters at the first hit and leaves him, in Mean Machines’ words, “running around in his boxers”. Treasure chests hold better suits, and Nintendo Power advised jumping everywhere, because some chests stay hidden until Arthur does. C&VG explained that green armour, called bronze in some guides, “powers up the weapon by one stage”, while gold armour “endows the wearer with magical abilities”, released as a charged attack. A chest could also hold a magician, whose spell, Mean Machines warned, turned Arthur for a while into “a defenseless woman or a tiny baby”.
Nintendo Magazine System’s player’s guide rated the weapons. The lance, Arthur’s first weapon, was slow to throw. The crossbow was good against airborne attackers and for reaching the heads of some bosses. The daggers were “easily the best weapon available to Arthur” for their speed. The scythe was “deceptively powerful yet unbearably useless”, and the axe “definitely one for Arthur to avoid”. The torch left a pool of fire on the ground when powered up. With gold armour, one magic spell forced hidden chests out of hiding; another was a “massive explosion”.
Twice round
Reaching the end is not the end. In Nintendo Power’s words, the player who defeats the boss of stage seven finds “that the Princess has been saving a surprise for you”: she had hidden a bracelet earlier in the game, it is the only weapon that can beat the final demon, Sardius, and “there is no way to get the Bracelet during your first trip”. The player has to go back to the start and play the whole game again. C&VG called it “The sneaky bit at the end”. Retro Gamer later called the decision “frankly evil”, since the second run has to be made “with an appallingly rubbish weapon”. The arcade Ghouls ’n Ghosts had done the same, sending the player round again for a special weapon.
Tokuro Fujiwara, who created the series, told Retro Gamer in 2006 that cruelty had never been the intention: “We never thought that we were being cruel when we were making the series, rather we were reacting to the desires of strong gamers to deliver titles that challenged their skills.”
Reception
The British import press loved how it looked. Mean Machines thought Capcom had “even bettered UN Squadron in the brilliant backdrop stakes” and judged the game “an essential purchase”. O’Connor in C&VG praised the graphics and sound, found that the armour “adds just a hint of strategy”, and thought the difficulty was “the only niggle”. C&VG’s second reviewer disagreed: he found the formula “old hat”. Nintendo Power’s panel scored it 4.3 out of 5 for graphics and sound and for challenge, and 4.0 for play control and for theme and fun.
Later writers ranked it highly in the series. Retro Gamer called it “the most-loved game in the franchise” in 2006, and said in 2012 that it was “arguably better than the original arcade game”.
Later versions
Capcom brought the game to the Game Boy Advance in 2002. IGN Unplugged reported that it would be “two games in one – kind of”: a direct port of the Super NES game, and a “rearranged” mode that mixed new stages based on earlier games in the series in among the old ones. It also added a cartridge save, which IGN noted was a first for the series. Retro Gamer also lists ports to the Saturn and PlayStation. The Super NES original came to Nintendo’s Wii Virtual Console, and in 2017 it was one of the twenty games on Nintendo’s Super NES Classic Edition.
Sources
- Computer and Video Games issue 121, December 1991, pp. 96–98: Super Famicom review by Frank O’Connor (“in for a bit of a shock”, the armour, the difficulty, “The sneaky bit at the end”), with a second opinion (“old hat”).
- Mean Machines issue 14, November 1991, pp. 92–94: Super Famicom review (the first stage’s tidal waves, the ghost ship, the ice level and the rotating tower, the orchestral music, the magician, “an essential purchase”).
- Nintendo Power volume 29, October 1991, pp. 72–75: Super NES preview (the double jump, the armour, the eight-stage map, the ghost ship, the Big Cave’s rotating background); p. 87: release chart and Power Meter ratings.
- Nintendo Power volume 38, July 1992, p. 71: “How do I get the Bracelet?” (the princess’s surprise after stage seven, the second trip, Sardius).
- Total! issue 22, October 1993, p. 100: reader’s question and answer on the bracelet, “the only weapon that can kill Sardius”.
- Nintendo Magazine System issue 2, November 1992, pp. 49–50: player’s guide (the weapons, armour, shields and magic).
- Retro Gamer issue 23, 2005, p. 96: retrospective (the first stage’s vulture).
- Retro Gamer issue 29, 2006, p. 39, Sean Smith, series feature with Tokuro Fujiwara: Chōmakaimura, the bracelet, mode 7, slowdown, “the most-loved game in the franchise”, Fujiwara’s remark on cruelty, the Game Boy Advance version.
- Retro Gamer issue 37, 2007, p. 91: the Wii Virtual Console release.
- Retro Gamer issue 102, May 2012, p. 36, “Cheap as Chips”: the double jump and the loss of vertical firing, the first stage and its vulture, the second run, the Saturn, PlayStation and Game Boy Advance versions.
- IGN Unplugged issue 15, August 2002, p. 34: Game Boy Advance preview (the port, the “rearranged” mode, the cartridge save).
- Capcom, “Platinum Titles” (web, secondary): Super Ghouls’n Ghosts, SNES, October 1991, 1.09 million units. https://www.capcom.co.jp/ir/english/business/million.html
- Kim Justice, “Super NES Mini Countdown: #11 | Super Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts”, Retronauts, 15 September 2017 (web, secondary): one of the twenty games on the Super NES Classic Edition. https://retronauts.com/article/561/super-nes-mini-countdown-11-super-ghouls-n-ghosts
- “Super Ghouls ’n Ghosts”, Wikipedia (web, secondary): North American release in November 1991 and European release in December 1992. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Ghouls_%27n_Ghosts