Ghosts n Goblins

STORY / GAMEPLAY
The story takes place somewhere in the Medieval times. You’re a knight named Arthur who must fight zombies, demons and other creepy creatures to rescue your love interest, Princess Prin Prin (quite funny name huh?) who's been kidnapped by a vicious demon. Your mission is harsh, as the enemies are attacking from almost every direction! The game is a typical eight-way arcade platform with some action shooting elements. You climb ladders to reach higher grounds either to kill enemies or to find a better weapon/armor to use. Along the way you can pick up new powers, bonuses and a special armor that can deflect a single hit. You can also jump over incoming enemies (zombies and demons) or even duck to avoid birds and deadly, hovering ghosts! Another hard part is the traps and the gaps and the most frustrating aspect of the game is that, once you lose a life, the game takes you a few screens back. Ghosts N' Goblins is among the toughest retro games of all time, from the arcade to every other conversion! So it needs patience and some skills to complete.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
The ZX Spectrum conversion released for the 48k hardware, thus there are several limitations in terms of graphics and (especially) sound here. The stages offer affordable (for the time) details, and sprites move fast on screen. Amazingly enough, the backgrounds move fast and smooth here (in contrast to the CPC version which runs on flip-screen mode, thus no scrolling). The sound is poor though, having a few simplistic sound effects and no music during gameplay.