Ghouls N Ghosts

STORY / GAMEPLAY
Arthur, the brave young Knight and the main character in Ghosts n' Goblins fought multiple creatures of the underworld and finally succeeded in rescuing his beautiful princess. But once more, those blood-thirsty creatures have risen again and took his love interest away for a second time. Now Arthur is called again to grab his shiny armor and his lethal daggers and kill enemies, fight with bosses and also avoid traps. The game is played the same way like its predecessor. It is a classic side-scrolling action game with quite a few platform elements that add to its intensity! The main idea is to run, jump and shoot up to the end of all five levels, survive and take out the ferocious end-of-level guardian (boss). On the final level you have to confront the leading Demon and rescue your princess. Arthur's energy level is not shown anywhere and the programmers had the brilliant (and funny) idea to grant you with a few lives and, each time you get hit, your energy drops by 50% and you lose your armor, continuing your quest wearing nothing but your underwear (just like in Ghosts N' Goblins)! My only complaint here is that the game continues to use one of the most frustrating aspects from its predecessor: When you lose a life, you are thrown back about ten screens and start over again! Other than that, Ghouls N’ Ghost is a great game to play and keeps your interest high to try and try again.

GRAPHICS / SOUND
We must note at this point that although both Amiga and ST conversions are OK, they look (and sound) inferior to the Sharp X68000! The graphics on the Amiga are fine, although there are several details missing from the coin-op (but found on the Sharp X68000). Truly speaking, the Amiga hardware could easily offer better graphics, close enough to the quality of the original. While the underworld is continuous, each level has a very different look, introducing new traps and enemies. The sprites are nicely done having several details and being nicely animated too. Of course the Amiga conversion offers a few more details and more colors on screen when compared to the Atari ST, and though the game runs smoother on the the Amiga, both Amiga and ST games play equally good. Each level has its own soundtrack, all of which were composed by Tim Follin. As you’d expect from the man behind the Bionic Commando and LED Storm music, all musics sound very original and particularly spooky! But strangely enough, there are no sound effects on both the Amiga and the ST and this is sad as they would add a lot to the game's creepy atmosphere!