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
The Atari ST conversion offers decent visual but overall they lack several detailsfrom the coin-op (which can be found on the SNES, Mega Drive, PC-Engine and Sharp X68000 games). The background details are less compared to the Amiga (which is also trimmed in details). Although the first level (graveyard) is continuous, each subsequent level has a very different look, introducing new traps and enemies. The sprites are nicely done and they move pretty smoothly. To be honest, the Atari ST Ghouls 'N Ghosts seems to be the main base on which the Amiga conversion was created! Now, the sound! Each level has its own music theme, composed by Tim Follin. As you’d expect from the man behind the Bionic Commando and LED Storm music, all music themes sound very original and very spooky! Note that the soundtracks are totally different between the Amiga and ST versions and I must admit that the ST music is better this time! Sadly enough, there are no sound effects either on the ST or on the Amiga conversion!