Ghosts 'N Goblins (NES)

Ghosts 'N Goblins

Platform:	NES
Year:	1986
Developer:	Capcom Co., Ltd.
Buy:	Amazon

Ghosts 'N Goblins is an early platform action game ported from the arcade to the NES. You play Arthur, a knight who was chilling with Princess Prin Prin, in a graveyard, at night, without any clothes on. Suddenly, Satan come and whisks poor Prin Prin away, and it's up to you to save her. You'll have to fight through six stages to get her back. Each stage is filled with evil monsters who want nothing more to see you dead. At the end of every stage there is a locked door guarded by a boss which has a key that will get you to the next stage. Prin Prin can be found at the end of stage 7, but you'll have to defeat Lucifer to rescue her. You'll also have to beat the entire game twice to see the happy ending. Good luck with that.

Few games perfectly create the illusion of sheer terror like Ghosts 'N Goblins; not because the game is scary, but because the game is so unbelievably hard! The average gamer will last only a few seconds in the game before dying and most players won't even make if past the first stage. There are many reasons Ghosts 'N Goblins is so hard: you only get two hits, the enemies move very fast and are extremely difficult to dodge, your weapons are not very effective, the bosses are terribly difficult, you have to use one of the weakest weapons to beat the final bosses, you have to beat the game twice to win, etc. It is possible to become good at this game, through many many hours of practice, but the reward is not worth it due to such a dull ending.

The NES version of Ghosts 'N Goblins was developed by just a few people. Kazuo Hasegawa and Tokuro Fujiwara were the planners, Harumi Fujita and Ayako Mori worked on the game's audio, Masahiko Kurokawa and Kazuo Hasegawa worked on the game's graphics, and Kazuo Yagi from Micronics single-handedly programmed the game.

Screenshots

The title screen.

Prin Prin has been abducted by Satan (probably for what she does in graveyards).

The left half of the map.

Stage 1 takes place in a grave yard.

This page needs more screenshots.

Music

VGMPF Album Art

The music in Ghosts 'N Goblins, ported from the arcade game, is actually pretty good for 1986. The background music changes every two stages, there are several nice fanfares, and the sound effects reflect what's happening in the game. While it won't be winning any awards, it adds a positive element to an otherwise terrible game. Most of the arcade soundtrack makes it over to the NES version, minus a few fanfares - albeit the boss themes used for Levels 1 & 2 and Levels 5 & 6 are missing, while Levels 3 & 4 for some reason only use the arcade boss theme for those levels, and are missing the normal level themes.

The "Hurry Up" music starts with 15 seconds left on the clock, so you only hear the first 15 seconds of the track. However, the actual ROM data has more music. After three minutes of the annoying alarm, it switches to a slightly quieter alarm. Then, after three minutes of that, it goes to an even quieter alarm. The total track is over ten minutes long, and included in its entirety below. If you can listen to it all the way through consider yourself insane.

The original arcade version of the music was composed by Ayako Mori who ported her own music from the arcade to the NES. Like the arcade version, she had to write the music in assembly. The music plays a quarter step sharp.

The PAL version should be recorded, as the music plays in a completely different key.

Recording

#	Title	Composer	Arranger	Length	Download
01	Game Start	Ayako Mori	Ayako Mori	0:05	Download
02	Title Back (Map)	Ayako Mori	Ayako Mori	0:03	Download
03	1st & 2nd BGM	Ayako Mori	Ayako Mori	1:14	Download
04	3rd & 4th BGM	Ayako Mori	Ayako Mori	1:01	Download
05	5th & 6th BGM	Ayako Mori	Ayako Mori	1:14	Download
06	5th & 6th Boss BGM	Ayako Mori	Ayako Mori	1:14	Download
07	Hurry Up	Ayako Mori	Ayako Mori	0:15	Download
08	Stage Clear (Key)	Ayako Mori	Ayako Mori	0:02	Download
09	Death	Ayako Mori	Ayako Mori	0:01	Download
10	Game Over	Ayako Mori	Ayako Mori	0:05	Download
11	7th BGM	Ayako Mori	Ayako Mori	0:48	Download
12	1st Lap End	Ayako Mori	Ayako Mori	0:03	Download
13	Ending	Ayako Mori	Ayako Mori	0:22	Download
14	Hurry Up (Full)	Ayako Mori	Ayako Mori	10:25	Download

Credits

Ripper: TNSe^1999
Recorder: TheAlmightyGuru
Game Credits:
- Music: Harumi Fujita credited as Hal
- Music: Ayako Mori credited as Wood
- Uncredited Sound Driver: Yoshihiro Sakaguchi

(Sources: PAL, NTSC)

The game has credits, but to get them, not only must you beat the game twice, you also have to enter a cheat code at the last screen; A, B, Up, Down, A, B, Left, Right. Then, instead of the Game Over screen appearing, you'll get a credits screen showing the microscopic development team.

We have received verification from Harumi Fujita that she is Hal and Ayako Mori is Wood. Hal is the English translation of Haru (ハル), which is a part of Harumi's first name. Mori (森) is Japanese for forest, or "woods". Harumi says that Capcom made the staff use aliases. Fujita said she did not work on the music, but rather the sound effects.

While some have speculated the game's programmer, Kazuo Yagi, programmed the sound driver, especially because of its inferior sound compared to Capcom's sound driver, Fujita claims that Ghosts 'N Goblins' sound driver was indeed programmed by Yoshihiro Sakaguchi. Comparing the sound driver code with earlier Micronics' games and later Capcom games' code has no match. The NTSC versions of the game uses a manually calculated pitch table which sounds severely off what it's supposed to be like. The PAL version uses the official 2A07 pitch table, and that version should be the intended for listening.

The game uses the hardware decay instruments built into the NES's Audio Processing Unit (APU).