Ghosts N Goblins

I remember the first time I saw Ghosts 'n Goblins on an arcade cabinet somewhere in a shopping mall. Knight Arthur set out to rescue the princess, took one hit, and ended up standing there in his underwear. I was ten years old, and this was probably the cruelest joke any video game had ever played on me.

Capcom released the original arcade Ghosts 'n Goblins in 1985, and in the years that followed it found its way onto practically every platform that existed — Commodore 64, Amiga, Atari, NES, and of course PC under MS-DOS. It's a platformer action game where the player controls a knight making his way through graveyards, castles, and demonic landscapes while zombies, ghosts, and all manner of winged creatures jump out at you from every direction. The goal is simple: reach the end, defeat the boss, rescue the princess. Except that "simple" is purely theoretical.

The 1987 PC version stays true to the original spirit, though visually and sonically it naturally suffers compared to the arcade or Amiga versions. The EGA graphics have their own specific charm, and the Sound Blaster sounds do what they can. But the gameplay is just as merciless as everywhere else. Arthur moves along a fixed path, jumping is stiff and imprecise by design, not by accident — and if an enemy hits you twice, you start the round from the beginning. You can pick up weapons, but swapping for the wrong one at the wrong moment can send you to your doom just as reliably as the boss itself. And then there's that thing about the second playthrough, which I'd rather say nothing about so everyone can experience it for themselves.

What did Ghosts 'n Goblins bring, and what has endured? Above all, the idea that difficulty can be part of the design, not a flaw in it. The game doesn't punish you randomly — every death has a reason, even if you refuse to accept it at that moment. This exact approach influenced the entire genre for decades to come, right up to today's so-called soulslike games, which have built their entire identity on the same principle. The PC version may not be canonical — there are better ports for that — but even here that fundamental DNA remains untouched.

Today, anyone playing Ghosts 'n Goblins in their browser will get the most out of it if they want to know where the obsession with justly cruel games came from. Or if they think modern games are hard. I recommend the latter group start right here — this 1987 game will quickly teach them that difficulty has actually become more forgiving since then.