Ghosts’n Goblins – “Worse danger is ahead”

14 min read Original article ↗

In June 1986, Japanese computer game magazine LOGiN launched a spin-off magazine, initially focused on Nintendo’s Famicom but soon taking in a wider range of platforms. It kept “Fami” as part of its name, though, eventually becoming known by the abbreviated name Famitsu. Today, coming up for 2,000 issues later, it is still going strong. Throughout those forty years, it has printed national sales charts, initially two-weekly and at somewhat of a delay. Those charts are available online, in English, at Game Data Library. I have been using them to add details of Japanese #1 games in my recent posts. 

The first ever issue of Famitsu includes the first part of a guide to an arcade conversion which Capcom had just released on the Famicom: 魔界村 (Makaimura), or as they called it in English, Ghosts’n Goblins. Taking the Famitsu charts from a few issues later, the ones covering the weeks around that first issue’s publication, and looking at them alongside their equivalent in the UK’s Popular Computing Weekly reveals something unusual and interesting. That game was the #1 bestselling game in Japan and the UK simultaneously. 

The way that the Famicom (or NES) became the dominant platform in the USA as well as Japan has meant that a lot of English-language discussion of games has assumed an audience who grew up playing games on it. In the UK, that applied to only a tiny fraction of players. In 1986, total UK revenues from computer games were more than six times as high as those from consoles and console games combined. Given how much higher console game prices were, the difference between numbers sold must have been many times bigger still. Part of my motivation for looking more into this history in the first place was to look at why my childhood experiences playing games were so different from what I frequently read about online. 

However, there is a temptation to go too far the other way in reaction, and treat games in Britain as a totally separate scene. The reality was still one of interconnection, with some gaps, and with arcade games as a crucial international commonality. Some British arcade distributors made deals with Japanese publishers, and had their games as an important part of their offer, from the Space Invaders craze onwards.

Most Brits weren’t playing Nintendo’s own games at home, since Nintendo made them exclusively for their own consoles, but we could play Super Mario Bros. at the arcade. Demand in Europe for a home version was also demonstrated when Rainbow Arts made The Great Giana Sisters in 1987, which certainly was “we have Super Mario Bros. at home”. Other Japanese companies like Capcom did not have the same incentive to convert their arcade games only to Nintendo’s console, so we got to play more official versions of them on home computers too. Even if those were not exactly the same official home versions as were being played elsewhere.

  • The Great Giana Sisters (Rainbow Arts, 1987, Commodore 64)
  • The Great Giana Sisters (Rainbow Arts, 1987, Commodore 64)

Before that, when designer Tokuro Fujiwara came up with Ghosts’n Goblins for the arcade alongside working on Commando, it was as a demon-themed game. He designed at least one of the demon enemies first (Red Ariima, named after Capcom colleague Toshio Arima). Fujiwara wanted to add a bit of cuteness as well, though, and get away from pure horror aesthetics. He turned to animated shows he had watched as a child for further inspiration. 

Theming sorted, he applied it to a kind of hybrid platformer/shooter/beat-’em-up, with enemies coming thick and fast like Spartan-X/Kung-Fu Master, some ladders and platforms, and the ability to fire your lance at them as a counter to the danger of their numbers. There is definitely a cartoon energy to the ungainly ragdoll way that the main character runs and jumps. As well as to the way that knight in shining armour Arthur can withstand a hit but loses his armour and fights on in his underwear.

  • 魔界村/Ghosts’n Goblins (Capcom, 1985, Arcade)
  • 魔界村/Ghosts’n Goblins (Capcom, 1985, Arcade)

Fujiwara described creating the game as being more fun than Commando, but also as being exhausting, in part because he put so much energy into ensuring it was extremely difficult. This included iterative location testing of early versions of the game in arcades, watching the tricks players used to progress in order to respond with extra traps to foil their strategies. There was an economic motivation for this difficulty, in getting more coins from players quicker, but Fujiwara would later insist that wasn’t the primary motivation and that they were meeting a demand from strong players for challenge. Which does seem to have been borne out by the game’s success all round.

Location testing during development also introduced the risk of competitors copying games, especially at a time when the time to develop their own could be only a matter of a few months. Fujiwara later responded to a question about SNK’s Ikari and its resemblance to Commando by saying that was just how things were, although he was disappointed that they had got to release more sequels than him. No word on his thoughts on Konami’s Green Beret and its mix of Commando’s aesthetic and the gameplay of Ghosts’n Goblins.

  • Green Beret (Konami, 1985, Arcade)
  • Green Beret (Konami, 1985, Arcade)

Just as he and Capcom colleagues developed those two games together, those games’ path to computers were strongly linked. After Walsall-based Elite Systems agreed a big deal for Commando with Capcom’s boss in a London hotel, they immediately searched for other opportunities to convert Japanese arcade games. Elite’s Steve Wilcox headed over to the Tokyo Game Show in September 1985 where he signed up a long list of games – he later named Paperboy, Space Harrier and Bomb Jack as being among them. That was right when Ghosts’n Goblins was entering Japanese arcades, so it’s very possible that it was also on the list, or it may have come separately. Either way, the existing relationship with Capcom surely helped.

It also meant that Elite started work on Ghosts’n Goblins quite early, enabling them to be just as quick to release home versions of the game as Capcom were with the Micronics-developed Famicom version they published themselves. That was also months quicker than the NES translation that became a hit in the US. Capcom had to make some compromises for the console version compared to their arcade hardware, but it faithfully gets across all the best elements of the game. Doing the same on Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum was a bigger challenge. 

  • 魔界村/Ghosts’n Goblins (Capcom, 1986, Famicom)
  • 魔界村/Ghosts’n Goblins (Capcom, 1986, Famicom)

As with Commando, it was Chris Butler who took up development for the Commodore 64 version of Ghosts’n Goblins. He had got into a routine of doing arcade conversions, telling Zzap! 64 that “games design is one of the things I’m not very good at” and he was therefore happy doing games where he didn’t have to do the design himself. Especially when those tended to be a financially successful proposition, although he did complain that “the programmers make a bit of money, but the software houses make a hell of a lot more money for doing sod all, really”.

Compared to Commando, he got a luxurious amount of time to develop Ghosts’n Goblins: five months, minus one month “because the equipment broke down”. He once again had to cut some levels out for memory space, but he did it in a less rushed and more planned way this time. Previews in Computer & Video Games noted the “vast amount of screens” of the arcade original and said that Elite had taken “a selection of the very best screens”. Butler called it “the best game I’ve written to date”, and it is an impressive achievement in getting across the atmosphere of the original while looking distinctly different.

  • Ghosts’n Goblins (Elite, 1986, Commodore 64)
  • Ghosts’n Goblins (Elite, 1986, Commodore 64)

For the Spectrum version, Crash’s review has a line that makes the level of its additional challenges plain: “When I read that Elite were to convert the game it caused much amusement, as we dismissed the idea as a triumph of marketing over the possible”. The game’s title screen indicates that task went to Keith Burkhill, but an earlier interview in Your Sinclair indicates that, as with Commando, Nigel Alderton worked on it too, at least early on, and that graphics were by Karen Trueman.

Trueman, a vegetarian who wasn’t delighted by the magazine’s decision to do the interview in a Wimpy burger restaurant, had joined Elite straight from school, towards the end of development of Commando. For Ghosts’n Goblins, she started off by doing the sprites, with an arcade machine handy for reference and working to sprite sizes specified by Alderton. She used Elite’s established graphics tool, which was coincidentally named Arthur, like the protagonist of the game. Well, Fujiwara and Capcom had been influenced by British legend.

  • Ghosts’n Goblins (Elite, 1986, ZX Spectrum)
  • Ghosts’n Goblins (Elite, 1986, ZX Spectrum)

The Spectrum version does Arthur’s movements very well, crucial to the feel of the gameplay. It’s a lot more compromised elsewhere, greatly reducing the numbers of enemies and in some cases compensating by making them even more ridiculously difficult. Good luck avoiding the hovering enemies at the start of the ice palace level. Another factor of the Spectrum which has a big effect on the game’s feel is its struggles to put different colour things next to each other. Where, for example, Green Beret’s main character has lots of detail shaded with black pixels to minimise the effect, Arthur’s block colours instead make him positively embrace it. The landscape seeps through him, green or yellow or cyan based on whatever he is standing in front of, rendering him a spectral figure. It feels appropriate.

One thing the Spectrum version of Ghosts’n Goblins has that the Commodore 64 version lacks is the game’s narrative intro. The Spectrum version of it is highly condensed, but the original was simple enough to lend itself to that. A man and woman sit outside, the screen goes dark and a demon swoops in and grabs the woman; the man runs off to the right. It’s an early archetypal version of something that became embedded in many, many games, and the intro is the source of many references as a result. Indie hit Super Meat Boy would later repeat it beat-for-beat with genders reversed. My favourite version is the one in UFO 50 in 2024, which reproduced the intro with a sandwich being stolen instead, and demonstrated that this carried an equal emotional weight.

  • 魔界村/Ghosts’n Goblins (Capcom, 1985, Arcade)
  • 魔界村/Ghosts’n Goblins (Capcom, 1986, Famicom)
  • Ghosts’n Goblins (Elite, 1986, ZX Spectrum)
  • Super Meat Boy (Team Meat, 2010, Xbox 360)
  • UFO 50 (Mossmouth, 2024, PC)

The British magazine reviewers of 1986 already had plenty to say about the narrative of Ghosts’n Goblins. Mike Pattenden in Commodore User started his review with the question “How many games and adventures can you think of where a fair maiden is kidnapped and imprisoned by a nasty character only to be rescued by a young prince? The answer is a hell of a lot”, before tying it back to folklore and Orpheus. Zzap! 64’s review took on the gender dynamics directly, referring to Ms. Damsel and recounting that Mr. Knight “strode after Mr. Demon, determined to reclaim his property (bit of a chauvinist is Mr. Knight)”. Meanwhile, in his bit of the same review, Julian Rignall wrote of the game that “if it was a female I’d ask it back to my place”.

Rignall went on to call Ghosts’n Goblins his new favourite Commodore game, which was further than most went, but there was a lot of enthusiasm around. Computer & Video Games highlighted “a large number of inventive touches in this game”, and wrote that “the scrolling on CBM and Spectrum has to be admired. Commodore owners may believe that goes without saying, after seeing the quality of Uridium. Spectrum owners may be surprised to hear, though, that their version is very nearly up to the same level.” Clare Edgeley in Sinclair User wrote that “like Imagine’s Green Beret, Ghosts’n Goblins is really no more than a levels and ladders game, but that doesn’t seem to matter. The original graphics and furious action more than compensate”.

  • Ghosts’n Goblins (Elite, 1986, Commodore 64)
  • Ghosts’n Goblins (Elite, 1986, ZX Spectrum)

Your Sinclair went with “play Ghosts’n Goblins and you’ll be grabbed by the ghoulies”, most likely not an inspiration for the later Rare game of that name but just an indication of how many British people find certain puns irresistible. And the note in Crash’s review I mentioned earlier, laughing at the prospect of a Spectrum version, was of course a set up for a reversal. “Keith Burkhill has proved my intuition well and truly and completely wrong and has gone and produced an excellent interpretation of the arcade original equipped with perfectly smooth scrolling and all the gamey bits that made the original Ghosts’n Goblins so much fun to chuck ten pee bits into”. 

Ghosts’n Goblins went on to spend four weeks at the top of the UK chart, a similar run to its Famicom counterpart in Japan. It ended up as the UK’s sixth best selling game of 1986, and Japan’s seventh best selling. And, mediated by some of Elite’s finest conversion work or otherwise, it ended up a much-loved classic in the UK and Japan alike. Its cute demon aesthetic, ruthlessly archetypal plot, and tremendous difficulty would influence games in many places.

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