The Gold Standard of High Difficulty Horror Action Game With a Royal Story!

Mitsuki Nonaka
2 min readOct 12, 2023

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#36 Horror Game 100 story challenge

Of all the action games out there, this is the ultra-high difficulty action game that plunged players into the depths of despair, That’s “Ghosts’n Goblins (魔界村)”

Image Credit: Gameplay screen clipping from Amazon

Title: Ghosts’n Goblins. (魔界村) Genre: Horror Action Compatible Hardware: FC(family computer) Publisher Release Date: CAPCOM 1986.6

The story is the royal story of Arthur, a knight of the kingdom, who goes to the demon world to rescue the princess of the kingdom. To save her, he must defeat the six demon generals, open the gate, and defeat the Great Demon King.

This “Ghosts’n Goblins” is an orthodox horizontal scrolling action game. There are a total of seven stages, and once the six regular stages are cleared, the player can proceed to the final battle stage against the Demon King. However, one must be careful with this: if you’re not equipped with a specific weapon (cross for the Japanese version, shield for the Western version), you’ll be forcibly sent back to the first stage…(This would have to loop forever if you didn’t know!) And even after defeating the last boss, the great demon king “Gondias,” the story still doesn’t end… The main reason why Ghosts’n Goblins is considered to be highly difficult is that it forces the player into a second week! OMG, the true ending can only be reached by circling a stage of even greater difficulty… This delightful absurdity was firmly carried over into the later series.

I couldn’t even complete one stage, but even though I am not good at action, I enjoyed it. Because it’s a worldview that horror lovers will love, and the background music played on stage is habit-forming. The latest “Ghosts ‘n Goblins Resurrection” has been released on Nintendo Switch. I hope you’ll give it a try!

See you tomorrow!

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Mitsuki Nonaka

Freelance writer/blogger 🖋 loves horror 👻 beloved horror novel, comics and films.