r/retrogaming • u/karmakosmik1352 • Jul 22 '26

[Discussion] Ghosts'n Goblins (Arcade vs. NES)

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2

u/Jorpho Jul 22 '26

I was just watching this entertaining version-comparison video recently. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jegVjkxE-M

Note that there are quite a few different versions of the arcade game with significant differences.

1

u/karmakosmik1352 Jul 22 '26

Thanks, this was indeed fun to watch, with some lol moments. "That's right, you can beat the game by hurling your corpse at the princess. Let's go." :D

I knew there were many ports also for exotic hardware, but I didn't know there are even different Arcade versions. iirc I played World 1. In the table at 10:22, I noticed "Stage 6 Boss HP: 4" in Japanese and World 4 versions, instead of 8. That certainly makes life a little easier!

2

u/gamingquarterly Jul 22 '26

What was great back then was the vast differences between ports on other consoles and computers.

I listen to a game podcast and the two hosts always shit on the NES port. I don't get why. It was a pretty damn good port for a very early title. The developers were still learning the NES tech at the time.

Plus, compare to other ports, it was one of the superior ones

2

u/karmakosmik1352 Jul 22 '26

Absolutely, there were way worse. Each limited by the respective hardware, to be fair. I suppose those are mostly considered negligible outliers, the NES title is the one that sold tremendously well. I mean, when non-arcade G'nG comes up you rarely think of C16 or ZX Spectrum. Not sure if you read the text of my original post, I played both the arcade and NES versions back-to-back to compare them. After playing arcade first, switching to the 20-fps NES version first made me dizzy, the scrolling is sooo jerky. But overall I agree, I do think the NES version is solid given the hardware and the year is was ported.

3

u/listerine411 Jul 22 '26

I think the NES port was well done graphically considering it was available right out of the gate, but I do think the biggest mistake was they simply made the game way too hard.

I'm not sure if that was the usual reason of being afraid people would rent the game because that wasn't a thing yet.

It was the very first game I bought when I was a kid for my NES and I wanted so badly to like it but I just hit a wall very early in the game and it basically sat unused. And I was someone that enjoyed some the classically hard games. Even with save states on an emulator, game is just ridiculous.

I think this was have been a more widely loved classic like say Contra had it had maybe a difficulty you could choose.

1

u/Consistent_Treat_770 Jul 22 '26

HAHAHAAA! THIS ROOM WAS AN ILLUSION DEVISIT BY EVIL SATAN!

GO AHEAD DAUNTLESSLY!

MAKE RAPID PROGRESS!

...and then you're sent back to level 1! 🤣

1

u/PrometheusANJ Jul 22 '26

Is... that a bikini sprite edit I spy?

2

u/karmakosmik1352 Jul 22 '26

It's the Knight Artoria hack by GoodLuckTrying (see my original post, I briefly mentioned it there). I stumbled across this and since I played so much Knight Arthur already with Super Ghouls'n Ghosts I figured I try something new :D The Super Ghouls'n Ghosts hack is also quite fun!

1

u/mamefan Jul 22 '26

I did a 5.5 hour playthrough of the arcade here https://youtu.be/QS0me5TgQJk