Super Ghouls 'n Ghosts

[Ed Oscuro]

I got the GBA incarnation of this game back at release, played a few levels, and then mostly forgot about it.

Recently I've been playing through it on my DS Lite, horrid piece of crap handheld but the badness doesn't affect this game too severely. The save function saves your weapon, points, armor and shield, lives, and continues, and restarts you upon resetting the game at the last level checkpoint. This saves my bacon, although I find myself resetting the game after every death (and sometimes after every hit).

Original mode is just as expected; two loops. I'm at the penultimate level right now (stage right before the final boss), and I got from the last half of the second stage to it in two hours today. I nearly got through the first half of the ice stage upon first reaching it, and it took me (only) a few tries. I was using the fairy bracelet weapon (the homing crossbow chases after enemies and makes me not have to jump as much), so I definitely have improved.

Arrange mode: There are three tiers of stages; with a line of icons that scroll past in place of the usual map screen. The top and bottom rows show pictures of each Super GnG stage and the middle row shows pictures of Ghouls 'n Ghosts (apparently these are "remixed," similar to the way some Genesis Hard Corps levels show up in Contra on GBA). I've been playing the bottom row (I assume I'll be allowed to go back and play the middle and top tiers of levels later; I've heard that unlocking each is dependent on what armor you have at exit; joys). The fairy bracelet is available from the start, and the locations of chests are different from the usual Original Mode positions (which I think stay more or less the same in the second loop).

For a while I was playing this alongside the Original Mode, but then I hit a snag (going on some days now) with the penultimate stage. I didn't see any point to using the homing crossbow in the final stage before Sardius because I'd have to learn it using the fairy bracelet anyway. I only make it to the boss of this stage once every dozen tries or two. The sole Red Areemer is easy. Birds are tricky, the section with ghosts and chests is tricky, but the boss is trouble. I haven't survived long enough to time out there but I bet it would happen. The fairy bracelet's power is a joke if you're any distance (i.e. safe) from your target.

[iatneH]

I played this quite a bit on the PSP Capcom Classics Collection when I still had it. It's my favourite in the GnG series, probably because it is IMO the easiest, yet I still never reached beyond stage 5 or 6 (or was it 4?)

I can't remember how the GBA one was, but I suppose I might put it on a F2A to play on the GBM once I'm totally done shuffling my computer stuff around.

[UnscathedFlyingObject]

I always play this game on my computer. Too afraid that I'll break the PSP.

[Marc]

Great game, the remixed stages were a nice adition on GBA.

[Ed Oscuro]

Before there were any replies to this thread I had gotten to the second form of the boss on Stage 6 after three attempts and promptly got hit by two of the huge blue laser attacks. I messed around with it for an hour or so today. I pretty much have the stage down to perfection aside from some of the tricky bits (there's just a bit of luck involved with the two birds and especially the ghost chests, but I have gotten through them more consistently now) and after forgetting what to do with the first form I'm getting better again. The second form seems like the first except that the flame attack has a notably longer range and you can't be anywhere in the air when the blue laser is about to fire. I guess I'll have to work on timing his attacks or something.

I started saving "progress" again to see if I can get through the stage before I hit 1,000,000 points. I'm at just over 660,000 now, heh.