Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts (Super Nintendo)

While not quite a launch title, Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts was released only a couple months after the launch of the Super Nintendo in October 1991. It was released exclusively on the SNES but was the third game in the series.

Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts is much like its predecessors in that it is a side-scrolling action adventure game in which you control the knight Arthur in his quest to rescue the princess from the demon king. Along the way you will fight your way through hordes of undead. Also like its predecessors, it is a very difficult game.

My first experience with this series came with the Commodore 64 port of the original Ghosts 'N Goblins. I absolutely loved this game. It had great graphics and music and just a great ambiance. As much as I may have liked it, I don't think I ever made it more than a third of the way through the game. It was soooo hard. Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts is probably my second favorite game in the series after that one. It had beautifully updated 16-bit graphics and sound and was an excellent game overall. There are only two real complaints. First, it is soooo hard. Second, it suffered from slowdown issues like a number of early Super Nintendo games did.

Fortunately, it has also been re-released a few times for more play options. The SNES version was released as part of Capcom Generation: Chronicles of Arthur for the PlayStation and again as part of Capcom Classics Collection for the PS2 and Xbox. It was also released for the PlayStation Portable as part of Capcom Classics Collection: Reloaded. The nice thing about these ports is that they do not suffer from the slowdown issues that the original SNES version has. A Gameboy Advance version of the game was released in 2002 with an additional game mode. Additionally, the SNES version of the game was released for the Wii Virtual Console in 2007, the Wii U Virtual Console in 2013 and the New 3DS Virtual Console in 2013. The GBA version was also released via the Wii U virtual Console in 2015. Finally, Super Ghouls 'N Ghosts was released in 2017 as part of the Super NES Classic Edition.