Developed/Published by: Capcom Released: July, 1990 Completed: 31st May, 2015 Completion: Finished the game by slogging from level 1 to 50, using continues. Trophies / Achievements: 100/100
I must have played this back in the day in the arcades. I remember it really well; the way the attract mode looked amazing, with all these heroes on screen and all this lovely chaos. It’s possible I did but just died so quickly that it never made an impression? Whelp, I’ve beaten it now.
I like Magic Sword. That doesn’t mean it’s good, but I’m going to get that out of the way. It’s one of those slightly odd “lots of ideas, vaguely implemented” arcade games from the period; you’re a strapping, Conan-esque hero, on his way to kill Drokmar and destroy the Black Orb. You do this by climbing 50 levels of a dungeon, which are all of varying lengths and have secret exits and so on that can bump you forwards and backwards, and while you’re doing this you level up your weapon, and get keys that you can use to unlock other heroes to help you (sadly, only one at a time.) Oh, and each time you rescue a hero they level up too.
Oh! And your weapon is interesting in that you can’t button mash, you have to hit it carefully once your weapon has “charged” otherwise it’s not full power, which is pretty difficult because the screen is swarming all the time, pretty much.
I’ll be honest: Magic Sword is your basic coin muncher. While there is some skill (in fighting bosses, for example) you’re mostly just trying to survive, and games where there are points where you just can’t avoid taking a hit aren’t really to be encouraged, eh? But it’s charming, perhaps because of the nostalgia I (and I guess many people?) feel for this arcade era; big chunky and attractive Capcom art, great sound effects and music, and a responsive play-style that makes you want to hit continue.
At this point, I’m just making justifications for liking this, really.
Will I ever play it again? Shamefully, yeah. It’s quick and I’d enjoy playing through it with another player.
Final Thought: A quick discussion of the port: I played this in its Final Fight: Double Impact incarnation, and it’s great. All kinds of display options! There’s also (apparently) a ton of archival art and stuff but, annoyingly, you’ve got to unlock it all by playing the game in lots of particular ways and I just can’t be arsed. Ah well. Here’s an awesome bit of Magic Sword art that’s really stuck with me, though.
I’ve been watching Game Centre CX again! I’d fallen out of the habit, but recently I got off my arse and organised my collection of Iron Chef episodes and started watching them in order (can you believe they made fifty-six episodes of Iron Chef in 1994? That’s more than one a week!) and it put me in mood for some Game Centre CX too. And after watching the Kacho valiantly battle his way through Ghouls ’n Ghosts on Megadrive, I thought I might as well give this a shot, because it’s been in my collection for donkeys.
You probably know the drill with the Ghosts ’n Goblins series: it’s absurdly difficult, and it changes from “Ghosts ’n Goblins” to “Ghouls ’n Ghosts” and back again confusingly. Most of the games are incredibly similar, differing only vaguely in terms of hero Arthur’s abilities and enemies. But then, plenty of series are even more restricted than that (you know, look at any side-scrolling shooter series) and it’s not like we complain about them (unless we do? We might!)
Probably the most interesting thing about the series is that the very first hit right around the time of Super Mario Bros., so you have to remember that this didn’t come from a context where that was what platformers were. In fact, it kind of feels like a series from an alternate dimension where Super Mario never really happened.
It’s a dimension where a locked-in jump is the done thing. It’s also one where randomly spawning and aggressively player-seeking enemies are the done thing. So while your jump is completely predictable, the enemies aren’t.
Can you tell where this is going?
I mean, you obviously can if you’ve ever played the series. The games just aren’t fair. You can do your best to deal with these enemies—and I’ve seen players far above my abilities perform absurd feats—but you’re going to commit to a jump, or throw a weapon at the wrong time, and you’ll die (usually by being knocked off a platform.)
It’s not good! Or fun! In fact in level 3-2 of this—a level where you have to survive on a small moving platform for quite some time, while attacked from all sides—I was pretty close to breaking my Vita in half. I had to beat it twice, too (and in fact, to “fully” complete the game I’d have to beat it at least once more). The game doesn’t even really offer much in the way of the kind of streamlining we’ve come to expect from our masocore; no quick restarts, limited lives meaning you have to continue from the start of the level at some point and often struggle on with a lost cause number of lives, etc.
The worst thing that Ultimate Ghosts ’n Goblins does however is that rather than previous games, where you just have to survive the levels, in this one you’re supposed to find all the hidden nooks and crannies (and I do mean hidden: a large amount of the game is about triggering chests by jumping in certain, totally unmarked, parts of the levels) in order to gain enough gold rings, or witch ingredients, or magic spells, to complete the game fully.
The game chooses just about the most uncomfortable twist on the unlock abilities design possible, by making sure you can’t collect plenty of stuff until you have magic spells that do things you don’t expect (the turn-things-to-stone spell that causes gravestones to explode is… alternate dimension logical I guess?) or very specifically have this one shield that allows you to fly.
The shield’s a weird one, to be honest, considering the Ghosts ’n Goblins franchise has basically never involved this level of control in-air. It changes the game almost entirely from the minute you get it into one that’s not about the inflexible jumping but the much more flexible (if temporary) flying. It doesn’t make you die any less (well, maybe a bit less) but you’re much more in control. It’s an odd twist that the level design works around, and that doesn’t make you feel better about the levels you’ve struggled through to that point (and it doesn’t come until very late in the game…) In a game that’s otherwise A to B linear being asked to jump back and forth in insanely difficult levels that you feel, by rights, that you’ve completed, just to collect some things because you can now fly… it just doesn’t work.
It explains why they re-released this in Japan with all of that stuff removed, though!
Will I ever play it again? Uhh… I really did sort of want to collect all the rings and “fully” finish it. But the hidden bits are so annoying that life is just too short. If you could download the Japanese version to Vita, I would maybe consider it. But… no.
Final Thought: I’m not really sure what excuse I have for, ultimately, not having a bad time playing this, though. Not that I liked it, but that I didn’t feel that it was a total waste of time. The nice PSP-era graphics, which are maybe in that sweet spot of dated for me right now? That as stiff as the game is and unfair the enemies are, there’s this responsiveness that means that it feels good, and you want to succeed even in the face of frustration?
Developed/Published by: Dimps, Capcom / Capcom Released: 19 October, 2012 Completed: 3rd August, 2014 Completion: Beat the arcade mode a bunch of times (twice on the hardest setting, actually) and played a bunch of the other modes. It’ll do. Trophies / Achievements: 40%
Well, if a wee guy from France can win Evo by playing Rose with a PS1 controller, I’m sure I can stand to play Street Fighter x Tekken with a Vita, even though it’s only got four face buttons and they’re tiny.
No, I can’t.
Will I ever play it again? Nope.
Final Thought: Well, obviously I played it for ages, but it’s horrible. What’s with this gem thing? Gives you bonuses or something for playing in particular ways, or being weak in others? But you’ve got all these menus to navigate to select them, and they’re totally incomprehensible in the moment, like, you have no idea what you’re opponent’s packing and how to deal with it?
Just a total abomination.
However! I will give them a lot of points for making people who suffer through this game some utterly absurd cut-scenes. Abel, obsessed with petting the bear from Tekken, or Zangief and Rufus’ amazing transformation.
Developed/Published by: Capcom Released: March 5th, 2009 Completed: 11th February, 2014 Completion: Completed the main game on normal and then beat the two DLC chapters. Trophies / Achievements: 645/1400
Finishing Fable III and discovering I had apparently purchased the DLC for it led me to dig through my past purchases; found I’d also done this for Resident Evil 5 at some point in the past (probably when they were on sale.) So in a bid to—as with Fable III—get my money’s worth I loaded up the game that I originally finished on the 27th of February 2010 to play through the DLC.
So should this be my thoughts on the game, or the DLC? Because I’d be lying if I said I particularly remembered the game. In fact, here’s what I’d say if you were like “what did you think of Resident Evil 5?” last week before I played through the DLC:
“Ehh. It was fine, I think? I feel like it replaced all the amazing pacing—that ebb and flow—from Resident Evil 4 with a relentless go-go-go that was pretty bloody tiresome. But then considering it was co-op, I guess they were working backwards from the Gears of War series, which took what Resident Evil 4 did and made it brutally Western. And Japanese developers are so desperate to appeal to the West even when… what they were doing already did. Story was definitely nonsense, and the African setting is the kind of thing you could do something really clever with, but your common-or-garden ignorance spoiled that obviously.”
Video games are weird. Here I am, doing my best to finish them, and, you know, within a few years I barely remember them at all. But that’s the case, really, with all media that I consume once. When I die, I’m pretty sure the only things I’ll remember are Father Ted and the good seasons of the Simpsons. A game either has to hit so hard it leaves a crater—your Walking Deads, your Sword and Sworcerys—or be so short or replayable I revisit it over and over, like a movie I love. These triple-A shoot-me-dos? All these things will be lost, like tears… in rain.
What was that from again?
Will I ever play it again? No.
Final Thought: Oh! The DLC! Utterly forgettable 45 minute long blips that showed what was going to happen with Resident Evil Giraffe-Blowy, which split up the game into discrete chapters with their own play styles. So one’s purely a classic RE scare-a-thon and the other’s a non-stop shooty-shooty-shoot. I forgot how nicely tuned (if tank-like) the player’s controls are, though! The end.
