Back with another GnG TAS!
Ghosts 'n Goblins was ported to the ZX Spectrum in 1986 by Elite and coded by Keith Burkhill and Nigel Alderton. This game has three stages in it, the first two from the original game and one condensed final level. The story is the same as the first game: Princess Prin-Prin is hanging out with Naked Arthur in a graveyard, when she is stolen by a... Blue Arremer??? Arthur gives chase, but not before putting on clothes like the decent human being he is.
Suggested thumbnail: Frame 24689, jumping over a beefy boy, while another waits further down the hallway
Tags: Takes damage to save time, Platform
Controls
Arthur controls similarly as he does in the original arcade game. Left, right, crouch, shoot weapon, jump and up to climb ladders. Jumping doesn't allow you to change direction in the air, as expected. There are multiple weapons to use in the game but I stick with the default weapon, the lance, as it has a big hitbox, fast speed and good damage. There is only one jump in this game, so don't expect any SGnG style shenanigans. Firing a weapon on the ground brings Arthur to a halt, but jumping and firing means Arthur maintains his speed, so I always jump when I need to fire a weapon.
It is worth noting that when Arthur gets hits, he flies straight up in the air instead of an arc in whatever direction he is hit. There is also no way to regain armour after being hit, so damage boost opportunities are few and far between.
Loading
This game is on the ZX Spectrum, and so requires a lot of loading. The gameplays starts five minutes and sixteen seconds into the encode for reference.
Stage 1
Stage 1 is the graveyard stage from the original game, and features a lot of enemies. The gravestone at the start is right in the way for some reason, and it is fastest to jump straight in the air to get on top of it. The plants in this stage were especially annoying to dodge around, since they shoot projectiles directly at your position. It is barely possible to weave between them though. The hitboxes in this game are quite inconsistent. Sometimes they exist, and sometimes not. So nothing special is happening when I run through a bird, I just kinda do. Zombies' hotboxes only affect me when they are about 3/4 out of the ground, so the rest of the time it's fine to walk through them.
Then, another Blue Arremer! As in other games in the series, they can be a nuisance unless they are taken out immediately. Unfortunately, a bird spawns which means I need to shoot it, which requires Arthur standing still for a few frames. I was unable to find a way around it :(
The moving platform is quite jank in this game. When holding right on the platform as it moves to the left, Arthur will simply stand still instead of moving. Also, the jump on the platform shows I cannot jump off any sooner, as Arthur moves the same speed as the platform.
The forest area is rather uninteresting except instead of a Unicorn to defeat, it's one of the big dudes from Stage 2. He's a real pushover. Once the boss is defeated in any stage, the key falls down to be collected, but weirdly, it follows Arthur as he walks, so you want to walk as far to the right as you can and jump to get the key at the peak of your jump if you are up against the invisible barrier at the end of the stage.
Stage 2
Those little imp things follow you around this stage a lot, but they aren't difficult to manage. Getting to the top of the stage is the name of the game here, so we can jump down later. Unlike the NES version, Arthur maintains his speed while falling large distances.
Next, the tower with beefy men in it. I damage boost up of off one of them to save time over climbing the ladder and invincibility frame though the next beefy boy. Firing a weapon at them may make them freeze instead. Jumping away from boys instead of walking means they will slowly walk towards instead of charging you. This is why I jump the wrong way at the bottom of the ladder, so I can live long enough to jump over the beefy boy. This is also why I jump over the ladder; so the beefy boy doesn't chase me.
The boss is now two beefy boys instead of one. No problem though
Final Stage
Had a lot of fun manipulating the flying enemies. Not sure how I walked through an enemy there, but hey, I'm not complaining. In the hall of hot beefy men, I need to kill one of them but jumping and shooting would not help and would kill me. After one is dead, I can jump in between the remaining two. Finally, we come across two... Blue Arremers????????? They could have coloured the stage red to solve this but whatever. Anyway, I damage-boost up to the top platform to shoot the Arremers. After killing one, I position myself and jump towards Prin-Prin while shooting at the last Arrmer. Input ends the last time I shoot a lance. The game ends when you run into Prin-Prin after killing the Arremer, so by jumping towards her I don't need to have extra inputs past the last lance input. The game then loops, but for our purposes it is over!!
Improvements?
Maybe if you can dodge the bird in Stage 1 more efficiently
Anything else?
nah. hope this is good enough to be published, and thanks for checking this TAS out and reading this far!
