This game casts a spell. A very particular spell. It is hard as they come, punishing, brutal, unforgiving in its challenge. And yet I love it still. It’s not just difficult. It has a perspective on difficulty. It makes its sheer level of horribleness first endearing and then thrilling.
You know Ghosts ‘n Goblins by now. 2D action-platformers with a horror vibe. You know the dark of the series’ scrolling night. The creep and shudder of the monsters rising from its graveyards. You are a knight, powerful but also delicate, the merest hit shedding you of your armour and leaving you scampering around in your underwear. It is a gothic world, devils and skeletons, but it’s also quietly funny: that underwear, but also huge hands descending from the sky to grab you, and there’s something charming and comedic about the fist-pumping, knees-up run of yours, somehow so little of the expressed energy channeled into useful speed.
I love this world. It’s so wretched, but so inventive. Even before you get to the difficulty, just look at it, and listen too: the classic video game graveyard, with the yawning, dancing, Addams Family accompaniment of an organ on the soundtrack. Beyond the graveyard are crystal palaces, or is it ice? Dragon rides through the clouds, swooping and circling and jumping from one beast to the next. A little intestinal travelling, a little peristalsis, as you move through demon guts surrounded by razor teeth instead of waving villi. Around you: vampire bats! Hungry caterpillars! Clown skeletons! All of it delivered with an art style that was controversial at first but turns out to be pretty wonderful, really, everybody you meet a collection of jangling, jolting articulation points, everyone paper thin, all but dangling on strings. The rich dark colours recall folklore prints, or those lacquered Russian boxes containing secrets. The perfect style for a hideous way of life lit only by the moon.
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