Pong and Beyond

491st played so far

Genre: Action
Platform: Arcade
Year of Release: 1985
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom

Ah, Capcom platformers. Somehow, they were one of the masters in the genre, where a lengthy series like Ghosts ‘n Goblins – we’ll be playing at least two more games from the series and played Maximo: Ghosts to Glory before – feels small compared to its bigger titles, with Mega Man having made a bigger impact in my mind. There’s clearly something to it, however, as so many games in the series ended up on the list.

This is the first in the series. All I know is that I’m expecting some undead monsters next.

Our Thoughts

All in all, this is a pretty decent platformer. It has arcade difficulty, with a scarcity of checkpoints, but giving enough opportunities to learn that you get a bit further each time.

Possibly the most difficult part is the number of enemies, which at times felt overwhelming. Static enemies are easy enough to kill, but zombies spawn in front and behind you and can get difficult to keep up with. You need to keep moving, but when an enemy is in your way, that makes it difficult.

It was difficult, then – looking at videos, I thought I found the first boss impossible to defeat, but that was just a small subboss others take out in a few seconds.  Fairly depressing – but at least I had a chance to look at what happened further.

Final Thoughts

There’s a lot going on in this game, and it’s fun too play, if not a bit difficult at the moment. I’ll be more looking forward to the sequels – and yes, hoping some of the other adaptations help a bit with, for example, some more checkpoints in the game.