THANKS FOR ONLY USING CAPITAL LETTERS IN THE NAME OF THIS GAME, CAPCOM! I ALWAYS ENJOY THAT! Anyway, yes, a new – new! – Ghosts’n Goblins game has appeared on the iPhone today. It’s only £1.79 at the moment, which is within my impulse purchase range for a much-loved series such as this, so I gave it a go.


First thing you notice is that it’s all been rendered in fairly cheap-looking 3D. Arthur’s animation, in particular, is laughable, but not charmless. (There’s another playable character, Lancelot, but selecting him would, of course, be sacrilege.)

The second thing you notice is that it’s all very easy. I doubt anyone will see the Game Over screen before the end of the first level. You might misjudge a jump and lose a life or two, but that’s it. The enemies are no trouble and the boss is a piece of cake, with a blindingly obvious weak spot and attacks that are harder to get hit by than avoid.


The second level is rather more challenging. The enemies are slightly more troublesome, yes, but the real difficulty comes from the jumps. There’s one near the end of the second level (I assume) that I keep failing. Yet, I still kept going back, stretching the definition of lunch time to breaking point. (And you can choose which level to start on, so there’s no need to do the first level again once you’ve completed it.)

I miss the hardcore punishment of the GBA version of the game, but I’m not sure if it’d work with virtual controls, good as these are. It took me a few minutes to adjust to the fairly small d-pad, but after that I didn’t have any issues.

So, any bad news, apart from maybe the difficulty?


Yes, I’m afraid so.

The graphics sometimes make it unclear where you can and can’t jump. It’s not a big issue, but it’s occasionally annoying.

More importantly, the game doesn’t do any auto save. Get a phone call of press the Home button while playing and your current game is lost. The level select feature makes this slightly less of an issue than it might be, but it’s still not good.

The final bit of bad news is the game’s approach to in-app purchases. Take a look at this screenshot.


That’s right, you can buy cheats for 59p each. Infinite lives, infinite magic attacks, things like that. No, you don’t have to use them – and I won’t be – but it all leaves a nasty taste in the mouth.