Ghosts'n Goblins

Ghosts'n Goblins is the NES conversion of Capcom's brutally difficult arcade action game. Sir Arthur sets out to rescue Princess Prin-Prin from the demon realm, and his armour falls off when he is hit - one more touch and he is a skeleton, then dead.

What makes it notorious is the commitment rule: once Arthur leaves the ground his jump cannot be steered or cancelled. Every jump is a decision made in advance, and the game is full of ledges that punish a wrong one. Stages have fixed enemy patterns - the graveyard's zombies rising from the ground, the forest's crows, the fire bridge - so progress is memorisation rather than reaction. Beating the game once is not the end: completing it a second time on a harder loop is required for the true ending, a trick Capcom had already used in the arcade original. Its music and its two-tier armour system are series fixtures.

• ▸Two-hit armour system - lose the armour, then lose the run
• ▸Committed jumping with no mid-air control
• ▸Fixed enemy patterns that reward memorisation over reaction
• ▸Second, harder loop required for the true ending