First 50:51. Akumajō Dracula (Famicom Disk System)
52. Castlevania (NES)
53. Classic NES Series: Castlevania (Game Boy Advance)
54. Guardian Heroes (Xbox Live Arcade)
55. Metal Slug (Neo Geo MVS)
56. Metal Slug 2 (Neo Geo MVS)
57. Metal Slug 3 (Neo Geo MVS)
58. Soul of Darkness (DSiWare)
59. Code of Princess (3DS)
60. Super Mario Bros. 3 (NES)
61. Super Mario Land (Game Boy)
62. The Legend of Zelda 2: Link no Bōken (Famicom Disk System)
63. Phantasy Star Online: Blue Burst (PC)
64. Shan Gui (Steam)
65. Space Fury (ColecoVision)
66. Smurf: Rescue in Gargamel's Castle (ColecoVision)
67. Gateway to Apshai (ColecoVision)
68. MURI (Steam)
69. Pink Hour (Steam)
70. Pink Heaven (Steam)
71. Planetarian: The Reverie of a Little Planet (Steam)
72. Princess Remedy in a World of Hurt (Steam)
73. Haunted House (Atari 2600)
74. Gremlins (Atari 2600)
75. Alien (Atari 2600)
76. Xenophobe (Xbox - Midway Arcade Treasures 2)
77. Frankenstein's Monster (Atari 2600)
78. Ghost Manor / Spike's Peak (Atari 2600)The last of my spooky Atari games before I move on to 8-bit land with
Castlevania II.
This is one of the strangest carts in my collection. It's double-ended, which is exactly what it sounds like. There are two sets of contact pins. After you play one game, flip the cart to play the other. I'm not sure what's inside, perhaps there are two boards separated by plastic or dead space, or just one really long board.
Anyhow, I suppose I could have counted this as two games as they were both released separately during the same year. But they're so similar they end up feeling like two interconnected mini-games (think
Kirby Super Star) so one entry it is.
So,
Ghost Manor is the main attraction here. I find that whenever I play some random third party Atari game it falls into one of two categories - 1) simplistic as shit or 2) obtuse as hell and requiring instructions.
Ghost Manor most certainly falls into the latter categorization. There's little on-screen direction, and at one point I mistook a Game Over screen for the ending screen! Thankfully, instructions are available online and even Wikipedia provides a thorough description of each of the five stages.
Five stages. That's a bit of a misnomer - more like five "screens" strung together, all of which must be completed within a strict time limit (you have perhaps six minutes total).
The game begins in a graveyard and the protagonist is... a little girl! And she's huge! Yeah, the sprites in the game are nice and chunky. Pretty impressive, actually. Now, you can play as a boy who instead must
save the girl; this change is triggered by switching from color to black & white mode on your 2600. However, should you play on a 7800 you'll notice that this key is lacking and you must be the lil Goldilocks lookalike. She's cooler anyway. The graveyard is inhabited by a rainbow-colored ghost. My first instinct was to avoid it, but nope, you gotta get all up in that ghost's personal space. Touching the ghost gives you ammo for the next level (obviously). And the hits only connect properly if contact is made with the ghost on top of a tombstone.
Level two is a sort of fixed shooter à la
Space Invaders. There are numerous ghouls running around some scaffolding while a giant skeleton patrols the ground level. Only the skeleton can cause damage - with an ax. He needs to be taken out, but he's immune until the ghouls are shot down first. Are you seeing why I needed the instruction booklet?
Next is the mansion, which makes up levels three and four. The ultimate goal here is to ascend to level five. There's a section of the wall that keeps moving and must be avoided - everything that touches you in this game is a one-hit kill. Coffins must be plundered to locate a cross, necessary for the final confrontation with Dracula. It's tricky to find, as it shuffles around to a random location each time the game is reset.
The climax is a battle with the evil vampire himself. It's the low point of the whole game, really. What you have to do is freeze him with a cross and then push him into an empty jail cell. Sounds simple but the controls are really butchered here. This part took me 15 attempts or so and even when I was successful I have no idea what happened. In the world of Atari Logic, tossing Dracula into a cell releases the boy from
his cell and the ending sequence commences. The game contains some really swell music, especially the rendition of "Taps" heard at Game Over. Day is done, indeed.
Aside from the final boss, this is a thoroughly enjoyable game. It's always refreshing to find an Atari game with some semblance of flow and structure, as opposed to just one level looping (though I certainly enjoy those as well). Seems like 1983 is the year these longer and more complex games started becoming more common.
Ghost Manor is no
Haunted House but it's certainly one of the better second gen horror games I've played.
Now... the mountain-climbing platformer
Spike's Peak. Similar format to
Ghost Manor - five unique levels with an ending. Palindromic developer Xonox really half-assed this one though. The first stage is nothing but a glorified title screen, and the final one consists of nothing but walking to the right hoping that there's some time left on the clock. That leaves stages two, three, and four - all of which are absolute disasters in terms of both programming and aesthetics. By sheer luck I was able to complete the game. Where the protagonist commences to collapse in exhaustion. Nice.
In summation, of the two
Ghost Manor is the only one worth sinking any time into. As mentioned, it was sold separately but it's about twice as expensive as the double-ended cart. Just get that instead and say no to flipping it.