By Andrew Smith

In every possible undertaking in life, there is always some pinnacle of difficulty: some crucible that tests the human spirit and snakes its insidious tendrils through all the barriers we put up and brings our true characters to light. For my suitemate and his productivity, this gauntlet seems to be having the foresight to block Bubble Spinner from his computer so he can actually do work; for me, it is apparently having to remember to balance all the work I do (and all the "Fallout" I play) with getting out and being a real human being. I have spiked my analysis textbook on the ground more times than I care to count this semester, and I think I’ve been to maybe two parties. However, my slow submersion into the realm of phantoms is not the subject of my column; had I a Xanga, I’m sure I’d just write about closed and open sets and their impact on my social life there. I bring to you today the zenith of videogame difficulty: "Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins."

Released for video arcade cabinets in 1985 by Capcom (a company later known for excruciatingly difficult titles like "Devil May Cry" and some of the "Mega Man" games), "Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins" is a wholly innocuous-sounding game that deceives players with its brightly colored promotional art and title screen, and then sends them spiraling into a world of mind-numbing frustration and a relentless volley of cheap shots. The game may actually have been designed by Satan (or Darkseid, I can’t really decide). The first tipoff I should have heeded was the fact that the game’s Japanese release title was “Demon World Village,” which sounds like a bastardized Ravenholm from "Half-Life 2." I hated Ravenholm. I should have known that this game held nothing but situations in which I would throw my hat down in bleak episodes of despairing anger.

Players control a knight named Arthur, who wears a suit of armor and launches an inexhaustible supply of lances at a similarly infinite horde of demons, zombies, ghosts, vultures and bosses that look like they should have been the shadow guys in "The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening." The game is pretty straightforward, it’s basically a platformer beat-‘em-up that requires a lot of tactical thinking to maneuver around sometimes screen-filling quantities of enemies. However, you should not expect to beat any level of this game, because you can’t. Even when you think you have reached the end of this game, you are entirely mistaken.

Players can only be hit twice before losing a life. Your armor falls off after the first hit, which makes me question the functionality of the armor in the first place. When you lose a life, you are returned to the start of the level, or the midpoint if you made some shady cosmic bargain that granted you probability-manipulating powers. Additionally, each life only lasts for about three minutes, so even if you don’t die because the titular goblins eat you, you die because your character has the half-life of Ununoctium. Are you playing "Marvel vs. Capcom" yet? If not, and you somehow manage to reach the final boss, I both salute and mock you: upon reaching the final boss, that boss transports you back to the beginning of the game. That’s correct. You have to beat this game twice.

I tried playing this game. The graphics were terrible, and all I ended up wishing was that I was doing my math midterm instead. This says nothing of my true character; I suffered through “Dante Must Die!” in "Devil May Cry 3" (the original). I think it simply says that in 1985, people needed different ways to define themselves. We have Facebook, Twitter and some bullshit that purports to combine the two services. In the year of LL Cool J’s debut album, people were divided into two distinct subsets: those that had the bravery and handfuls of quarters to play “Ghosts ‘n’ Goblins,” and those that just wanted to dick around in “Galaga.” Where do I fall? Fill your hand, you son of a bitch.

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