Sentences written about this title, gathered by type from the Japanese and English Wikipedia articles (as of 2026-8-30).
It took 10th place in the 3rd Gamest Grand Prix (1989).
On 2019-9-19 it was included as one of the 42 titles pre-installed on the Mega Drive Mini, a reissue console released by Sega Games itself.
On 2020-3-19 it is to be included as one of the 58 titles pre-installed on the PC Engine mini, a reissue console from Konami Digital Entertainment (the case copies the original PC Engine, but this game and Ordyne were chosen from the SuperGrafx software).
In the 3rd Gamest Grand Prix (1989) run by the game magazine Gamest, it took 10th place in the readers' vote for the Grand Prix.
It also took 45th place in the Gamest Mook The Best Game, based on a popularity vote among Gamest readers in 1991 covering every arcade game running up to then.
It scored a total of 31 out of 40 in the "Cross Review" in the magazine Famicom Tsushin, entering the Silver Hall of Fame, and 21.99 out of 30 in the "Game Report Card" reader poll in the magazine Mega Drive FAN, as set out below.
It scored 7, 7, 8 and 8 for a total of 32 out of 40 in the "Cross Review" in the magazine Famicom Tsushin, entering the Gold Hall of Fame; an average of 90 in Gekkan PC Engine from 90, 90, 90, 90 and 90; a total of 33 out of 40 in Marukatsu PC Engine from 9, 8, 9 and 7; and 23.11 out of 30 in the "Game Report Card" reader poll in PC Engine FAN, as set out below.
This score placed it 80th among all PC Engine software (of 485 titles, as of 1993).
Retrospectively, Game Rankings gave the Sega Genesis version an aggregate rating of 80% based on four reviews published online in the 2000s, including three reviews for the Wii Virtual Console release.
Using the programming techniques Capcom supplied for this port, they went on to make Sonic the Hedgehog, which became their best-known work, and they say: "we owe Capcom more than we can repay".
MegaTech magazine reviewed the Sega Mega Drive version, calling it "a truly superb game" and "a stunning conversion" of the "classic coin-op, combining stunning graphics and sound with very challenging gameplay."
In 2017, Gamesradar listed the game 44th on its "Best Sega Genesis/Mega Drive games of all time."
The Mega Drive version has the same CPU as the arcade game and is close to a straight conversion, but for that very reason, with differences in addresses and so on, the small bugs were not carried over correctly.
Ghouls 'n Ghosts had a fault that made the screen dark, and Capcom exchanged copies for a corrected version.
It was first due for release on a 4-megabit ROM, but the data would not fit however hard they tried, and Naka begged the company to add another 1 megabits.
A version for the Capcom Power System Changer was planned and previewed but never released.
It was also critically acclaimed, with the Sega Genesis version winning four awards from Electronic Gaming Monthly in 1989, including Best Game of the Year.
A version for the Capcom Power System Changer was planned and previewed but never released.
The sentences quoted on this page were taken from the Japanese and English Wikipedia articles exactly as they stand. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) — usable under those terms. They are the work of the people who wrote them.