Ghouls 'N Ghosts

It was late 1989 when the arcade machine showed up at the office, and I remember the collective shock when we first saw it running. This was an 8-way scrolling game running on the latest high-end arcade hardware. Capcom had really pushed the limits with this one.

Learning by Playing

As usual, there was no specification. No documentation, no technical details, nothing. The team's approach was to play the game extensively, taking hundreds of 35mm screenshots and documenting everything we could see and experience. This was standard practice for arcade conversions at the time, but it meant truly mastering the game to understand all its mechanics.

This was by far the most difficult game we'd had to convert. It was punishingly hard. Some members of the team eventually mastered it to the point where they could play through on a single life. I managed to get through it on one coin, which felt like an achievement at the time.

Technical Breakthrough

The most significant challenge was implementing 8-way scrolling for the first time. I'm not entirely sure why I hadn't managed this on previous projects. I think it came down to learning more about the Amiga and Atari ST hardware with each project, which allowed me to optimize better and push the boundaries of what was possible.

Intensity of the Schedule

By this point, we were churning through projects at a relentless pace. One every six months. It was intense work, but each project taught me something new about squeezing performance out of home computer hardware that was never designed for arcade-quality games.