Capcom

Capcom is arguably one of the most recognizable video game studios currently operating nowadays. Aside from delivering quality standalone titles, recognizable properties like Resident Evil and Street Fighter have undergone a dramatic facelift in recent years, selling like hotcakes after a particularly tumultuous existence throughout the 2010s. Some of Capcom’s older franchises have even been given a chance to live on once again, with multiple re-releases of various Mega Man games and the Ace Attorney franchise filling in the gaps between their more expensive efforts.

Chances are, whenever you think of Capcom, there’s a very distinct image that comes to mind. It’ll be a little different for everyone. Some may associate them with their prolific fighting games or their various dabbles in the survival horror genre. Older Capcom fans, however, may tie them to their brutally difficult platforming games. Take your pick, as Capcom has plenty of options. DuckTales, Bionic Commando, Aladdin, and of course, the prolific Mega Man games have all seen their fair share of resurgent popularity.

Of course, there’s one title we purposefully omitted. Ghosts ‘n Goblins has built up a specific reputation ever since it hit the scene in 1985, one that transcends its actual popularity with contemporary audiences: it’s hard. It’s incredibly hard, actually.

Set in a medieval fantasy setting, Ghosts ‘n Goblins sees a cartoony knight named Arthur fighting demons, zombies, and all other kinds of nastiness in order to save the princess Prin-Prin from the clutches of the Demon Lord Astaroth. Arthur jumps around, throws medieval weaponry, and he dies a lot. The game’s punishing, albeit fair, difficulty garnered a significant amount of infamy during its original arcade release, only becoming more prominent during its home console release in 1986. Combined with a hilariously broken English translation, as well as an infamous ending that compels you to play through the game a second time in succession, Ghosts ‘n Goblins cemented itself as a compelling encapsulation of an arcade experience for home consoles. The only limit to your ability to progress is your own skill instead of how many quarters are in your pocket.

This is important to know because the design philosophy that went into Ghosts ‘n Goblins also went into the Maximo games. Maximo, along with Gargoyle’s Quest, are billed as spinoffs of the legendary Capcom series, with the former focusing on a separate cast of characters and the latter fixating itself on Ghosts ‘n Goblins‘ most infamous monster, Firebrand. But while Gargoyle’s Quest would take a slower, more methodical approach to running and jumping on a 2D plane, Maximo would instead try to transplant the Ghosts ‘n Goblins experience into the burgeoning world of 3D platformers.

It All Started With Maximo: Ghosts to Glory

Maximo Ghosts to Glory Title Screen
Capcom

But before Maximo vs. Army of Zin was released in 2004, Maximo: Ghosts to Glory would originally hit store shelves in 2002. To say that it was purposefully old-school would be an understatement. Sharing more in common with its arcade roots than other PS2 platformers at the time, the original Maximo staked its claim on extreme difficulty with some unique systems that would be rarely seen elsewhere in the genre.

To be blunt, the story of Maximo isn’t a major focus. We follow Maximo, a brave warrior king who returns home to find things in a state of disarray. His former advisor, Achille, turned out to be evil. The greenery of Maximo’s land is now rotted into nothing, and roaming bands of the undead roam the streets. The ruling council, comprised of four princesses, has also been captured by Achille and locked away in each corner of the kingdom. Worse yet, Maximo’s love interest, Sophia, is set to be married to Achille in his absence. Maximo must rescue the council, destroy Achille’s rein, and reclaim his throne. There’s just one wrench that gets thrown into the works.

Maximo dies. Not even five minutes after having this information revealed to him, Maximo is struck by Achille’s magic and dies on the spot. As his soul descends into what can only be described as purgatory, a cartoony depiction of Death itself named “Grim” approaches him. Grim apparently has a bone to pick with Achille as well since Achille’s army of the dead is drawing souls away from Grim’s domain. Thus, a deal is struck: Maximo may return to the world of the living as long as he puts all his resources into stopping Achille.

But this doesn’t mean Maximo is immortal. Something you’ll come to realize very quickly about Maximo: Ghosts to Glory is that when it’s old school, it is very old-school.

Both Maximo games are 3D platformers. Things are mostly self-explanatory. You’re tasked with getting from point A to point B via running and jumping across a variety of hazards, collecting a variety of items to aid you on your journey, and fighting whatever decides to get in your way. It’s fairly standard stuff for the time, but Ghosts to Glory‘s emphasis on challenging the player is a noticeable deviation from its contemporaries.

RELATED: Top 10 Spookiest Horror Games on the Sega Genesis

Dying is a dangerous game in Ghosts to Glory, as each time you lose all your lives, you’re forced to pay Grim a Death Coin in order to come back to life. This normally wouldn’t be noteworthy, but one small detail fundamentally changes Ghosts to Glory into something unique: every time you need to be revived, the amount of coins needed to come back goes up. In fact, just about everything you do has some kind of cost. Something as simple as saving the game has a price tag: 100 gold pieces, to be exact. Bear in mind that after you beat a boss, you’ll have to complete an entire new level before you’re given an opportunity to save — if you want a special unlockable, that is. Even something as essential as blocking an attack takes some durability off your shield, with a very real possibility of losing the shield outright if you abuse such a privilege.

But it’s this combination of punishment and limitation that makes Ghosts to Glory feel like a purposeful twist on the popularity of “collecting things” in platformers at the time. Hear this out: in games like Donkey Kong 64, where you’re primarily tasked with collecting a variety of objects for progression, why are you collecting things? Really, why are you grabbing hundreds of different colored bananas with multiple separate characters amid various other objects? For progression, right? You’re going out of your way to get these things just to open the door to collect more of them. Their value is tied towards simply moving forward, with the stakes involved being that you’ll just have to try again if don’t nab them the first time.

In Ghosts to Glory, your gold, the souls you collect to form Death Coins, your power-ups that vanish upon dying, and even temporary upgrades for your sword are all given an additional level of importance when you factor in what they’re being used for. Your gold is essentially your lifeline. Your ability to make progress and comfortably stop is directly tied to your ability to save. You’re encouraged to die as little as humanly possible in order to keep the cost of Grim’s revival manageable.



Suddenly, going out of your way to grab some additional coins, hunting for secret treasures, or even just smashing objects in the environment doesn’t seem like busy work. It’s directly connected to how efficiently you’ll be able to deal with the rest of the game’s challenges and whether or not all the progress you’ve made is all for naught. Combine that with the natural improvement that comes with understanding a level’s ins and outs, and you have what is essentially an arcade experience transported into a colorful PlayStation 2 platformer. In theory, you could ignore practically every little thing you could pick up. But, to do so while successfully completing the game’s various challenges requires a significant degree of skill and mastery accrued through playing it.

Admittedly, it’s a little rough to get into if you’re not experienced with the genre. While modern platformers focus more on complex challenges with plenty of chances to try again, Ghosts to Glory leans in the other direction. Its platforming and combat challenges aren’t the most ludicrously complex, but they’re difficult enough to make the long stretches between your saves all the more tense. Combine that with some limitations for the time — like not being able to manipulate the camera, which remains firmly affixed to Maximo’s back — and you have a game that, while reviewing well for the time, has fallen under the radar in the decades since. It certainly doesn’t help that 2002 was absolutely stacked with classic releases. In the months before and after Ghosts to Glory came out, we got Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Ratchet & Clank, and even Kingdom Hearts. In terms of maintaining popularity, things were pretty rough.

But because Ghosts to Glory sold surprisingly well initially, enough to get both a Greatest Hits re-release and a port to the PlayStation 3, we got a sequel in Maximo vs. Army of Zin. Along with a new threat for Maximo to fight, Army of Zin brought with it a series of notable changes.

And Continued in Maximo vs. Army of Zin

Maximo vs. Army of Zin
Capcom

Army of Zin picks up sometime after the events of Ghosts to Glory. Maximo, still searching for Sophia after his tangle with Achille, finds himself in the middle of an invasion of mechanical robots. These automatons — the titular Army of Zin — are revealed to have been sealed away in Castle Hawkmoor centuries prior, only to have been released by an unknown entity. Cloaked in shadow, our new antagonist this time around is Lord Bane, who aims to conquer the kingdom with the Army of Zin. Grim reappears to Maximo once again as he makes a terrifying discovery, realizing that the Army of Zin is powered by stolen and condensed souls. Maximo and Grim, upon hearing the sounds of a village under siege, set off to put a stop to Lord Bane.

Ghosts to Glory was already fairly nice to look at, and Army of Zin only introduced more visual flair in its step. The franchise’s exaggerated character designs and hand-drawn environments all feature a pleasing mish-mash of both American and Japanese influences, mostly due to the involvement of artist Susumu Matsushita. Influences from Western animation, primarily Disney, can be found in how each of the game’s characters express themselves with their exaggerated proportions. While this was true in Ghosts to Glory as well, it’s intensified through Army of Zin’s technical improvements. The game’s cutscenes, now rendered with both full-motion video and in-engine animations, are now animated with the English translation in mind, feeling more smoothly paced when compared to the rushed delivery of the first game’s story beats. Characters move and act with a bit less mania this time around, which is welcome.

Something you’ll also notice about Army of Zin right off the bat is its linearity. Ghosts to Glory introduced a system of progression where the player had some degree of freedom. After completing a level that leads to a new hub area, you’d have the choice of three separate levels to complete in any order before taking on a boss. This hub area would have its own enemies, items, and secrets to discover as well, meaning if you’re not careful, you could very likely die on the way to the “real” challenge. Of course, any time you complete a level and successfully return to the hub, you’re able to return to them to grab more collectibles. The same is true for Army of Zin. Though you’re now restricted to a linear progression of levels dotted across a large map, you’re still able to jump back around to levels you already completed as you please.

RELATED: ‘Parasite Eve’ Revisited: Square Enix’s Unconventional Horror RPG

The incorporation of items and upgrades has also seen a drastic facelift. Maximo will no longer lose his precious abilities upon dying, nor are individual power-ups stashed in fixed locations throughout each level. Instead, a pair of merchants can offer Maximo a variety of helpful items that stick around in perpetuity: the Peddler, who offers health items, additional armor, various types of clothing and shields with different positive effects, and hint scrolls; and the Old Guard, who sells weapon upgrades, Death Coins, and expansions to your various meters. Normal civilians also make an appearance, and in exchange for saving their lives, they’ll often give you free items or hints pointing toward secrets.

That’s right, Death Coins are back, albeit in a limited fashion. Instead of utilizing Death Coins as continues, they now act as your lives. Gone is the ability to start over if you game over, as once you run out of Death Coins, you’re kicked back to the main menu. In exchange, Army of Zin allows you to freely save anytime you’re on the map screen, with up to six save slots available to use.

Already, we’re pretty far removed from the deliberate design decisions that were incorporated into Ghosts to Glory. But, the biggest change introduced in Army of Zin has to be a change in focus. That focus is combat.

Fighting things was always integral to Ghosts ‘n Goblins as a whole. Careful movement, positioning, and timing often dictated the difference between dying and surviving. It did play a part in Ghosts to Glory, for the most part, though you were rarely ever forced into direct conflict. Enemies, like the various platforming challenges, acted more as obstacles, only with a reward for directly removing them from play. You’re rarely ever forced to interact with enemies, with only a handful of examples coming up towards the very end of Ghosts to Glory.




Not so in Army of Zin. Maximo must’ve remembered he was a warrior, as not only does his full set of moves return from Ghosts to Glory, but with some new additions as well. For starters, your shield — a luxury in Ghosts to Glory that could break with repeated use — now lasts forever. Maximo’s sword is more forgiving to use, only ever connecting with enemies instead of potentially bouncing off of items in the environment. The sword becomes supported with a giant maul fairly early on, trading attack speed for sheer power and several attacks that inflict a stunned state on enemies. Two additional weapons, magical variations on both the sword and hammer, can also be found in the game’s later levels. Even Maximo’s special attacks, like a particularly effective spin move and lunging stab, are now tied to your super meter” instead of being a power-up that has to be found. As long as your super meter is partially full, you can pull off these attacks or even throw your shield as an impromptu boomerang projectile. Grim is even incorporated in Maximo’s, granting him invulnerability and a powerful scythe as long as he has his Grim Meter filled.

You’re going to need these abilities, as you’ll be fighting tons more enemies. By no means is this an exaggeration. Army of Zin makes fighting such a focus it may take those who originally played Ghosts to Glory aback. Some areas require all enemies to be eliminated before progressing. Some levels are nothing more than elaborate arenas full of enemies to defeat. A single encounter may even feature more enemies than an entire level’s worth of them in Ghosts of Glory. Combine this with the introduction of a combo system, where consecutive hits subsequently reward you with additional gold, and the result is a far cry from how enemies were utilized in Ghosts to Glory.

Exploding metal beetles, burrowing insects, mechanical birds, and hulking robotic soldiers make up Army of Zin‘s bestiary this time around, trading the generic fantasy implants of Ghosts to Glory for something slightly less generic. That’s not to say that they’re somehow bad, however. Their connection to the game’s soul mechanic, and by extension the plot once a certain twist is revealed, is appropriate, and they have enough interesting behaviors to avoid becoming simple fodder. The insects, for instance, are a unique addition not only for their multiple attacks and invulnerability states but for their inability to provide souls.

Army of Zin, when considering all these alterations and additions, could be considered a “diet” version of Ghosts to Glory. Its straightforwardness, reduction of punishing elements, focus on combat, and more forgiving nature allows for an experience similar to its predecessor but in a way that makes it less daunting for the player to overcome. Whether this is a bad thing or not is inherently subjective. Personally, I was able to complete most of Ghosts to Glory, but by the time I had gotten to the fourth world — appropriately set in Hell — I was feeling worn out. Conversely, I was able to finish Army of Zin in a fraction of the time it took to get to where I was in Ghosts to Glory, and I was having a blast throughout its modest length of just a few hours. They’re both fine games. They just take different approaches in implementing what made Ghosts ‘n Goblins so compelling into a 3D space. In the case of Army of Zin, it took more direct inspiration from its surrounding contemporaries instead of what came before it.

RELATED: ‘Quake II’ Game Review: A Quintessential Remaster

What ultimately became of Maximo‘s developer once everything was all said and done? We mentioned that it was developed by Capcom, but we can be a bit more specific. It was Capcom Production Studio 8 that handled both Maximo games, being one of Capcom’s few production studios housed in the United States. With each studio focusing on a select number of games, Studio 8 had focused almost exclusively on Maximo leading up to 2006. They would make one final game prior to the studio’s closure, barely a full month after it released: Final Fight: Streetwise. A particularly infamous title for Capcom during the mid-2000s, we won’t necessarily cover what went wrong with Final Fight: Streetwise here, but the usual suspect of shifting creative visions ultimately resulted in a product that failed to achieve both commercial and critical success. A third Maximo game revealed through leaked conceptual art, would ultimately be canceled.

Still, both Maximo games are a blast. If you’re up for the challenge, what you’ll find underneath their colorful presentation is a pair of games tailored for those who grew up with the arcades. Those who yearn for a difficult adventure game while being unsatisfied with modern offerings may find themselves enjoying what this duology has to offer. They’re a notable footnote in Capcom’s gaming library, a pair of games aimed towards Western audiences prior to the company’s complete pivot towards this ideology in the 2010s. While the dream of a third Maximo game still seems unattainable, stranger things have certainly happened in the past few years.

Maximo: Ghosts to Glory and Maximo vs. Army of Zin are digitally available on the PlayStation 3, in addition to their physical copies for the PlayStation 2 being available on the grey market. Thankfully, due to their reprints under the Greatest Hits label, they may be available for a cheaper price when compared to other classic PlayStation 2 games.

We’re hardworking geeks who love to geek out, but we can’t do it without you! If you enjoyed this article and want to see more like it, please consider tipping our writers. Also, as an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.