I bought one of these just before Christmas primarily because I'm a big fan of Ghosts'n'Goblins and I was curious to see how accurate the emulation was. Here are my thoughts.
Physical AppearanceFirst impressions are that that it looks cool but is badly made. Unfortunately, This seems to be typical of the Jakks units. The joystick is 8-way, with a soft action, and a short throw. It feels flimsy but works surprisingly well. Annoyingly, the buttons are on the left hand side of the joystick. Grrr. Why do Jakks always make this mistake? Almost every important arcade game was laid out with the buttons to the right of the joystick and that is what I'm used to. I can only assume that one of the Jakks designers must be left-handed. However I'm left-handed and I still prefer the buttons to be on the right. Of course the best approach would have been to put buttons on the left and the right as Radica did with their excellent Space Invaders game but I suppose that might have added to the unit's cost.
That being said, once I'd got used to the buttons being in the wrong place, I found the unit comfortable to use.
The unit has a slot for fitting what Jakks describe as Gamekeys. These are basically cartridges that enable extra games to be played. This is a bad move in my opinion. One of the charms of the Jakks games is their plug and play simplicity. Adding a cartridge slot just complicates matters and probably makes the base units more expensive to manufacture. I'd rather they just charged slightly more for the base unit and included more games from outset. Also, if Jakks expect me to invest in a significant library of Gamekeys then I expect the base units to be better made.
SoftwareThe unit comes with three games built in - Ghosts'n'Goblins, 1942, and Commando.
The first thing I should say is that I'm a bit disappointed that Jakks have only included three games. But in their defence these games are more sophisticated than the ones built in to their earlier units. Also, each of the games has a genuine following so none of them can be considered fillers.
I'm pleased to say that Ghosts'n'Goblins is graphically very close indeed to its arcade counterpart. Only an extreme purist is likely to be disappointed. However, the sound is a bit disappointing.
I have no complaints about the gameplay either. Jakks have, in my opinion, perfectly captured the feel of the arcade game. I'm guessing that the programmers must have had access to the original source code. It's that close.
With regards to the other two games, I don't have much experience of playing 1942 and Commando in the arcades or on MAME for that matter, so it's difficult for me to comment on how accurate the conversions are. However, for what it's worth, my impression is that they both seem to be decent enough copies of two well-liked arcade games. One thing worth mentioning is that in the arcades they were both vertical games, but the Jakks programmers haven't modified them to fit better on a horizontal TV, so you end up with large black unused spaces to the left and right of the main picture. I'm in two minds about whether this is a good thing or not. On the one hand it means the games are more faithful to their arcade counterparts, but on the other hand it also means that a lot of the screen area is wasted.
Each of the three games has the following features:
- Several difficulty levels.
- The option to continue when you've lost all your lives.
- Single player, or alternating two player games.
- The ability to enter your initials when you get a high score. These are then saved in flash memory. Cool!
ConclusionOn balance this is my favourite of the Jakks units I've tried so far. The Pacman unit (my previous favourite) looks cooler but the Capcom unit is more comfortable to play and the included games have more depth and longevity. It's just a pity they didn't include more games and put the buttons in the correct position.