There are some difficult things in life, and then there are things even more difficult than that. Some of the finest examples I can think of are all to do with girls, and love troubles, you know, when your best friend gets the girl you want - and you have to go through the difficult task of accepting that, until it tears you up inside, not knowing which way to turn - difficult is a word that barely touches upon that feeling. Will it get any better? Will the wounds heal over time? Will the girl see sense and give you a chance?

Am I talking from experience? Maybe I am - but I can feel for Arthur, our knight in shining armour, for he has to go through the difficult task of getting his girl back by battling his way through dozens of frustratingly hard levels. I could go onto comparing those frustratingly hard levels to real life scenarios, maybe the first level coming face to face with the guy who got what you've wanted for months, the second level could come with a whole lot of sore rejection… I just hope that the last level will see me getting the girl, just like I wanted Arthur to get his lady friend back at the end of all that valiant battling.

If you're a fan of the series, you'll notice that Ultimate Ghosts 'N Goblins seems to have gotten a lot easier if you remember those classic Megadrive games that lost avid fans a lot of hair. [Indeed, it's the primary cause of childhood baldness. Ed]. In the PSP version of this traditional side scrolling hard-a-thon, you get a lot of advantages over the Arthur you might recall. Firstly, you can select your difficulty level - Novice, Standard or Ultimate - and unfortunately these difficulty levels cause a slight trait of imbalance. Novice mode makes things a hell of a lot easier when you've just come from playing Standard, which is so very hard. I'm not even going to go into Ultimate mode, but my complaint doesn't lie in the difficulty of the modes; it actually lies in the other things that throw the difficulty levels off balance even more, and you'll see what I mean in a minute.

I'll just go ahead and say it - you get loads of lives, so when you die, you respawn in the exact same place that you died, with full health and a full power bar. A power bar? Yes, now Arthur gets magic that works in a similar way to Golden Axe; if your bar is full then you can use a more devastating power than if your bar is half full. While the addition of magic is one that made me a happy player, it seems as if you can use it just a little too often, crossing over the difficult line to the not-so-difficult area at the other side - and there are dozens of spells with different strengths to use too. Arthur can also now double jump, grab hold of ledges, and reach places that he could never reach before! As well as all that, you can continue from the start of the level should you use all your lives, and you can even warp to places in the middle of each level, should you find the checkpoint in the form of a warpstaff.

It's all of the above that makes each difficulty setting that little bit easier, and as a result the novice is laughably easy, although standard still seems pretty hard, and that's because the difficulty levels seem imbalanced. Why? It seems that novice is already easy without the additions that make this game easier and standard is very hard to begin with, but the features do actually bring that level down to, you know, not just as hard, but still damn hard all the same! Luckily for the people who want this game for a greater challenge, the ultimate mode serves its purpose, but maybe the hardcore folk won't like the additions that make the game easier - and far more enjoyable.

The above complaints aren't on my behalf - they belong to my alter ego, my twisted side, the guy who seems to have gotten used to a certain degree of difficulty in his life. He decided it would be a good idea to bring those issues up. But easygoing Dexter is here now, and for those who prefer fun instead of complications I have great news - Ultimate Ghosts 'N Goblins is a classic. The intensity of the original remains intact and you'll realise this from the very first level - ghouls, monsters, skeletons, ghostly hands, slimy blobs of doom, all these different enemies spawning on one screen, coming for you en masse, and you're there in the middle, expected to survive.

Fortunately for you, there are loads and loads of weapons to lay your hands on, and a good majority of these are ranged too, so you can pick off whatever may be haunting you from a distance. Arthur can equip anything, from super charged crossbows to throwing swords, homing axes to ancient bombs and Molotov potions to Indiana Jones' whip! Some weapons are better than others, although I'd rather take the homing axes over the throwing swords for example, but sometimes you have no choice! You see, if you have a weapon you're happy with, one that you're using to kick ghoulish behind, but then you accidentally walk over a worse weapon, you automatically lose the one you were having so much fun with, which is replaced with the sub-par weapon that barely harms a fly. [But an evil, zombified fly, right? Ed]. Ghost 'N Goblins has always been this way though, and it adds to the challenge, ensuring that if you have to start the level again you can have a new experience by doing things differently. On top of weapons, Arthur can equip new magic spells that my alter ego mentioned earlier, and he can also select items from his new inventory (the first Ghosts 'N Goblins game had an inventory too, I might add) such as a shield, which you can block attacks with until it breaks.

So you're there, moving Arthur through the side scrolling stages of Ghosts 'N Goblins, fighting tooth and nail with your whip, casting fire magic, and crouching down to block the odd attack from this giant snake mini-boss you've found, and you're having a very good time. But you've just been hit, so you've lost a layer of armour. You only have two hits remaining and the snake hits you again. Off comes the armour, leaving Arthur wearing only his boxer shorts. Oops! One more hit and you're dead, but you've run out of magic (and you can't use your magic even if you wanted to without your armour on) - and here comes the snake to hit you again. And you're dead.

Noooo! Oh - wait. No. No I'm not! Ha ha!

RESPAWN! One of your many lives in the bottom corner of the screen comes up in energy form and animates your pile of bones. On comes full armour, you get to keep the weapon you had before you died and you have your magic back. It's time to turn the tables, snake; your slithering days are numbered! So you make your way through the levels, under the time limit, having fun on the novice mode, or undergoing stress on the standard mode, or traffic-controller/NASA shuttle launch level stress in ultimate modes. And the best thing is, you can play these levels again and again for a better score each time. Plus - you won't get bored!

Retro games equal retro graphics, and while good for their time day, flash forward to the present and you have a pixelated mess that's not always nice to look at. Fortunately, Ultimate Ghosts 'N Goblins doesn't look like you remember back in the 16-bit era - instead you have what could be described as Viewtiful Joe. It's not quite as cel-shaded, it's not quite as quirky, but the side scrolling goodness looks ever so nice, thanks to the updated sprites that grace Arthur and his enemies and the new visuals for things like spells, in addition to the animated backgrounds, the monsters with real personality and the way everything moves differently - it basically looks as good as you remember it looked back in the day, when the graphics were cutting edge! It's like they let you play the game wearing a real pair of rose-tinted spectacles (and no, rose-tinted spectacles are not included!) Musically the game doesn't break any ground; the eerie loops don't annoy but they don't really make an impression either, although some of the classic sound effects are in there to give long time fans a nice nostalgia rush.

This really should be the retro release to please everyone - Capcom have taken a classic original, slightly enhanced the concept with modern features like the double jumping and magic, yet retained the core gameplay and style that made the original such a hit. They've revamped the visuals to bring them up to date, yet still retained the authentic feel of the original, keeping the music and sound similar for full-on flashback effect. But most importantly, they've introduced varying difficulty modes to make this retro remake of a notoriously hard original both accessible to newcomers and casual gamers, yet just as faithfully near to impossible for hardcore, long time fans, while the enhanced gameplay and visuals do the same thing, making it a fine tribute to the original but spicing up the gameplay and presentation just that little bit to up the variety and appeal for today's gamers. It really is a win-win situation.

So, does Arthur get his girl back in the end? I guess you'll have to play to find out, but the bets are pretty safe on this one - provided you get our knight though all the tricky levels in one piece, which shouldn't be too hard, considering you have things like magic spells, an inventory stashed full of items, lives, respawns, continues and a save after each level, plus your own choice of modes. The only question that remains then is not whether the game is worth a purchase - because it is - and it's not whether the game is good enough to play over and over again - because it is - hell, it's not even if Ultimate Ghosts 'N Goblins is the ultimate retro conversion available on PSP so far - because it is. The only question that remains is one about difficulty, back where we started. The question is this - is there a novice mode in real life? Because I could do with an easier way to get my princess back!

Reviewed by Dexter Pearson for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).