Few developers have gotten hit as hard by the never-ending console war as Rare. The moment Microsoft acquired Rare spelled doom for the reception of all their future games. It's impossible to undersell how much Rare carried Nintendo during the N64 era. If not by pure quality, then definitely by quantity. Nintendo themselves were slow to put out titles for a console with middling 3rd party support so Rare's unexplainable ability to pump 2 to 3 games out per year was nothing short of vital for Nintendo to not be completely overshadowed by the new kid on the block, Sony. Rare's games meant a lot to Nintendo fans so the moment they jumped ship was seen as nothing short of betrayal and has led to a seemingly never-ending belief amongst the gaming public that Rare "lost their way" once they left the big N.

As someone who didn't touch a Rare game till 2008 with the original Banjo-Kazooie I just wanna throw my hat in the ring and call bullshit on this take. Not all of Rare's games were gold on the N64 and not all their games after the buyout were lackluster. If anything, I think Rare has been an inconsistent developer ever since they entered the scene. Without the nostalgia goggles, it's hard to really vibe with a lot of Rare's output. For every Donkey Kong Country 2, there were 3 Jet Force Gemini.

So with all that buildup hopefully you won't come slash my tires when I tell you that Grabbed by the Ghoulies is one of Rare's best.

Ghoulies is a game no one was seemingly asking for. Rare infamously started development on a game named "Grabbed by the Ghoulies" because 'goolies' in British slang means testicles and Rare were big fans of raunchy humor. Safe to say that Ghoulies didn't have a strong vision behind it, at least not initially. When you first pick up Ghoulies it'll feel like a stew of incompatible ideas. It's a room-by-room beat em up where you throw out attacks with the right thumbstick and primarily pick up anything not stapled to the wall to cave the nearest funny gremlin's face in. There's QTEs, a health system that changes your max HP every time you change rooms, and a wide assortment of Challenges you must complete to progress. It's all admittedly a rather slow and confusing start but give it half an hour and Ghoulies reveals it's hand: An air guitaring Grim Reaper.

See, every room in Ghoulies throws at least one Challenge at the player. These can be as self explanatory as "Cooper(player character) must defeat all enemies" or "Cooper must find the key" and as deviously specific as "Cooper must not defeat the same type of enemy in succession" or "Cooper can only use up to a certain number of attacks". All Challenges must be completed (or, in the case of ones that don't have an end goal, obeyed). What happens if you disobey a Challenge? The Grim Reaper shows up and will slowly glide his way to Cooper and kill him in one hit with his extended finger. This isn't just a simple fail state though as the Reaper is slow enough that he can be avoided (though he will slowly build speed until you likely can't outrun him) and his one-hit-kill poke can also kill any enemy he makes contact with. The Reaper doesn't favor sides! Because of this, sometimes the player might WANT to fail a Challenge and activate the Reaper in order to deal with particularly tough enemies (and there's at least one late game case where an enemy holding a key you must obtain is invincible and the solution to the puzzle IS triggering the Reaper). With how many Challenges there are, some are inevitably going to clash with others. "Don't damage any of the room's contents" isn't a very feasible rule to obey when the same room also tells you to kill all the enemies and one of said enemies happens to be hiding in a destructible object. As a result, sometimes the Reaper is going to come out to play no matter how carefully you tread over certain rules, but instead of this taking control away from the player, it gives them more agency to decide WHEN to break a given rule. It's an extremely "meta" mechanic and not the tired 4th wall breaking "Oh shit! We're in a video game!" kind. It's not common to play a game that puts such a clever spin on such an intrinsic element of the medium.

So while the fighting itself is simplistic it's not really the star of the show. The variety in Challenges is more than enough to keep the game engaging throughout its 7-ish hour length. What many may find lacking is the sharp and crass humor Rare is often associated with. You'd think a game with such a crude origin would maybe have more of a personality but the general story and characters are largely forgettable besides a farmer who always greats you with a different not-subtle-at-all sexual innuendo. At least the cel shaded visuals and campy haunted house music has aged well.

Released in an era where gamers and critics got GTA-pilled and convinced themselves that M-rated games were objectively superior and shorter, linear games were seen as outdated it's easy to see why Ghoulies bombed on the OG Xbox but time has been very kind Rare's debut on Microsoft's turf. In some ways I see Ghoulies as a bit of a precursor to the modern experimental indie games that play with even the most conventional of mechanics. Give CBT a try and play Rare's most underrated game!

Reviewed on May 20, 2023


1 Comment


10 months ago

I agree that Rare's output was lacklaster (at least all there is in Rare Replay), I really didnt enjoy anything pre-xbox 360 besides Jetpac. Ghoulies, Kameo, and Nuts & Bolts are all brain blasts of ideas (and Viva Pinata was also good!) I wish they got to continue doing that and didnt get pidgeonholed into Kinect.