Ghoul School
Dec. 29th, 2025 05:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yamamanama80 days until the vernal equinox
Imagineering is responsible for a bunch of Simpsons games for the NES which makes people think this could have began life as a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror game that got the Journey to Silius treatment.
It's kind of your proto-Metroidvania.
There’s one frame of lightning on screen.
Back when games were made by a handful of people.
The backstory of this game is that you’re Spike O’Hara, you just cut across the local cemetery to get home from school and found a skull engulfed in a psychedelic glow. He took it, a storm wind blew in, and he didn’t take this an omen for ill or anything and just brought the skull in to anatomy class even though it was twice as big and the glow was even brighter and more psychedelic and he even thought it was laughing at him. Then the skull transmitted a message to the realm of the dead and Cool School High was transformed into Ghoul School. Dun dun dun.
He has a crush on Samantha Pompom, the cheerleader. So he went inside to rescue her.
There’s an interview with Scott, the lead programmer, on Bogleech that offers a bunch of insights on the game and things that weren’t implemented, either due to time constraints or technical limitations.
If you go left from the start, you encounter a Medusa head that can kill you in one hit and can’t be killed without the right weapon, which you don’t have yet.
Most of the rooms you can go into are classrooms.
These are desks for ants.
Hands Off launches his hands at you.
The bat doesn’t have much range, mostly because our hero has no idea how to swing a bat. He just waves it around like he’s conducting the school orchestra and not the choir of death like he should be.
Green apples give you two bars of health.
If you kill an enemy, they’re never coming back. On the other hand, if you get an apple, that apple is gone forever. Until you get a Game Over, that is. If you Game Over, you’re sent back to the entrance of the school and all the enemies are reset and I’d imagine all the apples are too, but at least you get to keep all your weapons and items.
You can hide from enemies in lockers. Originally, there were supposed to be skeletons hiding in some lockers and useful items in others. There was meant to be a bell that goes off every so often and the hallways would fill up with zombies but the NES couldn’t handle that.
The bat is used to smash things.
Red apples, often found inside of tv screens, restore your health to full.
The frankensteins monster’s hit box extends above the locker.
The towel hanging off of the bell is your first new weapon.
Now you’re a hoopy frood.
The showers will turn on and off and either the dark magic transformed the water into acid or it just ruins Spike’s hair.
Those basketballs move really really fast. Destroy the scoreboard and they’ll all vanish. someone even pointed out that the letters it flashes read HIT ME.
The strategy for Dumb-Bell is to run up, smack them with the towel a couple of times, and then run back before they toss a weight at you.
maneuver through the exercise machines to get your first shoe upgrade: spring shoes.
Spring shoes allow you to jump higher but your hitbox is also bigger but that doesn’t really matter much. If you really need to avoid those bats, or Squeekees as they’re called in the manual, put on your regular shoes instead.
And it’s height only. They don’t give you long range jumping abilities. Not that that matters either.
That dead zombie will still kill you in one hit if you touch him.
At the end of this dead end corridor, we can get another new weapon.
Behold, the Deweytron. Despite being found in the gymnasium and not the library, it shoots large numbers with decimal points to ‘classify’ the enemies. Scott meant it to be a clue on where it works best. The manual sort of ignores all of that.
The deweytron has range but it does paltry damage. it’s great against the guys who throw weights at you. The Spirit Ridders dropped this thing when they tried to exorcise the school.
And now that we have the spring shoes, I can show this off. Press up in front of a locker wearing your regular shoes. And then pause the game to change into the spring shoes. You’ll end up behind the scenery and enemies and you’ll be untouchable. If you go back into a locker, it will cancel the effect.
And in some rooms, you’ll be totally invisible.
Moss Top tosses his head. It boomerangs on him so you can just blast away with the deweytron.
There’s a new weapon in here, the Spinal Zap. The spinal zap was once known as the spinal tap, used to inject anesthetic into one’s spine to ease the pain of childbirth, among other things (they’re mainly used to suck up fluid to diagnose things like meningitis or hemorrhage. Nintendo objected, either to the idea of teen pregnancy or to the idea of using a giant syringe as a weapon.
It has shit range but it can destroy an Optik in one hit.
In the manual, it’s still a comically oversized syringe.
Scott mentioned a ghoul disguise you could put on and the enemies would ignore you. I wonder if this was meant to be that.
The deweytron takes down Par Lé Boo.
The digestaray fires in a downward arc. Now you can get your revenge on all those damn blinkies.
If you smash the clock, that invincible enemy is now gone. I say invincible enemy but I never bothered to show him off because it’s rather out of the way.
Games have you save the princess and fun fact: princess and principal have the same etymology. But then they made her a cheerleader instead and instead the principal is Death.
He’ll drop his scythe and now it’s yours.
The sandwich also fires in a downward arc. Despite being a sandwich, you have unlimited throws.
The little guy is Quarter Pound and the big guy is The Grouchy Gore-Met.
The digestaray removes that green gunk from the grill and comically oversized mixer. This must be the Nightmare Cafeteria and they’re ready to serve up some Sloppy Jimbo.
Having the golden apple in your possession means you now take half damage from everything.
Grease Monkeys will throw their wrenches at you.
The suction shoes are found in the auto shop.
Suction shoes are sort of complicated to use. Jump and hold up to flip up to the ceiling and avoid those pesky blinkies. I think you could’ve came here earlier.
The digestaray gets rid of these Putrids (living brains that escaped from the specimen closet and now want to see how it feels for you to be stuffed in a jar of formaldehyde)
Cleanser the Janitor won’t hurt you. Scott said that at every school he went to, the janitors were kind and endearing. Even when zombified.
Hurt Cleanser and the invincible broom Sweeps will arise to take its revenge.
Bootoven will run at you and his minion Note-Orius will bounce around.
No idea who that guy is supposed to be.
The periodic table goes up to hassium, which means they’re pretty up to date, even if it might still be labeled unniloctium at the time.
the sickle works really well on the Boolips. You’ll find the embalming fluid here, which also arcs but has a much shorter range than your other weapons. Works really great on organic enemies.
Of course the Spinal Zap is your weapon of choice on the Spine Tingler. And now you can use the elevator.
If you keep holding up on the elevator, it will take you to the rooftop.
There’s only one way to cross a gap like this.
Looks like Homer Simpson.
That’s no ordinary chart. That’s Funny Bones.
Bonehead is also vulnerable to the Spinal Zap. I saw a playthrough that just ignores this area so even though this is that very skull you brought in which caused this mess to begin with, I think it might be optional. Doesn’t even change the ending.
Now we’re on the other side of Medusa. I don’t think you can get past her but there’s a door on the ceiling that we passed by.
That door takes you to the Crawl Space. The crawl space goes on for some time.
At the end, we get access to the air ducts. Grease me up!
Spectres die in one hit to the scythe and Nibbles is best avoided.
I thought this skull had something to do with the skull you destroyed in Anatomy. but no.
And here’s the Gamma Gun, the ultimate weapon.
It fires in a straight line and does a lot of damage.
We get a chiptune rendition of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue. Hm, must be heading to the final area.
Admiral Aorta will just sort of move around aimlessly. Toss some embalming fluid if you want to play it safe or whip him with the towel if you’ve got hit points to spare.
And now the final boss, King Cornea. You can shoot him with the gamma gun or you can get up close and personal with the sickle. Either way, it’s kind of zero effort. Originally, all the previous bosses you fought were supposed to merge together to become the final boss but the NES couldn’t handle that.
She’ll cheer when you do damage to him.
Embalming fluid will clear away the barrier. I don’t think it’s possible to leave if you somehow came here without the embalming fluid but also I don’t think it’s possible to even reach this point without the embalming fluid.
Scott named her Suki Yamamoto and the manual writer changed her name. She’s even meant to look Asian, or at least, as Asian as one can look with tiny sprites and 4 bits of color.
The end.
burning question: did you raise the dead? but the car’s ok?
Imagineering is responsible for a bunch of Simpsons games for the NES which makes people think this could have began life as a Simpsons Treehouse of Horror game that got the Journey to Silius treatment.
It's kind of your proto-Metroidvania.
There’s one frame of lightning on screen.
Back when games were made by a handful of people.
The backstory of this game is that you’re Spike O’Hara, you just cut across the local cemetery to get home from school and found a skull engulfed in a psychedelic glow. He took it, a storm wind blew in, and he didn’t take this an omen for ill or anything and just brought the skull in to anatomy class even though it was twice as big and the glow was even brighter and more psychedelic and he even thought it was laughing at him. Then the skull transmitted a message to the realm of the dead and Cool School High was transformed into Ghoul School. Dun dun dun.
He has a crush on Samantha Pompom, the cheerleader. So he went inside to rescue her.
There’s an interview with Scott, the lead programmer, on Bogleech that offers a bunch of insights on the game and things that weren’t implemented, either due to time constraints or technical limitations.
If you go left from the start, you encounter a Medusa head that can kill you in one hit and can’t be killed without the right weapon, which you don’t have yet.
Most of the rooms you can go into are classrooms.
These are desks for ants.
Hands Off launches his hands at you.
The bat doesn’t have much range, mostly because our hero has no idea how to swing a bat. He just waves it around like he’s conducting the school orchestra and not the choir of death like he should be.
Green apples give you two bars of health.
If you kill an enemy, they’re never coming back. On the other hand, if you get an apple, that apple is gone forever. Until you get a Game Over, that is. If you Game Over, you’re sent back to the entrance of the school and all the enemies are reset and I’d imagine all the apples are too, but at least you get to keep all your weapons and items.
You can hide from enemies in lockers. Originally, there were supposed to be skeletons hiding in some lockers and useful items in others. There was meant to be a bell that goes off every so often and the hallways would fill up with zombies but the NES couldn’t handle that.
The bat is used to smash things.
Red apples, often found inside of tv screens, restore your health to full.
The frankensteins monster’s hit box extends above the locker.
The towel hanging off of the bell is your first new weapon.
Now you’re a hoopy frood.
The showers will turn on and off and either the dark magic transformed the water into acid or it just ruins Spike’s hair.
Those basketballs move really really fast. Destroy the scoreboard and they’ll all vanish. someone even pointed out that the letters it flashes read HIT ME.
The strategy for Dumb-Bell is to run up, smack them with the towel a couple of times, and then run back before they toss a weight at you.
maneuver through the exercise machines to get your first shoe upgrade: spring shoes.
Spring shoes allow you to jump higher but your hitbox is also bigger but that doesn’t really matter much. If you really need to avoid those bats, or Squeekees as they’re called in the manual, put on your regular shoes instead.
And it’s height only. They don’t give you long range jumping abilities. Not that that matters either.
That dead zombie will still kill you in one hit if you touch him.
At the end of this dead end corridor, we can get another new weapon.
Behold, the Deweytron. Despite being found in the gymnasium and not the library, it shoots large numbers with decimal points to ‘classify’ the enemies. Scott meant it to be a clue on where it works best. The manual sort of ignores all of that.
The deweytron has range but it does paltry damage. it’s great against the guys who throw weights at you. The Spirit Ridders dropped this thing when they tried to exorcise the school.
And now that we have the spring shoes, I can show this off. Press up in front of a locker wearing your regular shoes. And then pause the game to change into the spring shoes. You’ll end up behind the scenery and enemies and you’ll be untouchable. If you go back into a locker, it will cancel the effect.
And in some rooms, you’ll be totally invisible.
Moss Top tosses his head. It boomerangs on him so you can just blast away with the deweytron.
There’s a new weapon in here, the Spinal Zap. The spinal zap was once known as the spinal tap, used to inject anesthetic into one’s spine to ease the pain of childbirth, among other things (they’re mainly used to suck up fluid to diagnose things like meningitis or hemorrhage. Nintendo objected, either to the idea of teen pregnancy or to the idea of using a giant syringe as a weapon.
It has shit range but it can destroy an Optik in one hit.
In the manual, it’s still a comically oversized syringe.
Scott mentioned a ghoul disguise you could put on and the enemies would ignore you. I wonder if this was meant to be that.
The deweytron takes down Par Lé Boo.
The digestaray fires in a downward arc. Now you can get your revenge on all those damn blinkies.
If you smash the clock, that invincible enemy is now gone. I say invincible enemy but I never bothered to show him off because it’s rather out of the way.
Games have you save the princess and fun fact: princess and principal have the same etymology. But then they made her a cheerleader instead and instead the principal is Death.
He’ll drop his scythe and now it’s yours.
The sandwich also fires in a downward arc. Despite being a sandwich, you have unlimited throws.
The little guy is Quarter Pound and the big guy is The Grouchy Gore-Met.
The digestaray removes that green gunk from the grill and comically oversized mixer. This must be the Nightmare Cafeteria and they’re ready to serve up some Sloppy Jimbo.
Having the golden apple in your possession means you now take half damage from everything.
Grease Monkeys will throw their wrenches at you.
The suction shoes are found in the auto shop.
Suction shoes are sort of complicated to use. Jump and hold up to flip up to the ceiling and avoid those pesky blinkies. I think you could’ve came here earlier.
The digestaray gets rid of these Putrids (living brains that escaped from the specimen closet and now want to see how it feels for you to be stuffed in a jar of formaldehyde)
Cleanser the Janitor won’t hurt you. Scott said that at every school he went to, the janitors were kind and endearing. Even when zombified.
Hurt Cleanser and the invincible broom Sweeps will arise to take its revenge.
Bootoven will run at you and his minion Note-Orius will bounce around.
No idea who that guy is supposed to be.
The periodic table goes up to hassium, which means they’re pretty up to date, even if it might still be labeled unniloctium at the time.
the sickle works really well on the Boolips. You’ll find the embalming fluid here, which also arcs but has a much shorter range than your other weapons. Works really great on organic enemies.
Of course the Spinal Zap is your weapon of choice on the Spine Tingler. And now you can use the elevator.
If you keep holding up on the elevator, it will take you to the rooftop.
There’s only one way to cross a gap like this.
Looks like Homer Simpson.
That’s no ordinary chart. That’s Funny Bones.
Bonehead is also vulnerable to the Spinal Zap. I saw a playthrough that just ignores this area so even though this is that very skull you brought in which caused this mess to begin with, I think it might be optional. Doesn’t even change the ending.
Now we’re on the other side of Medusa. I don’t think you can get past her but there’s a door on the ceiling that we passed by.
That door takes you to the Crawl Space. The crawl space goes on for some time.
At the end, we get access to the air ducts. Grease me up!
Spectres die in one hit to the scythe and Nibbles is best avoided.
I thought this skull had something to do with the skull you destroyed in Anatomy. but no.
And here’s the Gamma Gun, the ultimate weapon.
It fires in a straight line and does a lot of damage.
We get a chiptune rendition of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue. Hm, must be heading to the final area.
Admiral Aorta will just sort of move around aimlessly. Toss some embalming fluid if you want to play it safe or whip him with the towel if you’ve got hit points to spare.
And now the final boss, King Cornea. You can shoot him with the gamma gun or you can get up close and personal with the sickle. Either way, it’s kind of zero effort. Originally, all the previous bosses you fought were supposed to merge together to become the final boss but the NES couldn’t handle that.
She’ll cheer when you do damage to him.
Embalming fluid will clear away the barrier. I don’t think it’s possible to leave if you somehow came here without the embalming fluid but also I don’t think it’s possible to even reach this point without the embalming fluid.
Scott named her Suki Yamamoto and the manual writer changed her name. She’s even meant to look Asian, or at least, as Asian as one can look with tiny sprites and 4 bits of color.
The end.
burning question: did you raise the dead? but the car’s ok?
