With Halloween this week, what better way to drill up excitement than looking at some of the ghostly happenings from Nintendo?
With Halloween quickly approaching, I decided to think about the ghosts and ghouls that inhabit some the games Nintendo has created over the years. In practically every franchise, there have been ghosts giving the heroes a tough time. In the other instance, ghosts have been there to mess with the characters. Let’s look back at some of the creepy moments of Nintendo gaming.
Let’s start with one of my favorite franchises that have some ghouls, the Super Mario franchise. I think the first creepy thing you think of when you think of Super Mario is the classic Boo ghost. If the Boo isn’t following you when your back is turned, they’re making faces at you. Think about this, the Boos were given their own house in Super Mario World and Luigi had to sheepishly wonder through a Mansion to find Mario after King Boo trapped him. It also appears that Boos can play tennis and King Boo can drive a go-kart. (Who knew?) Ghost houses even have secret exits to find while you try to survive in the haunted house.
Mario has had his fair share of abnormal enemies to combat with. There have been Giant Boos to fight, aliens who are flying space ships to deal with, witches and dark shadows that have to be taken care of as well. It would seem that Creepy and Mario go hand in hand. The Jack-o-lantern Goombas scream Halloween to me. (“Scream,” see what I did there)
Pokemon has their fare share of ghosts in the various Pokedex’s across the regions like Gastly, Haunter, and Gengar in the Kanto Pokedex as well as the Pokemon Tower where pokemon who have met their untimely end rest in peace. Combine that with the unknown ghost at the top of the Tower who turns out to be a Marowak and you have some creepy/ghost like stuff going on. The music in Lavender town was rumored to do some odd things to people when they listened to.
There have been more ghost Pokemon in the later generations in the Pokemon series like Duskull and Litwick. Ghost has played an interesting role in the Pokemon series. I can remember taking advice from the Anime where ghost was powerful against Psychic and brought a ghost type into the Saffron City gym. However, the ghost I brought with me was also Poison so the psychic attacks were super effective.
