Ghosts 'n Goblins/Stage 5

Walkthrough

• You must continue to navigate back and forth along each level to find the ladders that lead you higher into the tower. Along the way, you will encounter a Red Arremer. Deal with it as you normally would, making sure to destroy it before advancing and provoking any more monsters to attack you. Unfortunately, there are no chances to reclaim your armor throughout this stage so protect yourself vigorously.

• • Eventually, the floors of the tower break along the center, and floating platforms are the only means available to cross them. To make matters worse, ladders are not available on every side, so you are forced to utilize the platforms in an effort to reach the top. Ogres are the designated guardians of the platform floors. Be sure to wait until the Ogres have moved far enough away from the ladder to safely climb up to their floor and destroy them.

• • Use the platforms to cross over to the left, climb up a ladder, and then back to the right. Remember that you will have to deal with Ogres on both sides. Once you climb up another ladder, the hole in the center of the floor will be small enough to jump over. This is how you will know that you are close to reaching the end of the stage.

• The path leading up to the boss is actually fairly inactive. You will not have to worry about any surprise attacks until you reach the very top. Make sure that you are mentally prepared to go to battle with the toughest enemy that you have ever faced in the game so far: Satan.

Boss

Dealing with Satan can make any player pine for the old days when fighting Red Arremers was the most difficult activity in the game. Satans are far worse. They are stronger, quicker, and take more hits to destroy. When they float in midair, they will sometimes cloak their body with their wings. When this occurs, they are invulnerable to all forms of attack. You must wait for them to open their wings, and when they do, they typically spit fireballs at you and swoop down to attack you. What's worse is that they tend to glide upwards a bit when they finish attacking, which sometimes puts them out of your weapon's reach. To deal with this, you can attempt to use ladders to lure them down to a lower height. Be aware, however, that this technique is not without it's risks since you are slower and locked into one vertical column until you are completely at the top or the bottom. Even if you do use the ladder, you must recover quickly and begin firing as soon as you are able to, or at least as soon as Satan unfurls his wings. In the older versions of this game, you must hit the Satan six times to defeat him, while the newer versions of the game only require four hits. For whatever reason, Satan is invulnerable to the Axe in the NES version.

Secrets

Arcade

This trick will work most of the time. Awake the Satan, then run as fast as you can. A few platforms down there is a gap where you can see moving eyeball platforms going back and forth. Jump into the gap and fall down as far as you can. It will say "Take a Key for coming in" as you land. Satan will now be gone.

NES

As you begin to ascend up the tower, you merely have to walk across this particular platform to make an Axe appear. Nothing that can be found so easily can be good for you. The Axe is the one weapon that this stage's boss is invulnerable to. Avoid picking it up.	If you climb up or down the ladder to the right of the Red Arremer, you can make an extra life appear. Even better, as long as you never walk to the left of the ladder, you need not fear attack from the Arremer.
Not far from where you collected the 1-UP, if you climb the ladder two levels up, you will make a 5,000 Yashichi appear.	Because it is likely that you have lost your armor at this point in the game, the fates have been kind enough to make armor appear at the end of this ledge just by riding the platform.