First released into arcades in 1999, Ghoul Panic by Namco is a spooky Halloween-style lightgun shooter for one or two players that is heavily inspired by Namco‘s Point Blank series. The game was developed by Eighting/Raizing and features colourful, well-animated 3D graphics throughout.

Players are represented by two cats (thus all the “meows” on the intro screens) – player one being a pink female cat, and player two being a blue male cat – both of whom go exploring inside a haunted house in order to try to revert back to their former selves.

The game can be played at three difficulty levels: Practice (six stages), Medium (17 stages), and Advanced (17 stages). Each level features a variety of minigames that require the player(s) to shoot a target number of ghosts, skeletons, or ghouls, within a set period of time, or with only a certain amount of ammo. The rules of each minigame are shown before starting.

At the end of each level is a boss battle against a special character, where you must reduce their health while at the same time shooting the projectiles they throw at you. The first boss is based on Frankenstein’s Monster, the second is based on Dracula, and the third is a witch on a broomstick.

Ghoul Panic is a real test of anyone’s shooting skills and is arguably best played against another player in “Match Play” mode.

The only real downside to playing Ghoul Panic now is that I found it to be quite difficult to play with a mouse. It’s better played with an actual lightgun because very quick reactions are needed, although I wouldn’t know how to get a lightgun working in MAME (it may be possible, but you’d have to research how to do that and maybe consult an expert).

If you’re able to play Ghoul Panic with a lightgun you’ll undoubtedly have more success with it, and also get to play the game as intended. It’s not the end of the world having to resort to using a mouse, though, because you can put in credits to continue where you left off.

Anyone looking for kid-friendly spooky games to play over the Halloween season should look no further than Ghoul Panic – it’s inoffensive, non-violent, fun and very challenging.

Note that a PlayStation version was released in 2000, which is also lightgun compatible, so if you want to play it with your family for Halloween it might be worth trying to track that version down instead.

Happy Halloween!

More: Ghoul Panic on Wikipedia