Review: Avenging Spirit (Nintendo Switch)

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A time worn tale of a boyfriend walking home with his girlfriend, who gets murdered and the girl- abducted. Her dad, a scientist whose experiments are wanted by a secret society, helps you, now a ghost, learn to possess enemies to exact revenge and get her back. It’s been done to death I know, (insert sarcasm here).

Start busting as a ghost

Avenging Spirit, (known in Japan as Phantasm), is a 90’s arcade game from Jaleco. It was also released for the original Gameboy, but now rereleased for modern consoles by Ratalaika Games. The premise, as wacky as it sounds, plays out as most 2D standard arcade platformers do. Each character I possessed had its own health bar at the bottom. When the character health bar runs out, you have a larger bar at the top this gives you a limited amount of time to possess a new character before it’s game over.

The variety of characters is diverse. A kickboxing girl, a metal slug inspired mercenary, a ghost sorcerer, and a ninja are the initial offering, but many more lie in the levels for you to possess. Every enemy in each level is up for grabs. A snowball throwing lady, tommy gun toting mobster or even a flame belching dinosaur are a few examples. The sprite work in Avenging Spirit is nice, featuring unique looks and animated attacks for each.

The levels go both horizontally and vertically, but the layout is perplexing sometimes. An ever present arrow points you which direction to go, but exactly what is a platform can be a little confusing. I was never lost, but fell down large corridors because I missed a jump that I didn’t know was there.

An exorcism is required

At the end of each level a boss, your standard arcade quarter eating, damage sponge, must be dealt with. Some are inventive like a blob of ooze that crawls ceiling to floor, or a crane that opens its door protector while lowering its shovel at you. All of them I dispatched with relative ease.

In between levels, Avenging Spirit uses simple cutscenes to advance the story. None are particularly noteworthy but still the sprite work and the actual attempt at a story are appreciated.

There are two styles of play offered up. There is a standard arcade mode, which is more difficult and you have to input tokens, or a console style game that is easier and has simple continues.

Final thoughts

I had a surprising amount of fun with this one. I expected the standard arcade quarter muncher, and came away mildly impressed. Avenging Spirit tries some novel ideas and is a better than average looking game. The gameplay is entertaining, the story is different for sure, and the concept of possessing the enemies is just plain fun. I couldn’t wait to lose my health to try out a new character. Some of the games more outlandish enemies seem tucked away, so I was encouraged to explore just to see the new types of attacks I could garner.

Avenging Spirit is available on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Series X/S, PlayStation 4/5 and Evercade.