The prospect of playing as a delightfully psychopathic ghoul was too delectable for this reviewer, who was a little kid much amused by the associated movie and cartoons of the same name. Little did this reviewer know, the fun to be hand in media shown on the idiot box (or silver screen) does not translate well to affiliated video games; this is a lesson that had been driven deep into this reviewer over the years.
The first thing to hit this reviewer was the rather lackluster graphics. The mansion that was the first level of Beetlejuice had rather bland interiors, furnished with mis-proportioned doors and windows and inexplicable holes on the floor (both lethal and useful as cover). Fortunately, the later levels do not suffer from such lousy design, but their better quality was pretty much overlooked due to a gameplay design mistake that will be explained later.
Beetlejuice himself is hideously ugly (more so than his cartoon version already is) and is quite deformed, with a head so big it is a wonder that he does not suffer head trauma from every hit. The enemies that he faces (often other spooks) are also equally bizarre, and often not in a way appropriate to the theme of the Beetlejuice IP. Some of them are stiltedly animated and would had been more at home in very old RPGs.
The gameplay can be split into two main portions: mini-games & boss fights and platforming, the latter of which will be described (in a bad light).
The mini-games and boss fights are the better part of the gameplay. Most bosses cannot simply be fought head-on, requiring some smart use of cover and timely assaults to beat; in fact some of them can't be harmed by Beetlejuice's launched beetles (yes, you read that right - Beetlejuice's ranged attacks involve sending killer beetles after enemies). In fact, many of the bosses have seemingly random patterns of attack (though they still have a theme unique to them).
Some bosses have to be beaten in mini-games, most of which involve some frantic button-mashing. However, there tends to be an amusing preparation of sorts for a fight, such as a a contest to see who can make a more horrifying face (though the button-mashing QTE required to charge a meter of sorts does appear to be out-of-place).
The dying animations of defeated bosses are quite amusing, especially those that can be seen after winning the aforementioned scary-face contest.
The latter portion of the gameplay is the one that sinks it. Much of the game requires lots of jumping, climbing and shooting enemies with beetles. It is therefore frustrating that the controls for moving Beetlejuice around are terrible: the dude's jumps are touchy, he slides around more often than he should, etc., causing many deaths in the game to be rather infuriatingly cheap ones when Beetlejuice just had to come into contact with instant-death spikes. This is especially so in the later levels, where such hazards are greater in abundance.
Moreover, Beetlejuice has a completely useless crouching feature. When crouched, Beetlejuice's profile only gets lowered by a quarter, making this move quite useless in evading the ranged attacks of certain enemies. He also makes an odd pose and expression, as if he's having diarrhea. This is perhaps the first game that this reviewer played where the player can give the player character a stomach cramp by pressing a single button.
The audio is perhaps the only saving grace of this game. The music is pretty catchy and appropriate for the current situation. (This reviewer still remembers the 8-bit theme song of the game even after a decade or more.) Sound effects also deliver their function well, which is to alert the player of anything happening on-screen & off-screen, such as Beetlejuice hitting an obstacle he cannot remove at the time, a beetle that he launched had successfully struck an enemy and all sorts of other indicators.
Unfortunately, due to the rather poor controls of the game, the music that triggers whenever Beetlejuice suffers an ignominious, painfully clumsy death plays too often to the point that it is absolutely grating.
This reviewer has to admit: this game inflicted mental and psychological scars unto this reviewer, who was an unwitting, impressionable kid at the time. If there is ever any IP that immediately elicited irrational dread from this reviewer, Beetlejuice is one.