Ghostbusters (1984)

[JaySevenZero]

Here's where you can contribute your thoughts and opinions for Ghostbusters for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

A friendly reminder that where the feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but keeping it brief is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mostly reading out essays. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.

[Alex79]

I was a huge fan of this game on my old Amstrad as a kid. From the terrible, digitised speech to the catching ghosts it's a whole heap of fun. I remember how excited I'd get when a building started to flash, alerting the player to the presence of a Slimer to go and catch. I had my technique down and never varied from it, it was a good technique. I remember only ever finishing the game once, and afterwards I'm sure you could note down a passcode so that starting a new game would let you carry over any money you'd earned. It was only by doing this I was ever able to afford the most expensive vehicle in the game, but then I'd always end up reverting back to the classic white Ghostbusters hearse in the end.

I used to really enjoy the driving sections, despite them being incredibly basic, but I'd suck up all the ghosts I could on the way to the job, and then would need to empty the ghost catching machine back at HQ after every few missions.

A lot of fond memories of this game. I wonder how well it's held up - it'll be interesting to hear the thoughts of the panel on the show.

[moobaa]

I rode my bike on a 20 kilometre round-trip on dusty country Australia roads on a 40 degree Celsius day to buy this game for my C64. I convinced myself that the presentation alone (with the singalong lyrics to a reasonable rendition of the [strike] Huey Lewis [/strike] Ray Parker Jr title tune) was worth the price of admission.

The game itself was... competent. Enjoyable, even. But whilst it suffered from repetition, the joy of nailing a quick ghost capture (hold right, hold left, hit fire button) never got old.

I never did figure out how to consistently get past the Marshmallow Man's jumping legs just before the finale, though. Many runs just ended in a series of flattened Ghostbusters, rather than the low-key "spectacle" that concludes the game.

Still, this felt extremely polished at the time. In retrospect, though, it wasn't really worth that ridiculous bike ride in the heat.

[Workyticket]

For some reason, despite being a huge Ghostbusters fan and owning a C64 for years, I never played this game until stumbling across an Atari 2600 copy of it in the early 90s. As you'd imagine, that version was fairly basic but did the job, even without the shonky digitised speech (Imagine if they tried though... Actually, on second thoughts, maybe we really shouldn't).

Looking back, having played several iterations of the game since, it's always struck me as struggling somewhat under the weight of its own ambitions. Despite trying to deliver a comprehensive ghostbusting experience, it's always felt to me like a hodge-podge of not quite fully - formed systems thrown together. The ghost catching can be fun once you get the hang of it, but there's a lot of struggling to get a grip on the various mini-games while the game rushes you to the final Zuul confrontation.

Thinking about it, the game really needed a sequel to refine its various systems, but I'm guessing that licensing issues didn't allow it. A shame, as the game was in many ways ahead of its time, even if only intermittently fun to play.

[Nayson]

Back in the 80s when my circle of friends were all kids for some reason four or five of us ended up with the same computer, the Amstrad CPC 464. I don't know whether our parents just figured we could swap games if we had the same machine or if said machine was going cheap at the time but the upshot was that we'd always end up playing the same games at different people's houses and Ghosbusters was a particular favourite.

Looking back at it now and I can't say it's aged particularly well, but to an eight year old kid with a vibrant imagination it was awesome. The game had a damn karaoke mode of banging Ghosbusters theme tune on the title screen and it was almost certainly the first bit of software I knew of that could make the computer talk, even if it was the scratchiest lowest bitrate voice ever it was still cool. The game itself was a collection of minigames of varying quality, driving round the minimap and battling the ghosts seemed mediocre even at the time but clearing the city grid of those ghosts was satisfying and oh the joy to be had with buying and customising your car! We'd all seen the film and knew that the Ghosbusters drove a hearse (even if we didn't know what a hearse was for) but why have that when you could have a bright red Ferrari looking thing? You'd have to complete the game a couple of times in order to get the money together to afford the Ferrari of course but the fact you could carry money over (in what I guess was an early example of new game plus?) really added to replayability and having the most tricked out car with every gadget possible bolted onto it was the *real* objective of the game according to the house rules we'd set for ourselves.

Can we talk about how disappointing the ending was by the way? I only played the Amstrad version so maybe others are different but on the Amstrad at some point the speed of ghosts invading blocks on the city grid was overwhelming and the fearsome Stay Puft Marshmallow Man would spawn on one of them which was an invitation to what should have been an epic final showdown. What were we greeted with instead? A flickering sprite not much bigger than the players jumping up and down in front of a doorway and you had get into that doorway without being squashed. You couldn't shoot him with the proton pack, you didn't get to cross the streams and make him explode, all you could do is dodge his jumps and walk past and if you successfully did so then all you'd be greeted with is a wall of text informing you that the portal had been closed and here's a code to carry your money over into a new play through. The first couple of times we saw this screen it was unclear if it was a game over screen or a game complete screen. Still, back we'd go with the money rewarded on that screen for another play through so I'm calling it a win. Overall it was a fun game, but you'd probably have to be in the target demographic (pre pubescent children living in the 1980s) to get the most out of it.