2022/7/15: Commodore 64: Ghostbusters

[VideoGameCritic]

Here's a brand new Commodore 64 for your reading enjoyment, compliments of the C64 Critic. As usual, I had to gut his review to match my format, but here is the original super-long version in its entirety!

Ghostbusters (Activision, 1984): B-
I know what you’re all thinking; Ghostbusters? In June? Seasonally incorrect! But hear me out;
although full of ghosts and supernatural phenomena, and thus seeming better slated for Halloween, the
original movie was released in June of 1984 as a fun popcorn Summer flick, which makes playing the
game this time of year well within tolerances.

Having cleared that up, Ghostbusters is a take on what happens when a video game maker is at least
passingly familiar with the source material upon which their game is based, something that rarely seems
to happen with movie-licensed games. You start the game with a $10k loan from the bank which you
use to purchase your vehicle (with four to choose from) and your choice of a variety of ghost hunting
items. I’m embarrassed to admit that I started to try and play this games multiple times over the
previous 4 years and was never able to get past the out-your-vehicle screen and could never figure out
why. I finally discovered that I needed to purchase TRAPS in order to advance, which weren’t listed on
the first page of stuff you could buy, thus I didn’t know they existed, thus I couldn’t advance! I’m sure
this is spelled out in the manual, but since I don’t have one I was playing by feel.

Anyway, once you have your vehicle kitted out you hit the mean streets of NYC, looking for flashing
buildings that indicate a ghost is present. You guide your vehicle there by moving your Ghostbusters
logo around the map to the building in question and hit the joystick button. This, then, drops you into
an overhead view of your vehicle and you can move your car back and forth on the street as it drives to
the destination. At first I had no idea what the point of this was, until I realized that if you outfitted your
vehicle with a ‘ghost vacuum’ you potentially get a chance to vacuum ghosts up as you drive to your
destination. Surely you remember the part of the movie where Spangler sucked up ghosts with a
vacuum cleaner right? Even after figuring THAT out, I still haven’t a clue what impact that has on the
game but I’m sure it must. Somehow.

When you arrive at your destination, you move 2 of your Ghostbusters into position; the first will drop a
trap, then you make him face how you want and hit the button. A second guy will run on screen, and
you position HIM how you like and hit the button. This will then cause both of them to shoot their
particle accelerators into the air… cross the streams, and HOLY HECK WHAT ARE YOU DOING? Don’t
cross the streams. They even told you as much in the movie, DUH! The idea is to get your men facing
away from each other, fire their streams, and ‘funnel’ the ghost (flying clueless around the screen) near
to your trap so you can spring it and suck them in. Got him? Nice! You just earned yourself
$<somerandomamountofmoney>. You can capture one ghost per trap, and when full you need to
return to your HQ’s to empty them before you can capture more ghosts. Obviously the more ghosts you
catch, the more mullah you earn, the more mullah, the better equipment.

I thought I was doing a pretty good job running around and catching ghosts and slowly building up my bank account until suddenly the Marshmallow Man appeared and wrecked and entire city block! This cost me $4K. Then it happened
again. Then again. And again. I was down to $0 in no time, with no chance of getting ahead when the
Gatekeeper and the Keymaster joined up a Zuul’s building and the game ended. WHAT? Yes,
apparently all the really matters in the game is that you have enough to pay the bank back their original
$10k front when the PK meter at the bottom of the screen hits 9999 (it’s been slowly counting up the
entire time you’ve been playing). Assuming you have the requisite $10k after the keymaster/gatekeeper
love-in, you move on to a screen where you have to run under the legs of a giant Stay-Puft man and into
the skyscraper behind him. You only need to get 2 of your men into the building (out of three), but it

was still challenging for me to get past this screen and timing my run under his stomping feet turned out
to be quite a chore. Once you get past THAT obstacle, you’ve beaten the game; you get a cut-scene of
your Ghostbusters closing the portal to the spirit world, you’re given $5k for your efforts, and the game
begins anew (you’re given a new ‘bank account’ number which is a code for starting your next game
with the higher $$ amounts available to you).

With excellent music and voice synthesis, this game really demonstrates when the C64 was capable of in
the sound department. The graphics are crisp and colorful, and the gameplay is pretty fun and varied
the first time through. After that, it’s hard to imagine going through the slog more than 2 or 3 more
times, at which point you’ve probably bought all the best equipment you can and it’s just a matter of
rinse/repeat.

[BlasteroidAli]

Ghost BUSTERS... yeah I played it back in the day. It was great. A really good version with great voice synthesis.

[CaptainCruch]

I played the Master System version of this game back in the day, which I liked.... is the Master System version based on this C64 version?