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An in-depth look at the best Ghostbusters games so far and the context around them, featuring Nintendo angel Satoru Iwata, Activision ghoul Bobby Kotick, and Slimer.

Ghostbusters II

Game Boy - HAL Laboratory, 1990

I had never played the other four Ghostbusters II games until now, but my first foray into virtual bustin’ was the Game Boy version of Ghostbusters II, the case securely tucked away in my Game Boy portable carry-all. Unlike their predecessors (and some would argue the film they are based on) these sequels mostly still hold up today.

Nintendo second-party developer HAL Laboratory had a string of excellent NES games to their name before their first Game Boy game, Ghostbusters II. Their experience with the GB would help them launch pink puffball Kirby into global consciousness two years later with Kirby’s Dream World, and their pedigree extends to a number of other beloved franchises like Mother 3, and Super Smash Bros. If you’re hoping for more than a low-effort movie tie-in, you’re in luck!

The overall premise is novel and solid action arcade fare. First, choose your busters; (they all play the same sadly) one zaps, one traps, and off you go to purge levels of their ghosts before the timer runs out. Some ghosts only appear after you've caught everything, so there can be a bit of tension as you hunt around the slightly maze-like maps against the clock to find that final frightener.

You control both Ghostbusters at the same time, moving your first with your second following automatically. This means that you have to be careful lest your second buster get caught on a piece of scenery or stuck running along a parallel corridor having missed a doorway. It sounds annoying but adds another interesting factor as you race against time to retrace your steps and unhook them, something that is referenced in the manual more than once. Once you accept it as part of the challenge rather than see it as a flaw in the AI, it adds to the fun.

Each ghost takes two hits to bust. The A button fires your proton pack, stunning the spectre, B throws out the trap from your second buster. Miss, or take too long, and the ghost will start moving again and you’re back to square one. Each buster has four lives, a little tough given there’s no save games or codes, but there are only five levels plus bosses so it’s standard fare for the era. You encounter other busters on levels along the way who you can swap out to use their special weapons or power ups like the mood slime gun (one-shot ghosts), or ghost power (move through walls). Louis Tully (whose name is spelled wrong in the closing credits as Winston’s was in the film) and Dana Barrett also pop up to give you 1-ups throughout.

The graphics are cute and even cuter in the Japanese manual. The variety of enemies is good, each requiring a slightly different tactic to deal with, keeping things fresh. The busters can’t shoot diagonally, which makes it difficult, but the game makes up for this by auto-aiming slightly to the left or right when necessary.

I’m not a fan of bosses in general and the boss levels in this game haven't changed my mind. As your second buster has nothing to do during boss levels, they are shielded during the fights. This means the occasional bullet hell parts of the battle can be avoided by leading them around strategically and using them as a human shield. This tactic further convinced me that the unique two-character setup was intended design, but I’ve always wondered if it was a hangover from the NES version since the NES has 2 controllers.

New Ghostbusters II

NES - HAL Laboratory, 1990

Released a few months after the GB title, the NES version similar but not a direct port. It includes the all important ‘New’ prefix, as Activision released a separate ‘Ghostbusters II' game in North America. Although there is an unofficial NA prototype, The New Ghostbusters II ended up a Japan and Europe exclusive and sadly, to answer the question I’ve had for 30 years, did not include multiplayer.

So the control scheme was intended this way after all! This time though, the game is a bit more refined. Your second buster can no longer get killed which makes the controls less frustrating than the GB version, although their AI is not as good. Since the games were developed in parallel I wonder if the NES game was made easier after feedback from the GB release. At this point I discovered that you can hold the proton stream on the ghost while you manoeuvre, which makes things even easier. It also works on the GB version, so that’s 30 years of making that game harder for myself. (I did the same thing with Bomberman, playing all 5 SNES games for thousands of hours of my childhood before learning in my twenties that you could manually stop sliding bombs.)

I enjoy it being on the easy side compared to how brutal some games of the era are. Once you get into a rhythm, it's challenging enough to be engaging, and quite therapeutic to clear each area and unlock the next. The levels contain lots of separate areas rather than one big level to seamlessly walk around in, as in the GB version, but they are much more varied and inventive. Even the much hated apartment level is kept fresh with new enemy types each time you move to the next floor. Although the layouts are identical, you have to traverse them in new ways due to the new enemy types each time.

The NES game is much more fleshed out in terms of levels and enemies, and aside from the usual busters (including blue Winston) Louis Tully is playable this time. There are no power ups or different weapons like the GB version but let's be honest, most fans only want to use the proton pack so it’s not much of a downside. Most of the enemies have multiple types, and there are some bigger, tougher enemies that will occasionally pop up. The bosses are also more interesting than the GB’s bullet-hell-while-blasting, often with a bit of variation, requiring traps or dealing with environmental dangers.

The graphics are fantastic and the cute little cut scenes are even more fun and detailed than the GB version. The proton stream and traps look great, although the enemies have lost a bit of their Game Boy charm.

As the credits were rolling I noticed a familiar name pop up which might help explain why this game was a success: Satoru Iwata. Still a young man, he would work on Kirby and Pokemon, be installed as head of HAL Labs by Nintendo, and go on to become the CEO of Nintendo. Despite only owning the GB game and loving it for decades, I found I enjoyed this version even more; it’s the best at making you feel like a Ghostbuster and the best Ghostbusters game I’ve reviewed. Unfortunately for Americans, that is not about to change.

Here's a fresh new gif for reading this far! Taken from the NES menu screen.

Ghostbusters II

NES - Imagineering, 1990

The North American Ghostbusters II was created during a torrid time at publisher Mediagenic, formerly Activision, who had been in financial trouble after bad business decisions and the famous Intellivision patent lawsuit. It was a messy time with much to-ing and fro-ing on the direction of the company and the types of software they were making. Indeed the Atari 2600 port reviewed in Part 2 was initially cancelled, the NES now being the big name in town, then eventually released. In a few months Mediagenic would fail and be taken over by gaming pariah Bobby Kotick, who would change their name back to Activision.

Activision had the Ghostbusters II licence, but we don’t know why they decided to develop a separate game instead of publishing the New Ghostbusters II, which they sub-licensed out. HAL Labs did make a North American version of New Ghostbusters II, the prototype of which is floating around the internet, but the continent ended up with this separate design instead, which they weren’t very happy about.

The game was created by Dan Kitchen, part of a core group of games designers from the 1980s. Dan also made the Atari 2600 port of his colleague David Crane’s C64 Ghostbusters game reviewed previously, which perhaps influenced the structure of driving sections between each level.

There is no proton pack, instead the slime blower of the second film is your only weapon. You can aim this up and down which is nice, but very few of the ghosts can actually be attacked with your gun. Most of the enemies move around a fixed point or zoom through, acting as environmental obstacles to be avoided by timed runs or jumps as you walk across the level. This is except for the spider that walks behind you to prevent you moving backwards. I spent my first few attempts trying to kill it before realising it was the first of many invincible enemies. Another odd choice but more interesting than forcing the screen to scroll I suppose.

One thing you can shoot is flying Ghostbusters logos, there are more of them than actual ghosts. Having no indication what these logos were (collect 20 for an extra life), I looked at the manual which explained that by pressing the Start button(!), you can lay a trap to suck up some types of ghosts. This doesn't make things any better, the trap laid at your feet and can trap ghosts that pass directly above, for as long as you stay still. In the end it’s easier just to try and run through the bullet hell, shooting whenever you feel like it.

The Ecto-1 levels fare better, and the car can now jump as well, as you shoot ghosts in the street. Moving left and right speeds the car up and down, and you can jump over huge gaps with speed boosts and avoid obstacles and of course flying logos. It’s ok although it’s sometimes hard to tell what's an enemy and what's a power up. Ultimately you’re just driving in some streets, not particularly GBII-esque.

As with the HAL Labs GBII games, this has a courtroom level and a slime sewer level, but the main focus is on the film’s finale, the Statue of Liberty.

It’s a good idea and an iconic part of the film that the other games largely ignored. They also got the licence for a lovely chiptune version of Jackie Wilson’s ‘Higher and Higher’. Unfortunately if you are motivated to make it as far as this level, it’s basically a mix of Galaga and Centipede but with the Statue of Liberty which is not very engaging.

Reviews were bad to middling, and have gotten worse retrospectively as more Americans find out about the HAL Labs game. It’s possible this was churned out during the chaos at the company, or rushed out due to the NA licensing issues. Regardless this one is a miss, but Dan Kitchen created many games I played as a kid, mostly movie/TV tie-ins which is a genre I still love. I’m looking forward to reviewing more games from their development cabal.

But until then, we still have two more Ghostbusters II games to play!

Ghostbusters II Part 2: Atari and DOS