Ghostbusters

aka: Car Wars, Cazafantasmas, S.O.S. Fantômes
Moby ID: 2619
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Description official descriptions

Based on the 1984 film of the same name, the Ghostbusters are the ones to call to "bust" any ghost hauntings. They do this through the use of nuclear-accelerated "proton packs" and "ghost traps", whereby the ghosts can be captured and transferred to a secure storage facility at their Headquarters. However New York City has suddenly become a very haunted place, and the number of ghosts has suddenly and dramatically increased. The Ghostbusters must reduce the paranormal psychokinetic energy, the "PK level" in the city, which represents ghost power, before the Temple of Zuul awakens and resurrects an evil goddess called Gozer.

Ghostbusters is an action game that features an overhead-view and a side-view. From Ghostbusters HQ, the player must monitor a map of midtown Manhattan for "ghost alarms", as well as for casual, roaming spirits, and plot a route to the alarmed area. Once the route is plotted, the player then controls the purchased Ghostmobile as it drives through traffic. Here, the player is able to capture casual ghosts on the way if they are en route. When the haunted location is reached, the game switches to a side-view. Two of the Ghostbusters will take position, activate their proton beams, and toss a trap to the ground. The player must then use the two Ghostbusters to attempt to lead the ghost(s) over the placed trap. Once activated, the trap springs to capture any ghosts directly above it. A successful capture will earn the player money, which can then be used to purchase new Ghostbusters vehicles and new modifications for it. An unsuccessful capture will see the ghost fly away (after nastily sliming one of the Ghostbusters).

As the game progresses, the PK energy in the city increases. The Ghostbusters must keep it under critical levels by being constantly successful at busting ghosts. Eventually the Temple of Zuul will activate, and if the PK levels are still manageable, the Ghostbusters can venture there for a final showdown with Gozer.

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Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Commodore 64 version)

Design
Additional Programming
Graphics Design

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 58% (based on 38 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.3 out of 5 (based on 212 ratings with 8 reviews)

You want to be a Ghostbuster?

The Good
This game was just plain fun. You got to blast the ghosts, and the sounds were impressive. I'd never before (and never since) had the PC speaker used to play clips like this game did. Most samples were directly from the movie, and they didn't even sound bad! This was the dawn of the sound card, but they still bothered to make the PC speaker folks feel welcome. I'm still impressed.

The Bad
It was short and pretty simplistic, but, that can sometimes be a good thing. :)

The Bottom Line
A nice quick dive into the life of a Ghostbuster.

PC Booter · by Kees Cook (26) · 2001

Who ya gonna call?

The Good
This game was pretty fun in its day, you can even sing along with the Ghostbusters theme song on the title screen (a nice little word prompter ball :) Basically you drive from house to house ridding the city of ghosts. You have to maneuver the two ghostbuster's energy streams around the ghosts then set off the trap to catch em'. Oh yeah, while you're driving to each location, if a vacuum cleaner is purchased and installed on your car, you can suck ghosts up off the road. I never did beat this game but I think you fight the marshmallow man later. I think its in one of the screenshots.

The Bad
Ahhh, its a game for C-64, why complain about it? It was an all-around pretty fun game for its day.

The Bottom Line
A good game thats worth a play.

Commodore 64 · by OlSkool_Gamer (88) · 2005

Surprisingly playable, considering the limitations of the system.

The Good
Ghostbusters for the Atari 2600 was one of the last games published for the system, right around the same time the Nintendo Entertainment System was released in North America, ushering the next generation of video game consoles. So, this game has a sizable advantage over other games on the system, since Atari programmers would have discovered many tricks to maximize performance on the system. But this game also was at a big disadvantage compared to other systems, especially what would become the third-generation console champion, the NES.

The graphics on the Atari 2600 version are much simpler than what you'd get on other consoles, but they are still recognizable for what they are supposed to be. You can tell a roamer from a slimer, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is as intimidating as it should be, and the plasma guns and traps are decent. You can recognize the Ecto-1 for what it should look like, although allowances must still be made due to the limitations of the system.

The music is particularly good for the Atari. It even had me bopping in my seat along with the music while I was playing, and the gameplay is smooth. The instructions booklet gives you all the information you need to play the game in only a few pages.

The Bad
There are still a few problems with the game that take some getting used to. The first issue is that you can't always tell when the round is finished right away. It would have helped if there was an audio cue, or a round finished screen, to let you know it's time to start a new game or buy more equipment for the next round.

It would help to have an indicator on the screen for how many traps you have remaining, or how many men you have left before you need to go back to the headquarters.

As I said earlier, the graphics are decent, but they pale in comparison to other ports of this game, so the fact that it was available on other systems guaranteed that they were going to be the better buy than this one.

And while the gameplay is smooth, it does get repetitive because you're only ever doing the exact same thing over and over. And finally, it's too easy for the slimers to escape over the reach of your plasma guns, so half the time you don't have a chance to catch them.

The Bottom Line
Overall, it's a fun game on a limited system. Even more fun to keep track of your best scores and try to beat it next time or compare with your friends. If your only gaming system was an Atari 2600, then this game would definitely be worth buying, but if you had any other system with a port of this game, that one would be more worth it.

Atari 2600 · by NixieLake (28) · 2022

[ View all 8 player reviews ]

Trivia

Development

From Brad Fregger, Producer of Ghostbusters:

The game developers at Activision would often take the afternoon off to see a new movie that was exciting to us. One day we all decided to see Ghostbusters on the opening day. After the movie David Crane (Pitfall and Pitfall II) announced that he was going to do the game. As a founder of Activision, he had the power to get the wheels in motion and within a week we we're beginning development.

Crane had already been working on what would become the game, and made a beta version with the driving and franchising elements, but it wasn't until getting the Ghostbusters license that he had a setting for those game elements. The title screen sing-a-long feature of the computer version was not added until the week before the game was finished. In Retro Gamer 25 Crane mentioned that the game was created in six weeks. Normally it wouldn't be possible to create a game in such a short amount of time but Crane had a working engine of a racing game Car Wars. Thanks to the resource allocation segment that was embedded into the game, it was easy to replace guns, missiles and rockets into more Ghostbusters themed armaments. In the same issue of Retro Gamer Crane said that the original version of the game was created in 1984 on C64 and later, in 1985, it was ported to Atari 2600, Amstrad, Spectrum and MSX. SMS version appeared in 1987 and Mega Drive in 1990 however none of the people who were involved in creation of the original were not participating in the works over the last two versions.

License

Like the cartoon based on the movies, Activision was not allowed to use the likeness of the actors that performed in the movie.

Music

The game title music and speech based on the original theme music from the movie written by Ray Parker Jr.

NES version

The NES version of the game differs in a few ways from its computer counterparts. First, the driving sequences feature a "zoomed out" perspective, meaning that the Ghostbusters car is smaller on the screen and that there is more road to manuver over. Also, gone is the ability to purchase different vehicles (which was in all versions of the game). By contrast, there are more items to buy and equip from the shop than other versions. Finally, the NES version features a unique Temple of Zuul sequence at the end of the game where the Ghostbusters must slowly climb the stairwell of the building to the rooftop, avoiding the touch of enemy ghosts that fly around.

Sales

According to the magazine Retro Gamer (issue #1), the game was Mastertronic's #2 best selling game (412.922 copies).

Winston Zeddmore

Interestingly, the game does not portray, or even reference, Winston Zeddmore – Ernie Hudson's character in the film, and the sole black Ghostbuster. He does later appear in the game version of Ghostbusters II.

ZX Spectrum versions

  • Spectrum first version
    • In the rush for a pre-Christmas release, the Spectrum version did not work with the popular Kempston joystick interface. Even worse, the game crashed on selecting this joystick add-on. According to ACE (issue #15), thousands of copies had to be replaced with a working version.
  • 128K version
    • Two years after the 48K release an enhanced version of the game appeared. The only new addition was a funky AY version of Ray Parker Junior's theme song.

Awards

  • Happy Computer
    • Issue 02/1986 - #4 Best Game in 1985 (Readers' Vote)* Zzap!
    • Issue 01/1985 - #6 It's the Zzap! 64 Top 64!

Information also contributed by BurningStickMan, Garcia, Scott Monster and WildKard

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Old man gamer.

SEGA Master System, NES added by PCGamer77. ZX Spectrum added by Martin Smith. Atari 8-bit added by Terok Nor. Apple II, Commodore 64, Atari 2600 added by Servo. MSX added by Игги Друге. Amstrad CPC added by Katakis | カタキス.

Additional contributors: Brad Fregger, Sciere, Alaka, Martin Smith, François-Patrick Arteau, Macs Black, c64fan, Patrick Bregger, mailmanppa, Lain Crowley, Jo ST, FatherJack, ZeTomes.

Game added November 17, 2000. Last modified January 3, 2024.