Summary
The Best Ghostbusters game made
The Good
Well, I got it when I was a young boy and when Ghostbusters meant everything to me, and it blew my mind. First off, the game had well rendered graphics, somewhere between the 8-16 bit range. There were this amusing various little cut-scenes like newspapers that told you what was going on after you completed a mission, shots of Ecto-1A, shots of Venkman or Egon or Vigo... All around, the bright bold colors were just dazzling and fun. The game was divided into something like 2-3 mini games. The most fun was where you have to go into the river of slime to collect slime samples. If you were successful, you'd take the slime back to the lab, and try out all sorts of music on it to find which ones made positive mood slime that you needed to build the slime blowers. If you failed collecting the slime, your Ghostbuster would fall in the river, and thus a bizarre new mini game would begin. You had to climb down the building of the mental hospital where your buddy was being held, and swing into various windows hoping to find and free your friend. This was really hard, but off the wall and fun. The other part of the game was going out on Ghostbusting missions to zap and trap ghosts for money. This was also challenging, cause the more you destroyed of the store, the more money you lost, also there was a time limit. But, there were naughty little things like blasting the changing room at a women's department store and seeing frightened beautiful women run around in their lingerie.
The Bad
Well, on my original computer, the ghosts moved far too quickly to capture, and thus the game was impossible to beat. But then I installed it a few years later on a different computer, and all the sudden, the ghosts were catchable, and I actually got to the last level. But, I couldn't beat that either because you had to follow some ridiculous map that was in the instruction booklet and hard to read, to navigate the Statue of Liberty downtown. Also, when rescuing your fellow Ghostbusters at the mental hospital, it was impossible to tell what window they were hiding in, and most of the times you did it, you'd just get captured by the armed hospital guards, and lose another Ghostbuster. Also, the worst thing about the game was the overall time limit, counting down to New Years. Even if you made it to the last level, you have to beat it fast to beat this ever present clock.
The Bottom Line
I think, despite it being impossible in some parts, and overall lack of depth in length of game play, its still an incredible game. It was sort of ambitious for its diversity of mini games, and how they all kind of related to running a successful Ghostbusting business. The game wasn't forgiving at all for mistakes, and this was especially a challenge because the game play mechanics weren't so easy to master. But, it had great sound, great bold dazzling detailed 8-16 bit graphics, and most important, plenty of unique Ghostbuster action and humor.
