The Real Ghostbusters Longplay (C64) [50 FPS]
72Developed and published by Activision in 1989.
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Following the huge success of the 1980's film, the world went Ghostbusters-mad. A cartoon series followed, of which I was a massive fan. Data East developed an arcade coin-op based on the cartoon and where there is a coin-op, a slew of substandard conversions for home computers wouldn't be far behind.
The game is a strange hybrid of a top-down shooter, but with stylistic nods towards Capcom's Ghosts n' Goblins series (take a key to come in!). The only objective is to keep pushing towards the top of each stage, kill the guardian outside the level exit and to collect the key that it drops.
The player is equipped with two weapons with which to deal with the game's various ghoulish denizens. The first is a generic, single-shot cannon that can be used to release a ghost from the monster's initial form.Once released, the player can capture ghosts using the famous proton pack. Each captured ghost is transferred to the containment unit after completion of the level and bonus lives will be awarded for fifty or more ghosts captured.
By far the biggest problem with the game is the collision detection. The game is extremely picky when it comes to calculating if the ghost is trapped in the proton stream or not. To complicate matters, the ghosts head towards the player at angles that make hitting them extremely difficult.
The difficulty of the game meant that anyone with the tape version of the game was subjected to much painful rewinding and reloading of the tape. To this day, I don't know how we ever put up with multi-load tapes...
The arcade game on which this is based wasn't a great game to begin with and, to be fair, the C64 version does at least "work". David Whittaker produced a jolly, if rather short version of the Ghostbusters theme tune and the art work is reasonable.
I did notice that, despite having ten levels, some of the level layouts did repeat themselves (levels one and nine are the same).
The Real Ghostbusters isn't a terrible game, but it's just not enjoyable enough to recommend it. Anyone looking to scratch that Ghostbustin' itch should go and play the version by David Crane instead.
#retrogaming