I totally get why they'd have some sort of money management system, other than the holdover from when this was supposed to be a different game before they got the license. The Ghostbusters did charge for every bust, and in that first movie they were constantly on the verge of going completely broke until the supernatural activity started blowing up. Like that scene where they're all sitting around the table to Chinese take out and one of them says, "this 'feast' represents the last of our petty cash." Also, the reason why they were broken up at the beginning of the second movie. Though, I think the Genesis Ghostbusters game does it much better, getting paid after each big boss ghost to spend on weapons upgrades. Even though you have to suspend some disbelief that someone's selling them Ghostbusting gear, instead of Egon and Ray making them.
That digitized speech on the ZX Spectrum version will surely give you nightmares. Reminds me of ET Phone Home on the Atari 8-bit. Speaking of which, I'm most familiar with the Atari version and always enjoyed the heck out of it, despite never being able to get past the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
The thing about the game was... David Crane wasn't making a Ghostbusters game, but when Activision got the license, he just inserted the Ghostbusters elements in his original game. That's how they got to release the game close to the movie (4 months after)
Conglaturations!!! You reviewed a great game. and prooved the NES port is abismal. Now go and rest our heroes ! Personally, I own both 2600 and SMS versions of this game.
The C64 had a useful bug: If you placed your two men facing the same way and directly on top of each other so that their sprites overlap perfectly, the ghost will freeze when you fire the streams. This also avoids the possibility of accidentally crossing the streams. BTW, there's also a freeware Windows remake.
I had this on my Atari 65XE and I loved it as a kid! The tape took so long to load, the speech always scared me because I wasn't expecting it! I could never get past the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, but I always had a blast!! Great BotP Mark!!
@@RetroCore I had the same problem when I played the Master System version years later! To this day I still haven't managed to finish that game on either system!!
Going off memory, it took Activision 8 months to get the Atari 8-bit DISK version out in the UK and some 18 months to get the painfully slow cassette based version out, we loyal A8 owners were always shafted here in the UK as the system had failed to gain a market foothold, due to Atari's absurdly high initial pricing of the hardware and software for the A8 range 😭
Very nice to see the C64 version in NTSC mode. The funny thing is that in the US, the Master System port was released before the NES port. Btw, there is one missing version, the PC Booter which only works on Tandy 1000/IBM PCjr. It's fine from what I remember, though it has no speech. Visually it's most comparable to the Atari 8-bit version.
Yeah, I tried to get the PC Junior port to run but had a few problems so I just left it out. Playing Ghostbusters on a PAL C64 is way too slow. I had originally started to play it in PAL mode but noticed the music was chugging along.
@@ScatterbrainPete There is no specific PAL version. The game was only ever made in NTSC with no PAL optimization ever happening for European releases.
My favorate was the C64 original. A friend and I beat it and had a blast playing it back then. You're not kidding about the famicom/nes port. Just awful. I was so dissapointed. The Atari 2600 port was better than it had any right to be given the hardware. I need to try the Master System port. It looks great. Great video as always.
Good to hear some positivity about the Master System version. I quite enjoyed the added depth the business element added to things, and always thought the colours were rather nice. The Megadrive Ghostbusters game was much more simple and straightforward in comparison (although I'm sure it's more fun to play nowadays). For some reason, that part where you have to dodge the big marshmallow man in order to enter the building is forever burnt into my memory. I must have died a lot in that section!
Did you know that Compile also made the Mega drive game? Back in the day it looked amazing and still looks okay even now. The audio driver is a bit weak mind you.
@@RetroCore Compile were usually the shoot'em people, right? They did a nice job with that Ghostbusters game anyway. Japanese devs normally did great with the sound chips, even in those early MD games, so it's disappointing they didn't create a better OST, although I still think it's pretty decent (certainly better than those later US GENS soundtracks)
Yeah, I was kind of stuck for music. I couldn't use and mixes of the real theme because of copyright and all versions of the music from the 8Bit games is rather weak. So I went with the Mega Drive music.
Quite enjoyed the CPC version back in the day - think you reviewed the disc version here - I had the tape version, which didn't load anything in separately.
The movie was about 3 guys starting a small business, hiring employees and providing a service to the community. I think Dave Crane had it right, friend, you may want to go back and watch it again!
I still love the C64 version to this day. I got it for Christmas 1984 and the speech thing was HUGE for the time. The game, once I'd figured out what was going on, was a blast. I've gone back to it numerous times over the years as I find it a good "palette cleanser" of sorts when gaming starts to get boring.
The digitized speech of the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Apple II & Atari 8-bit versions sounds like they distorted it using a Ring Modulator - Max Headroom incident style. (3:15, 4:19, 5:23, 6:25)
One of those games that on the face of it seems very slow and dull yet at the same time I loved it. My brother and I got it for the zx spectrum on Christmas Day, we loaded it while my mum and dad watched. First thing it said was ‘do you have an account’ my mum quickly ran upstairs to get my brothers bank book and we tried entering his details to no avail. Doh! The spectrum version here seems to have 128k music, surely this game is far older than that or did they do a rerelease upgraded years later?
Yes, this is the 128k version but it says it was released in 1984 on the copyright screen. I guess it did come out late 1985 but they just didn't bother to edit the game code to show that.
The Atari 800 version was a missed opportunity, I expected cruder graphics, as the machine lacks the sprites of the C64, but it had a far wider colour range, yet some bizzare choices made here. There was a later 128K enhanced ZX Spectrum version i believe? Only enhancement, better music? The 2600 version is technically very impressive. Having owned this on the A8 and C64, I gave the Master System version.
Ghostbusters on 2600? Quite an impressive game for the system and certainly has much more depth than most other 2600 games. Ghostbusters on everything else (minus ZX Spectrum and Sega Master System)? Terrible. They didn't even bother adding anything to the game. Though that speech sample on the ZX Spectrum is very impressive. The best versions are the ones that manage to run well on lesser hardware (2600 and ZX Spectrum) and the one that flat out looks and plays the best (SMS)
in the later versions of the game (only loader changed). Im remember mine diddent contained it. Also Invadaload a patent Namco took, dispite its was a prior art. But its a different story.
I have quite fond memories of the Master System version. And find the presentation to be nice and colorful still. I was surprised at how good the C64 version looks. And that it was released the same year as the movie. That must have been a real showpiece back then. I remember that Ghostbusters laughing sound sample so one of my uncles must have showed it to me on their C64.
Ghostbusters was a pretty huge seller on the C64 and it was a quite solid and well made game, although when looking bit, it was a bit too simplistic even for that time. Compare that with eg Elite and you know what i mean.
After I woke up my wife with the Flute Busters Cover (here on YT) I found a fitting BotP Episode, how nice. Wife somehow didn´t felt much like Ghostbusters anymore, wonder why.
The wife is certainly possessed by an evil entity. Either call Ghostbusters or Pater Karras to exorcize her or simply exchange her for a new, not yet inherently evil wife.
Will anybody ever get nostalgic about the days when every single well known film release got a home computer game adaptation? Nearly always they were terrible, there's even an adaptation of Big Trouble in Little China. In hindsight, I wouldn't touch Ghostbusters with a ten Foot pole but I think the developers made the best of a situation where it was very difficult to succeed. You've got passable ghost catching and Ecto 1 driving, it could have been far worse.
The game was a huge commercial success and actually quite good, when it came out. I probably wouldn't want to play it for more than a single round today, but as a game at that time, it was ok. There where far worse movie licenced games, eg the infamous Highlander by Ocean. And some of those movie-tie in games were really good. Friday the 13th by Domark was a bad game, but playing it by killing everyone, so that Jason can''t was fun. also Death Wish III by Gremlin was great. I mean in which other game can you kill an innocent handbag waving granny with a Bazooka, leaving behind just a steaming pile of flesh ?
I'm seriously re-evaluating the Sega Master System games, especially the versions of the most famous western games of the time, like Impossible Mission or Leaderboard, this Ghostbusters confirms that often the best conversions were just for SMS
Yep. In Europe we loved the Master System. The NES wasn't even popular at all. Either you had a home computer or a Master System. Nintendo had always shafted Europe anyway until the Wii so kind of fitting Europe gave them the middle finger for so many years.
Yeah it has the best versions of a lot of games. Rampage, Fantasy Zone, Shinobi, Space Harrier, Double Dragon, Ghostbusters, Choplifter, and Operation Wolf to name a few. It also has really good ports of others like R-Type and Lemmings, but those are better on other systems like the TG16 version of R-Type and Amiga version of Lemmings.
@@RetroCore True. The only exception with a major European market mostly siding with the Nintendo consoles was Germany. They were big suckers for both the NES and the SNES, I'm not sure how those fared against the computer market but at least they outsold the Sega consoles in there. But the rest of the major European markets like the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Italy were pretty much like you mentioned indeed.
For the longest time I presumed Ghostbusters had originated on the Atari 8 bit computers and not the C64 (as it was often the case with earlier American games) but it looks like I was wrong. Anyways, in 1984-85 this game was really something and it seemed like there was so much going on into it. The AVGN review seems to have set in stone that it is a bad game (and he primarily played the NES version so it's understandible), but it shouldn't be dismissed as such. Not something I'd play today, but still it was cool and made a lot of sense at the time.
Not that many games originated on the Atari 8-Bit systems, if ported they came in those days often from the Apple II, although that practice mostly ended during 84 and turned around, primarily because those systems lost their early leading positions of sold units somewhere during late 83/early84. The culprits mostly responsible for initially porting to the C64 were Synapse, Broderbund, Datamost, Sirius and well of course Atari themselves in form of Atarisoft. When Ghostbusters appeared, this was already long over. A game they really should have ported to the C64, but didn't was the original Space Raiders.
The NES version is crap so AVGN does have a point there. The game isn't too bad. It was quite impressive in 1984 and the Master System version looked so nice when that was released.
I’m guessing you were playing a cracked or badly emulated version of the CPC game there because the logo absolutely does appear on the menu screen and it’s similar to the poor Speccy recreation of the international version (with the ghost facing left to right).
Ah, so it should have the logo? I though something odd was up with it being missing. Sadly, with old computer game rom images it's so hard to know what has been altered unless I'm familiar with the original game.
I was so confused playing the C64 port as I didn’t have a clue what to do my game was a back up so I had no instructions, the mega drive port is my favourite ghostbusters game
Ah, the Mega Drive game is a whole different game and much better for it. The interesting thing is that it was developed by Compile, the same developer who did the Master System Ghostbusters.
@@RetroCore I wasn’t aware compile developed the mega drive game, it’s definitely the best ghostbusters game around at the time, but the 8bit award definitely is the master system
The Apple II actually was a pretty major game platform in the US, at least. It was the birthplace of Ultima, Wizardry, Wolfenstein, Prince of Persia and many more legendary franchises. If nothing else, it remained a fixture in class rooms through the mid nineties (Or even later, if your district was particularly underfunded). Pretty much every American of a certain age who was subjected to public schooling has memories of playing Oregon Trail on an Apple II at some point during their childhood, even if they never had one at home.
How have you reached that conclusion? The DS version of Ghostbusters: The Video Game uses the same stylized aesthetic as the Redfly Studios versions for the Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstation2 but was developed by Zen Studios. Rather than a third person chase camera perspective, the DS version uses a top-down perspective for most of the game. The story is the same as the other versions but the Ghostbusters receive side missions as well as story missions which they can use to boost the populace's opinion of them. Unlike the other versions in this there is no rookie character and the player takes control of the four original Ghostbusters one at a time while issuing commands to the other three. The money earned from missions can be used to buy new equipment and take part in the resource management aspect of the game. Also, between the game hub of the Firehouse & the missions, there are driving segments which uses a chase camera perspective where the player takes Ecto-1 from location to location, catching ghosts along the way.
I fear Larry has his wires rather confused here, whilst the DS version, differs from others of the time (see detailed explanation in my reply to him above), none of the modern versions are remakes of the original.
Hear now the tale of a child that was tortured by the NES version - if I'm not mistaken that version came with a NES clone we had released here in Brazil and as such it was my only game for a long time. Well I got to finish it many, many times as a kid because time was infinite back then.
I have lots of nostalgia for this game. Discovering it on the C64 back then I was amazed at how much detailed and complex it was in comparison to the game systems I had.
A cracking battle thanks Mark, this is one of those games that I've never played as I thought it looked a bit boring tbh. I'm wondering whilst capturing some of this footage was it a sound off experience for you as that music was starting to piss me off by the end of the vid. what I do like though is the speech in the c64 version, can you remember how any sampled speech in a home game used to be such a massive deal, I remember playing Nam 75 for the first time with all the awesome Neo sound felt like such a big deal at the time. Some great memories triggered thanks.
By today's standards, its nothing special, but just a simple casual game. But having played it once for it's historic status can't hurt. You won't want to play it for hrs, but the first 2 or 3 rounds will be fun.
I've beaten the MSX version of this a dozen of times :) I actually would buy the cheapest car, just one ghost trap and the ghost bait which you need to quickly use when the Marshmallow monster appears in the map at near the end of the game. You don't need *any* other item other than these 2, and one ghost trap is more than enough. You NEVER move the icon on the map for no reason, because every step you move at the map is more time you waste driving your car. Always take the fastest route to wherever and never add unnecesary waypoints to your travel. And to capture the ghosts I always found easier to actually put the trap at the middle and the ghostbusters turned the back at each other. this way you would never cross the streams and somehow the ghost would usually above the trap and not "escape" right as you activate it. It sounds counter-intuitive but it actually worked better somehow :D Great video as usual, by the way :)
@@RetroCore Also never enter the building moving from the bottom of the screen. Moving sideways into the building is a lot easier. Line up with the door but stay at the left of it, away from the reach of the marshmallow monster. WHen it jumps right, move to the right. :) At least the MSX version had no stairs level nor gozer battle. I should give the SMS version a spin sometime :)
That Atari 8bit version looks like a crossover between The Smurfs, Ghostbusters and Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em ( that green ghost), I don't think anyone noticed or knows what I'm talking about. 😅
That would certainly be the case IRL,but you came to a youtube gaming channel, frequented by 30+ year old men, interested or obsessed with ancient video games (and possibly Japan too). This means you are talking plaintext to pretty much everyone here.
I remember the Master System game fondly, you had to enter a code to access your "save", I miss typed the code and my "save" was a random llace in the game with a ludicrous amount of cash...still couldn't clock it 😆
I’d say the best versions are the Atari 2600, ZX Spectrum, Atari 8-bit Computer, Commodore 64, and Master System versions. Also, it would be good to look at the different versions of Ghostbusters II, including the Activision NES version, the New Ghostbusters II from Japan and Europe, and Ghostbusters II on Game Boy.
@@RetroCore New Ghostbusters II by HAL was also released in Europe like he mentioned. Europe was the only region to receive both Ghostbusters II games for the NES. There's also a great lot of computer versions of Ghostbusters II (but sadly not a single Sega console version) so it's feasible to do a BOTP for that one too.
Back in 1990, a local Brazilian NES clone manufactured by Gradiente, the Phantom System, used to be sold bundled with the Ghostbusters cartridge as some sort of weird punishment for the customers. xD
@@RetroCore Gradiente had a strange sense of humor. lol I had a weird hybrid NES myself back then, manufactured by a company called "CCE". It had two slots: one for the NES cartridge and the other for Famicom. Looked weird as heck, it was very flimsy, but interesting nonetheless.
The Atari 2600 version prooves sometimes less is more for a great game. As for the Master System version, Compile did it justice! It's more like what the NES version should've been! Oh, and if you somehow beat the Famicom version, all you get is several minutes of a black screen before finally seeing "りり". Yeah...
I remember when came out, I had a 464 at the time, I think I got it in WHsmith, it was activisions first £10.99 game when games were £9.99, a sigh of things to come...
I can relate to that. Back in the day I played the Master System version a lot. It was really good or at least I thought it was. Now it's kind of just a grind until you get past Mr. Stay Puff.
I'd say MSX is not just a Spectrum port as long as it seems to use sprites, making the game very fluent and fast. Also the car seems to be made with sprites, unlike the Spectrum version.
Interesting to see all the versions as I had the game for my Master System and played it a lot. I'm surprised I figured out how the game worked at such a young age. Good thing Compile worked on that version and made it so playable. I recently saw the Console Wars video on this game so the issues with the NES version are fairly fresh in my mind. I can't believe how the developers designed the building stage on that version. I decided to revisit the Master System version a few years back and, to my surprise, I jumped right back in like no time had passed remembering how everything worked and I enjoyed the game much more than I expected. When I was a kid, I never did beat the game, but I could regularly get to stage three, the building stage. I reached the final stage quite a few times, but I never did beat it, but it was cool getting that far as beating games wasn't a regular thing for be back in those days. The sampled laughing reminds me of Strider!
Well, it is unless we include the PC Engine. Sadly most Americans seem to think its a 16bit console because of the marketing used over there. Truth is that the PC Engine is a 8bit machine and sadly blows the Master System out of the water. But take the PC Engine out of the equation and yeah, the Master System rocks.
Compile was a really talented development studio back in the day, and it shows when they managed to salvage a mediocre game like this. Really it's such a shame that a series of business mistakes caused them to eventually go bankrupt.
I've always been amazed how they churned out *so many* titles back in the 80s being such a small studio by then and *still* kept a high quality among all their releases. The amount of games the made between 85 and 89 is really high considering they had so few employees and they rarely, if ever, made a dud. They were really amazing indeed.
Safe to say this game is not New Ghostbusters 2, Ghostbusters Genesis, and especially not Ghostbusters the game. Usually the Nintendo home console version when it comes to ports is rarely ever the worst version. However, there is no denying in this situation that the NES version is just so horrendous that it easily makes all the others look better put together.
Are you running these on emulators? If so, the Amstrad one isn't doing a very good job with the speech. The speech isn't great there either, but better than in your video
I'd say the Xbox 360 version of the 2009 game is worth playing and the Mega Drive game. Also, check out HAL's version of Ghostbuster II for the Famicom. That's a good one.
this game was far from a diaster when compared to E.T. from those early license game. Actuelly im liked it back in the days, dispite newer saw the movie, but was also quite young kid as well, hihi. We owned the game on the C64, the original one.
I had well over $100,000 in my C64 Ghostbusters account before I stopped writing the codes down, back in the day. It's kind of pointless when you can already buy anything you want. I only wish the game's difficulty would increase the more starting cash you had.
When this game came out. I really enjoyed it on my Atari 800XL. When I picked up a cart for my Master System about 6 years ago, I couldn't seem to really get into it. IMO it hasn't really aged well. I do have a lot of fond memories playing it with my brother though and it's possible the first game I ever played that used a password system. I remember being fascinated with how it remembered your account without saving it to the disk.
My hat goes off to the talented bunch who worked on the Famicom/NES port. It must be hard to port a slightly outdated game to more powerful hardware yet make it worse in every conceivable way!
C64 is amazing. ZX Spectrum is a scaled back (somewhat) version of C64. CPC is abysmal. Apple ][ is better than most pc ports. Atari 8bit is there. MSX is no different than ZX Spectrum. 2600 knows how to work within limits. NES is very tedious to play and possibly broken. Master System is very good.
2600 port more playable than NES port...What were developers thinking? What's even more sad, is that even NES port is more playable, than that abysmal Female Ghostbusters game from 2016.
Oh man, don't talk about the cringe worthy 2016 movie. So bad in many ways. In fact, the only Ghostbuster I liked in that was the one who had the brown / reddish hair. The one who was supposed to be Eigon was unrealistically stupid, the coloured lady was the typical loud mouth in your face stereo type, the short fat one (possibly ray?)was rude and unfunny. Then there is the main villain who had zero appeal. And what is it with the dumb camp macho guy? Just a poor movie all over that was made worse by having it as part of the Ghostbusters franchise.
Ah, the wonderful world of the early home computers, where any movie turned into a game with almost nothing related with the inspiration source. :D And the Atari2600 Port is really impressive!!
![ILLSLICK - KILLSHOT REMIX [FULL VERSION]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/RIK8RrqIAzE/mqdefault.jpg)
I totally get why they'd have some sort of money management system, other than the holdover from when this was supposed to be a different game before they got the license. The Ghostbusters did charge for every bust, and in that first movie they were constantly on the verge of going completely broke until the supernatural activity started blowing up. Like that scene where they're all sitting around the table to Chinese take out and one of them says, "this 'feast' represents the last of our petty cash." Also, the reason why they were broken up at the beginning of the second movie. Though, I think the Genesis Ghostbusters game does it much better, getting paid after each big boss ghost to spend on weapons upgrades. Even though you have to suspend some disbelief that someone's selling them Ghostbusting gear, instead of Egon and Ray making them.
That digitized speech on the ZX Spectrum version will surely give you nightmares. Reminds me of ET Phone Home on the Atari 8-bit. Speaking of which, I'm most familiar with the Atari version and always enjoyed the heck out of it, despite never being able to get past the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.
The thing about the game was... David Crane wasn't making a Ghostbusters game, but when Activision got the license, he just inserted the Ghostbusters elements in his original game. That's how they got to release the game close to the movie (4 months after)
I wonder if the original version was ever released.
Conglaturations!!! You reviewed a great game. and prooved the NES port is abismal. Now go and rest our heroes ! Personally, I own both 2600 and SMS versions of this game.
nice. I see what you did there.
Yeah right on! Proove the justice of our culture!
The end game message yeah baby!!!
The C64 had a useful bug: If you placed your two men facing the same way and directly on top of each other so that their sprites overlap perfectly, the ghost will freeze when you fire the streams. This also avoids the possibility of accidentally crossing the streams.
BTW, there's also a freeware Windows remake.
Wow, never knew about the windows version. Wish I had know about that.
I remember playing the C-64 version for hours every day after school. Once you got into it, it was addicting.
Oh my god, I love how the speech is literally just the same guy yelling stuff into the computer
It is! I think I even say a credit for the voice in one version.
I had this on my Atari 65XE and I loved it as a kid! The tape took so long to load, the speech always scared me because I wasn't expecting it! I could never get past the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, but I always had a blast!! Great BotP Mark!!
Ah, getting past Stay Puff was rally tricky. I remember dying so many time on that screen when I owned the Master System cartridge back in the UK.
@@RetroCore I had the same problem when I played the Master System version years later! To this day I still haven't managed to finish that game on either system!!
Going off memory, it took Activision 8 months to get the Atari 8-bit DISK version out in the UK and some 18 months to get the painfully slow cassette based version out, we loyal A8 owners were always shafted here in the UK as the system had failed to gain a market foothold, due to Atari's absurdly high initial pricing of the hardware and software for the A8 range 😭
I guess it's a miracle you got the game at all. I had a Commodore Plus 4 :( No Ghostbusters for me.
I wonder if Ray Parker Jr ever got any royalties from these games?
I doubt it. The initial co Tracy would probably have something included for this kind of use.
Of all versions, the FC port is the only one who included Japanese text. And, never forget the *りり* ending.
Any it's also the only one to suck really badly )
The Amstrad CPC's scrolling caption for crossing the streams is 'You crossed the streamers'! What, like decorations?
lol, yes, that's right.
Very nice to see the C64 version in NTSC mode. The funny thing is that in the US, the Master System port was released before the NES port. Btw, there is one missing version, the PC Booter which only works on Tandy 1000/IBM PCjr. It's fine from what I remember, though it has no speech. Visually it's most comparable to the Atari 8-bit version.
Yeah, I tried to get the PC Junior port to run but had a few problems so I just left it out.
Playing Ghostbusters on a PAL C64 is way too slow. I had originally started to play it in PAL mode but noticed the music was chugging along.
@@RetroCore So you simply played the PAL version in NTSC mode? As far as I'm aware, the original NTSC version is next to impossible to find anywhere.
@@ScatterbrainPete There is no specific PAL version. The game was only ever made in NTSC with no PAL optimization ever happening for European releases.
The fourth Ghostbuster, Ernie Hudson was busy driving, and not catching ghosts in this game...
Ah, so that's where he is.
My favorate was the C64 original. A friend and I beat it and had a blast playing it back then. You're not kidding about the famicom/nes port. Just awful. I was so dissapointed. The Atari 2600 port was better than it had any right to be given the hardware. I need to try the Master System port. It looks great. Great video as always.
Good to hear some positivity about the Master System version. I quite enjoyed the added depth the business element added to things, and always thought the colours were rather nice. The Megadrive Ghostbusters game was much more simple and straightforward in comparison (although I'm sure it's more fun to play nowadays). For some reason, that part where you have to dodge the big marshmallow man in order to enter the building is forever burnt into my memory. I must have died a lot in that section!
Did you know that Compile also made the Mega drive game? Back in the day it looked amazing and still looks okay even now. The audio driver is a bit weak mind you.
@@RetroCore Compile were usually the shoot'em people, right? They did a nice job with that Ghostbusters game anyway. Japanese devs normally did great with the sound chips, even in those early MD games, so it's disappointing they didn't create a better OST, although I still think it's pretty decent (certainly better than those later US GENS soundtracks)
Oh dear... I don't even know how many hours I have played that C64 version of this game when I was young.
Nice touch playing the Woody House stage theme from the Genesis/MD Ghostbusters game at the end.
Yeah, I was kind of stuck for music. I couldn't use and mixes of the real theme because of copyright and all versions of the music from the 8Bit games is rather weak. So I went with the Mega Drive music.
I have played the Master System version as a kid, a lot of fun with the Sega 8bit version.
Quite enjoyed the CPC version back in the day - think you reviewed the disc version here - I had the tape version, which didn't load anything in separately.
Glad you enjoyed it. It's certainly better than some other versions.
The movie was about 3 guys starting a small business, hiring employees and providing a service to the community. I think Dave Crane had it right, friend, you may want to go back and watch it again!
I still love the C64 version to this day. I got it for Christmas 1984 and the speech thing was HUGE for the time. The game, once I'd figured out what was going on, was a blast. I've gone back to it numerous times over the years as I find it a good "palette cleanser" of sorts when gaming starts to get boring.
Love the Master System, but dang that music!
Didn't know about the Apple ][ version. I would have loved playing this back in the day.
The digitized speech of the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC, Apple II & Atari 8-bit versions sounds like they distorted it using a Ring Modulator - Max Headroom incident style. (3:15, 4:19, 5:23, 6:25)
C64 one blew me away when I got it in 85!
I own three of the ports. 2600, NES, and SMS. As you say, the SMS version is the best.
One of those games that on the face of it seems very slow and dull yet at the same time I loved it. My brother and I got it for the zx spectrum on Christmas Day, we loaded it while my mum and dad watched. First thing it said was ‘do you have an account’ my mum quickly ran upstairs to get my brothers bank book and we tried entering his details to no avail. Doh! The spectrum version here seems to have 128k music, surely this game is far older than that or did they do a rerelease upgraded years later?
The 128k version was released just after the first 128k Spectrums were released.
Yes, this is the 128k version but it says it was released in 1984 on the copyright screen. I guess it did come out late 1985 but they just didn't bother to edit the game code to show that.
The Atari 800 version was a missed opportunity, I expected cruder graphics, as the machine lacks the sprites of the C64, but it had a far wider colour range, yet some bizzare choices made here.
There was a later 128K enhanced ZX Spectrum version i believe?
Only enhancement, better music?
The 2600 version is technically very impressive.
Having owned this on the A8 and C64, I gave the Master System version.
Yeah, the 128k version was released just after the computer, so later 1985. Same game besides the music.
Ghostbusters on 2600? Quite an impressive game for the system and certainly has much more depth than most other 2600 games.
Ghostbusters on everything else (minus ZX Spectrum and Sega Master System)? Terrible. They didn't even bother adding anything to the game. Though that speech sample on the ZX Spectrum is very impressive. The best versions are the ones that manage to run well on lesser hardware (2600 and ZX Spectrum) and the one that flat out looks and plays the best (SMS)
I played the zx Spectrum version as a kid. Didn't matter that it was terrible it was friggin Ghostbusters. Loved the new movie btw
I'll be seeing the new movie in February. Japan gets it last but we do get Matrix 4 a few days before everyone else 😅
@@RetroCore Hope you enjoy it mate.
I remember the c64 version had a space invaders game whilst it loaded which we preferred to the actual game although we did enjoy that too 😂
Invadaload? 😂
in the later versions of the game (only loader changed). Im remember mine diddent contained it. Also Invadaload a patent Namco took, dispite its was a prior art. But its a different story.
Ghostbuster on SMS is one of my first videogames and I loved it ^^
I have quite fond memories of the Master System version. And find the presentation to be nice and colorful still. I was surprised at how good the C64 version looks. And that it was released the same year as the movie. That must have been a real showpiece back then. I remember that Ghostbusters laughing sound sample so one of my uncles must have showed it to me on their C64.
Ghostbusters was a pretty huge seller on the C64 and it was a quite solid and well made game, although when looking bit, it was a bit too simplistic even for that time. Compare that with eg Elite and you know what i mean.
After I woke up my wife with the Flute Busters Cover (here on YT) I found a fitting BotP Episode, how nice. Wife somehow didn´t felt much like Ghostbusters anymore, wonder why.
The wife is certainly possessed by an evil entity. Either call Ghostbusters or Pater Karras to exorcize her or simply exchange her for a new, not yet inherently evil wife.
nice coincidence :)
@@RetroCore It´s so terrible (Flute Busters) she picked it as alarm on her mobile now. Joke is on me now it seems.
Remember AVGN? If you do, conglaturations it's a shitty NES port of the ghostbusters computer game as he discovered it in part 2!
yep, I remember that one. He was right though. The NES port is crap.
Talk about timing!
I was literally looking up information about the Genesis Ghostbusters game and this popped up on my notifications haha
Hope you enjoy it! Also, used the MD Ghostbusters music for the opening and ending :)
Will anybody ever get nostalgic about the days when every single well known film release got a home computer game adaptation? Nearly always they were terrible, there's even an adaptation of Big Trouble in Little China. In hindsight, I wouldn't touch Ghostbusters with a ten Foot pole but I think the developers made the best of a situation where it was very difficult to succeed. You've got passable ghost catching and Ecto 1 driving, it could have been far worse.
The game was a huge commercial success and actually quite good, when it came out. I probably wouldn't want to play it for more than a single round today, but as a game at that time, it was ok. There where far worse movie licenced games, eg the infamous Highlander by Ocean. And some of those movie-tie in games were really good. Friday the 13th by Domark was a bad game, but playing it by killing everyone, so that Jason can''t was fun. also Death Wish III by Gremlin was great. I mean in which other game can you kill an innocent handbag waving granny with a Bazooka, leaving behind just a steaming pile of flesh ?
I agree. Most film to game adaptations even now are still awful.
As a kid with an *Atari 2600* and later a *C64* I will confess to getting suckered into buying several movie licensed games throughout the 80s.
Another great video. I bet that theme tune got to you by the time you had finished.
Oh yes!
I'm seriously re-evaluating the Sega Master System games, especially the versions of the most famous western games of the time, like Impossible Mission or Leaderboard, this Ghostbusters confirms that often the best conversions were just for SMS
Yep. In Europe we loved the Master System. The NES wasn't even popular at all. Either you had a home computer or a Master System.
Nintendo had always shafted Europe anyway until the Wii so kind of fitting Europe gave them the middle finger for so many years.
Yeah it has the best versions of a lot of games. Rampage, Fantasy Zone, Shinobi, Space Harrier, Double Dragon, Ghostbusters, Choplifter, and Operation Wolf to name a few. It also has really good ports of others like R-Type and Lemmings, but those are better on other systems like the TG16 version of R-Type and Amiga version of Lemmings.
@@RetroCore True. The only exception with a major European market mostly siding with the Nintendo consoles was Germany. They were big suckers for both the NES and the SNES, I'm not sure how those fared against the computer market but at least they outsold the Sega consoles in there. But the rest of the major European markets like the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Italy were pretty much like you mentioned indeed.
Holy shit! The Amstrad version's title screen is horrifying!
For the longest time I presumed Ghostbusters had originated on the Atari 8 bit computers and not the C64 (as it was often the case with earlier American games) but it looks like I was wrong. Anyways, in 1984-85 this game was really something and it seemed like there was so much going on into it. The AVGN review seems to have set in stone that it is a bad game (and he primarily played the NES version so it's understandible), but it shouldn't be dismissed as such. Not something I'd play today, but still it was cool and made a lot of sense at the time.
Not that many games originated on the Atari 8-Bit systems, if ported they came in those days often from the Apple II, although that practice mostly ended during 84 and turned around, primarily because those systems lost their early leading positions of sold units somewhere during late 83/early84. The culprits mostly responsible for initially porting to the C64 were Synapse, Broderbund, Datamost, Sirius and well of course Atari themselves in form of Atarisoft. When Ghostbusters appeared, this was already long over.
A game they really should have ported to the C64, but didn't was the original Space Raiders.
The NES version is crap so AVGN does have a point there. The game isn't too bad. It was quite impressive in 1984 and the Master System version looked so nice when that was released.
I actually thought it originated on the Apple ][, which was where I first played it.
I’m guessing you were playing a cracked or badly emulated version of the CPC game there because the logo absolutely does appear on the menu screen and it’s similar to the poor Speccy recreation of the international version (with the ghost facing left to right).
Sorry, “title screen” I should say.
Ah, so it should have the logo? I though something odd was up with it being missing.
Sadly, with old computer game rom images it's so hard to know what has been altered unless I'm familiar with the original game.
I was so confused playing the C64 port as I didn’t have a clue what to do my game was a back up so I had no instructions, the mega drive port is my favourite ghostbusters game
Ah, the Mega Drive game is a whole different game and much better for it. The interesting thing is that it was developed by Compile, the same developer who did the Master System Ghostbusters.
@@RetroCore I wasn’t aware compile developed the mega drive game, it’s definitely the best ghostbusters game around at the time, but the 8bit award definitely is the master system
c64 was my jam. thank you. haven't seen it in ages.
The C64 always surprised. Either with how great it handles games or how poorly most racing games end up on it.
The Apple II actually was a pretty major game platform in the US, at least. It was the birthplace of Ultima, Wizardry, Wolfenstein, Prince of Persia and many more legendary franchises.
If nothing else, it remained a fixture in class rooms through the mid nineties (Or even later, if your district was particularly underfunded). Pretty much every American of a certain age who was subjected to public schooling has memories of playing Oregon Trail on an Apple II at some point during their childhood, even if they never had one at home.
Ah, kind of like the BBC Micro in the UK although that only really gave birth to Elite.
I did hear that the DS Ghostbusters game is somewhat of a remake of this.
I don't know about that.
How have you reached that conclusion?
The DS version of Ghostbusters: The Video Game uses the same stylized aesthetic as the Redfly Studios versions for the Nintendo Wii and Sony Playstation2 but was developed by Zen Studios. Rather than a third person chase camera perspective, the DS version uses a top-down perspective for most of the game. The story is the same as the other versions but the Ghostbusters receive side missions as well as story missions which they can use to boost the populace's opinion of them. Unlike the other versions in this there is no rookie character and the player takes control of the four original Ghostbusters one at a time while issuing commands to the other three. The money earned from missions can be used to buy new equipment and take part in the resource management aspect of the game. Also, between the game hub of the Firehouse & the missions, there are driving segments which uses a chase camera perspective where the player takes Ecto-1 from location to location, catching ghosts along the way.
I fear Larry has his wires rather confused here, whilst the DS version, differs from others of the time (see detailed explanation in my reply to him above), none of the modern versions are remakes of the original.
Very Impressed at the Atari 2600 version.
Hear now the tale of a child that was tortured by the NES version - if I'm not mistaken that version came with a NES clone we had released here in Brazil and as such it was my only game for a long time. Well I got to finish it many, many times as a kid because time was infinite back then.
I have lots of nostalgia for this game. Discovering it on the C64 back then I was amazed at how much detailed and complex it was in comparison to the game systems I had.
A cracking battle thanks Mark, this is one of those games that I've never played as I thought it looked a bit boring tbh. I'm wondering whilst capturing some of this footage was it a sound off experience for you as that music was starting to piss me off by the end of the vid. what I do like though is the speech in the c64 version, can you remember how any sampled speech in a home game used to be such a massive deal, I remember playing Nam 75 for the first time with all the awesome Neo sound felt like such a big deal at the time. Some great memories triggered thanks.
By today's standards, its nothing special, but just a simple casual game. But having played it once for it's historic status can't hurt.
You won't want to play it for hrs, but the first 2 or 3 rounds will be fun.
lol, I had the sound on while playing the whole 3 hours it too me to capture footage. Yeah, it was pissing me off :p
Ghostbusters were always short of money so tha fact that money is so essential part of the games is real irony.
I've only ever played the C64 version of this, but now I'm definitely going to have a stab at the SMS one
Get ready for the climbing of Diana's building and the final confrontation with Goza. That's a tough one.
I've beaten the MSX version of this a dozen of times :)
I actually would buy the cheapest car, just one ghost trap and the ghost bait which you need to quickly use when the Marshmallow monster appears in the map at near the end of the game. You don't need *any* other item other than these 2, and one ghost trap is more than enough.
You NEVER move the icon on the map for no reason, because every step you move at the map is more time you waste driving your car. Always take the fastest route to wherever and never add unnecesary waypoints to your travel.
And to capture the ghosts I always found easier to actually put the trap at the middle and the ghostbusters turned the back at each other. this way you would never cross the streams and somehow the ghost would usually above the trap and not "escape" right as you activate it. It sounds counter-intuitive but it actually worked better somehow :D
Great video as usual, by the way :)
Some nice gameplay tips there. Thanks for sharing.
@@RetroCore Also never enter the building moving from the bottom of the screen. Moving sideways into the building is a lot easier. Line up with the door but stay at the left of it, away from the reach of the marshmallow monster. WHen it jumps right, move to the right.
:)
At least the MSX version had no stairs level nor gozer battle. I should give the SMS version a spin sometime :)
I had this on my Atari 65xe, and I loved it, holds a lot of nostalgia
This is going to be fun. GOESHTBUSHTERS
That Atari 8bit version looks like a crossover between The Smurfs, Ghostbusters and Beat 'Em & Eat 'Em ( that green ghost), I don't think anyone noticed or knows what I'm talking about.
😅
Ahhh the infamous Atari 2600 title 😂
That would certainly be the case IRL,but you came to a youtube gaming channel, frequented by 30+ year old men, interested or obsessed with ancient video games (and possibly Japan too). This means you are talking plaintext to pretty much everyone here.
Beat'em and Eat'em Nasty game.
I have fond memories of the C64 version of this.
Ghostbusters on the 2600 a surprise? Not as much as the fact that it got Ghostbusters II as well :-O
It did? Bloody hell. I need to check that one out.
I remember the Master System game fondly, you had to enter a code to access your "save", I miss typed the code and my "save" was a random llace in the game with a ludicrous amount of cash...still couldn't clock it 😆
I’d say the best versions are the Atari 2600, ZX Spectrum, Atari 8-bit Computer, Commodore 64, and Master System versions.
Also, it would be good to look at the different versions of Ghostbusters II, including the Activision NES version, the New Ghostbusters II from Japan and Europe, and Ghostbusters II on Game Boy.
Ghostbusters II is a tricky one since the only one playing is the game by HAL but that7S only on the Famicom I think.
@@RetroCore New Ghostbusters II by HAL was also released in Europe like he mentioned. Europe was the only region to receive both Ghostbusters II games for the NES. There's also a great lot of computer versions of Ghostbusters II (but sadly not a single Sega console version) so it's feasible to do a BOTP for that one too.
Had no idea there was a Master System port.
Man, that's the best port too!
Back in 1990, a local Brazilian NES clone manufactured by Gradiente, the Phantom System, used to be sold bundled with the Ghostbusters cartridge as some sort of weird punishment for the customers. xD
Ah they went with Sega tactic of using a popular license, but instead of a quality game they used a turd.
lol, you bought a clone so play a shitty game on a your shitty system :p Actually, the Phantom NES clone looked quite cool.
@@RetroCore Gradiente had a strange sense of humor. lol I had a weird hybrid NES myself back then, manufactured by a company called "CCE". It had two slots: one for the NES cartridge and the other for Famicom. Looked weird as heck, it was very flimsy, but interesting nonetheless.
The Atari 2600 version prooves sometimes less is more for a great game. As for the Master System version, Compile did it justice! It's more like what the NES version should've been!
Oh, and if you somehow beat the Famicom version, all you get is several minutes of a black screen before finally seeing "りり". Yeah...
I remember when came out, I had a 464 at the time, I think I got it in WHsmith, it was activisions first £10.99 game when games were £9.99, a sigh of things to come...
9.99, I was a Commodore Plus 4 owner so most of my games were Mastertronic 1.99 specials 😅
just read the spelling errors but you got the point! it was saturday night!
@@RetroCore I still have that 464 and the copy of the game
lol, they looked like Smurfs in the Atari version
I can relate to that. Back in the day I played the Master System version a lot. It was really good or at least I thought it was. Now it's kind of just a grind until you get past Mr. Stay Puff.
I'd say MSX is not just a Spectrum port as long as it seems to use sprites, making the game very fluent and fast. Also the car seems to be made with sprites, unlike the Spectrum version.
They may have changed a few background layers to sprites but the base of it is based upon the speccy.
Interesting to see all the versions as I had the game for my Master System and played it a lot. I'm surprised I figured out how the game worked at such a young age. Good thing Compile worked on that version and made it so playable. I recently saw the Console Wars video on this game so the issues with the NES version are fairly fresh in my mind. I can't believe how the developers designed the building stage on that version. I decided to revisit the Master System version a few years back and, to my surprise, I jumped right back in like no time had passed remembering how everything worked and I enjoyed the game much more than I expected. When I was a kid, I never did beat the game, but I could regularly get to stage three, the building stage. I reached the final stage quite a few times, but I never did beat it, but it was cool getting that far as beating games wasn't a regular thing for be back in those days.
The sampled laughing reminds me of Strider!
I do remember beating Goza back in the day but I also remember that being a fluke. The last battle was pretty tough.
The dissonant tones were maddening
Try playing all the versions for hours :( Drove me nuts.
@@RetroCore well. We appreciate your sacrifice.
The reason why the Master System port is the best is because the Sega Master System is the best 8-bit console.
Well, it is unless we include the PC Engine. Sadly most Americans seem to think its a 16bit console because of the marketing used over there. Truth is that the PC Engine is a 8bit machine and sadly blows the Master System out of the water. But take the PC Engine out of the equation and yeah, the Master System rocks.
This game was rather nice on Commodore 64, certainly better than other licensed crap. But now I consider the Master System version the best
Compile was a really talented development studio back in the day, and it shows when they managed to salvage a mediocre game like this.
Really it's such a shame that a series of business mistakes caused them to eventually go bankrupt.
I've always been amazed how they churned out *so many* titles back in the 80s being such a small studio by then and *still* kept a high quality among all their releases. The amount of games the made between 85 and 89 is really high considering they had so few employees and they rarely, if ever, made a dud.
They were really amazing indeed.
It's so sad how amazing studios have either been shut down or swallowed up by no talent corporations.
Safe to say this game is not New Ghostbusters 2, Ghostbusters Genesis, and especially not Ghostbusters the game.
Usually the Nintendo home console version when it comes to ports is rarely ever the worst version. However, there is no denying in this situation that the NES version is just so horrendous that it easily makes all the others look better put together.
Are you running these on emulators? If so, the Amstrad one isn't doing a very good job with the speech. The speech isn't great there either, but better than in your video
i am a gigantic ghostbusters fan but never played any of the games not even the 2009 one. :( that genesis one looks fun
I'd say the Xbox 360 version of the 2009 game is worth playing and the Mega Drive game. Also, check out HAL's version of Ghostbuster II for the Famicom. That's a good one.
A meritory 2600 version, but Master System is the best by far.
Amazing BotP Mark. Need to buy now a ghost vaccum urgently.
lol, imagine if such a thing actually excisted.
I aint afraid of no Mark.
You would be if you saw me in a foul mood :p
@@RetroCore fair enough !
For some reason, you omitted synthesized speech in the opening of C64 version.
It's there but very difficult to hear as the opening music kind of drowns it out.
I played ghostbusters 2 on the Genesis and the newer games on PS3/360 and ps4/xone, but never played this one.
I love Master System version. It’s the best version for me
I swear to god if I get the theme stuck in my head this is your fault :P
Lol 😁 you're lucky. I was listening to it for hours.
@@RetroCore I don't envy you...especially with how... painful... some of those old home computers can be with their "music"
Your amstrad emulator is having some issue: there IS a logo on the title scrreen.
Peace!
Thought there was something wrong. I don't think it's an emulator issue though. Probably a hacked rom.
I got this game for Christmas when I was young. (Nes) Damn near ruined my childhood.
Poor kids who got this turd. While in the UK the kids were playing one of the home micro ports or the Master System one.
For my birthday I got kid icarus. Love the nes and love Sega too. Shining force is amazing.
this game was far from a diaster when compared to E.T. from those early license game. Actuelly im liked it back in the days, dispite newer saw the movie, but was also quite young kid as well, hihi. We owned the game on the C64, the original one.
I think I was 10 when Ghostbusters came out. I remember my mum taking my brother and I to the cinema to watch it.
Nice
ROLF.... wow completely forgot this game came from the C64... iirc I played the SMS version and back then did not know how the other versions fared.
I had well over $100,000 in my C64 Ghostbusters account before I stopped writing the codes down, back in the day. It's kind of pointless when you can already buy anything you want. I only wish the game's difficulty would increase the more starting cash you had.
When this game came out. I really enjoyed it on my Atari 800XL. When I picked up a cart for my Master System about 6 years ago, I couldn't seem to really get into it. IMO it hasn't really aged well. I do have a lot of fond memories playing it with my brother though and it's possible the first game I ever played that used a password system. I remember being fascinated with how it remembered your account without saving it to the disk.
Sega master system version is so great & my childhood fav!
Who are you gonna call? :D
My hat goes off to the talented bunch who worked on the Famicom/NES port. It must be hard to port a slightly outdated game to more powerful hardware yet make it worse in every conceivable way!
So, AVGN WASN'T exaggerating about the NES version....
Nope, it's crap.
the Master system was best one i think
So desperate for a bit of audio variety that you had to use the Megadrive game's music on the opening and end cards. :)
Yep. I originally wanted to use a remixed track but they all kept hitting a copyright strike.
@@RetroCore Modern TH-cam really is the worst thing to happen to TH-cam creators.
Amstrad CPC looks like it was programmed in BASIC. And the NES version is unfair on the stairs, as the ghosts keep moving up as the screen scrolls.
Yeah, I'm not sure what is going on with that CPC port. It's not good at all.
The graphics on the Master system are really nice, but isn't the music out of key?
lol, you can say that gain. Not sure what they were going for with the odd music.
C64 is amazing. ZX Spectrum is a scaled back (somewhat) version of C64. CPC is abysmal. Apple ][ is better than most pc ports. Atari 8bit is there. MSX is no different than ZX Spectrum. 2600 knows how to work within limits. NES is very tedious to play and possibly broken. Master System is very good.
2600 port more playable than NES port...What were developers thinking? What's even more sad, is that even NES port is more playable, than that abysmal Female Ghostbusters game from 2016.
Oh man, don't talk about the cringe worthy 2016 movie. So bad in many ways. In fact, the only Ghostbuster I liked in that was the one who had the brown / reddish hair. The one who was supposed to be Eigon was unrealistically stupid, the coloured lady was the typical loud mouth in your face stereo type, the short fat one (possibly ray?)was rude and unfunny. Then there is the main villain who had zero appeal. And what is it with the dumb camp macho guy?
Just a poor movie all over that was made worse by having it as part of the Ghostbusters franchise.
Am i the only one who says Feel Good or Ronaldinho Soccer after every Digitized Laugh?
Wow that 2600 version is seriously impressive! The master system definitely is the best but what’s up with the super sped up music?
I think the music is fast because I'm playing on a NTSC Master System.
@@RetroCore aha that makes sense
COOL !
Ah, the wonderful world of the early home computers, where any movie turned into a game with almost nothing related with the inspiration source. :D
And the Atari2600 Port is really impressive!!