There have been two video games based on the original movie Ghostbusters.

Ghostbusters (Activision)

Ghostbusters was a licensed game by Activision. It was designed by David Crane and released for several home computer platforms in 1984, and later for video game console systems.

The player sets up a ghost busting franchise in a city with a rising Psychokinetic Energy Level (PK Energy) and has the ability to purchase equipment such as traps, or to upgrade their vehicle. The player then negotiates a grid representing the city. They need to stop the "roamers" from reaching the temple of Zuul (which causes the PK Energy level to jump). When the player moves to a city block that is flashing red, the game mode switches to an overhead view of the player's vehicle driving to the location. The player must move left and right to vacuum up the stray ghosts. The player then moves to a screen in which a Slimer ghost must be guided with two proton streams over a ghost trap.

If the ghost is successfully captured, the player's income increases. The aim is to have $10,000 by the time the city's PK level reaches 9999. In some versions (e.g. the Commodore 64 version), after the first successful game, the player is given an account number, which stores the amount of money the player had at the end of the game. This allowed for purchasing more expensive items for use (faster cars, more traps etc.). In order to win at these games the player was required to have earned more money than their initial account balance. This is one of the earliest uses of passwords being used as a 'save game' feature on home computers.

Some ports of the game (especially the ZX Spectrum and the Commodore 64 version) are significant for their attempt at playing back rudimentary speech samples ("Ghostbusters!", "He slimed me!"), a novelty at the time. The Commodore 64 version was noted for having the best synthesised speech and music, with a very good representation of the Ghostbusters theme song used as background music.

Cheats

Entering the name "LM" and the account number as "LM102030" gives the player a great deal of money.

Ghostbusters (SEGA)

Ghostbusters was released by Sega for the Genesis in 1990. It is unreleated to the earlier Activision game, and is instead a straight forward platform game in which the player takes control of squat cartoon representations of the three Ghostbusters from the movie.

External links

• MobyGames' entry on all versions of Ghostbusters