Pixelated Proton Packs: A Look at Fan-Created Ghostbusters Games
Ghostbusters games have been really hit or miss over the years. Sure, fans have gotten Ghostbusters: The Video Game, which was essentially a Ghostbusters 3 long before Ghostbusters Afterlife. But we've also had The Real Ghostbusters on Game Boy, which had so little to do with the license that it was actually just a Mickey Mouse puzzle platformer that they changed the character art in.
So, I thought it would be fun to take a look at a few Ghostbusters games that fans have either taken it upon themselves to make entirely from scratch or tweaked other existing Ghostbusters games to improve them in some way.
Ghostbusters Special Edition (Genesis romhack)
First up is the latest one, and probably the most well-known. BillyTime! Games decided to right a great wrong and make Winston a playable character in the classic Sega sidescroller! I always found it super weird that Winston was not in this game at all. There's four Ghostbusters, man! Anyway, Winston has unique stats and a great looking new sprite! And they did more than just add Winston, we also get to play as Louis Tully! Louis has the worst stats of anyone in the game, which I mean I guess that checks out. There's also a variety of colors you can now choose for your buster's flight suit, which is a nice addition.
Since this was on the Genesis, I'm not nearly as familiar with it as some of the other Ghostbusters games. I was a Nintendo kid, and I was perfectly happy with that, although I did feel a pang of regret when I would walk into an Electronics Boutique and see this 16-bit Ghostbusters game on the shelf that I was not going to be able to play. It was many many years later than I finally got to try it. It's a challenging game to be sure, and one of these days I'm going to make myself sit down and seriously make a go of finishing it.
The Real Ghostbusters Remastered (NES romhack)
I really tried to get into this one. I mean, someone went through a LOT of work to fix up this NES game. The NES port of Ghostbusters, which originally released for the Commodore 64, is notoriously bad. And while Nesrocks did add a TON of stuff, including lots of nice looking sprite work, rebalancing for a lot of the game, especially the driving, and more, it still feels too much like the NES Ghostbusters game for it to be very fun to me. The spritework looks great though, and showing up to bust ghosts visually looks really nice now. The Slimer sprite and Ghostbuster sprites are from New Ghostbusters 2 but all the rest is original work, and it feels much more like Ghostbusters.
An odd addition, however, is instead of starting with $10,000 you now start with nothing and have to get the ghost vacuum for free and use that in the driving sequences to earn money to get the rest of the equipment. I'm not sure if that was intentional, or what, but this game certainly didn't need one more roadblock to success added in! (Edit: I was playing version 1.0, and I've now seen that a revision was made, 1.1, that adds in a button comboniation to enable 'easy mode', which starts you off with the $10,000)
Finally, we have a brand new fangame for the fantasy console Pico-8! Bustin' is a retro arcade style game by Brian Vaughn. The gameplay is inspired by the arcade game Tapper. You can choose your favorite Ghostbusters (from the original or the Answer the Call reboot) and blast ghosts with your proton beam which knocks them back. You want to knock them back into the portal that they entered from and keep firing at the portal until it breaks. There are four different floors, each with ghost spewing portals, so you'll need to go back and forth between all the floors and to try and keep everything under control. You can also throw a ghost trap to instantly catch a ghost, though those are limited and should be used wisely.
Overall Bustin' is a wonderfully fun arcade style game. Some sprites are borrowed from New Ghostbusters 2, like the Slimer and the four busters, but all the original sprite work is well done, colorful, and all fits together nicely. This is one of those short distraction type of arcade games, and once you play, you'll definitely want to go again and try to get further (and Gozer does show up eventually, so keep at it). This is a fangame that every Ghostbusters fan should give a try, and it's free to play in browser, so you have no excuse!
So there you have it, two romhacks and a brand new fangame from some dedicated Ghostbusters fans! I know there are more hacks and fangames out there, but feel free to comment below if there's one you think is definitely worth checking out.