With Ghostbusters: Afterlife hitting theatres soon, a sequel that early reviews have described as both "a refreshing relaunch of a beloved franchise" and "a slimy, stinking corpse of a sequel", it's an ideal time to look back at the history of Ghostbusters video games. There have been loads over the years, from '80s arcade games to a fully-blown digital sequel featuring the original cast. Some have been great, some have been bad, and some have been terrible.
The first Ghostbusters game was released in 1984 for the Atari 2600, Sega Master System, and NES. It was coded by David Crane, best known as the man behind Atari classic Pitfall, in just six weeks—before he'd even seen the film. That gives you an idea of how little the movie studios cared about tie-in video games in those days. The game, titled simply Ghostbusters, saw players driving around a top-down New York City in the Ecto-1, and honestly? It wasn't great. Shocker. The digitised Ghostbusters theme on the title screen was cool though.
A port for the NES, developed by Japanese studio Micronics in 1988, gained some infamy thanks to its poorly translated victory screen, which hilari🍃ously read: "Conglaturation! You have completed a great game and prooved the justice of our culture." The game was also ported to the Commodore 64, which Ernie Hudson, who played Winston in the films, said his kids hated. Not a great start for the series.
The Real Ghostbusters, developed by Data East in 1987, was much better. Based on the popular animated series, this shooter saw you zapping monsters, turning them into ghosts, and trapping them. It was a smash hit, especially in the UK where the cartoon was especially popular. Curiously, a version of the game was released in Japan with all the Ghostbusters stuff stripped out, under the name Meikyuu Hunter G. The Real Ghostb🙈usters was primarily an arcade game, but was released on a number of home systems including the Atari ST.
In 1990, a year after Ghostbusters 2 hit cinemas, tie-in video games were released for various systems including the PC, Game Boy, and NES. The PC version, developed by US studio Dynamix, was the best of the lot, with vibrant VGA graphics and faithful, interactive adaptations of scenes from the mov𝐆ie—including the Statue of Liberty coming to life and stomping across New York City.
The NES version, created by Double Dragon developer Imagineering, was a side-scrolling shoot🍎er that became notorious for its gruelling difficulty. You had to finish the ridiculously hard final level four times before it let you face the final boss. HAL Laboratꦯory, a studio best known for the Earthbound series, also released its own Ghostbusters 2 video game for the NES in the same year. It was only ever released in Japan and PAL territories—something to do with US licensing issues—and featured a quirky, very Japanese art style.
Another game was released for the Sega Mega Drive in 1990, once again titled simply Ghostbusters. Developed by Japanese studio Compile (who also made Aleste, Shadowrun, and Puyo Puyo), this was the first game to feature a standalone story that wasn't directly connected to any of the movies. It involved the Ghostbusters travelling to an evil alternate dimension to battle Jana, the God of Darkness. Not the best story ever told in the series, but the earliest example of a video game spin-off not being totally reliant on the source material.
This game also featured cute chibi versions of the characters—although for some reason, only Ray, Egon, and Peter were featured. Winston was nowhere to be found. Another Japanese studio, Kemco, took a stab at the series with the 1993 Game Boy game The Real Ghostbusters—which is notable for being the first and only Ghostbusters puzzle game. It saw Peter leaping around various maze-like levels, collecting stars to unlock doors. If that doesn't sound very Ghostbusters, that's because the game was really just a template to shove various licensed properties into. In Europe it starred Garfield; in Japan it was Mickey Mouse.
Then, after this non-stop assault of Ghostbusters games, silence. It was nine entire years before the next game emerged: 2001's Extreme Ghostbusters. Released for the Game Boy Color, this was based on the animated series of the same name, which featured a young, fresh-faced crew of 'busters mentored by Egon. The show wasn't as good, or as successful, as The Real Ghostbusters, lasting only 40 episodes. The game—a tedious side-scrolling shooter developed by French studio Light and Shadow Productions—wasn't much better either.
Not exactly a killer comeback for the series, but that would all change after another eight years of radio silence. In 2009 we finally got a Ghostbusters video game worthy of the movies. Developed by Terminal Reality, Ghostbusters: The Video Game was released for the PS2, PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, and PC. It's not only a fun, well-designed third-person shooter, but it also managed to reunite the entire original cast of the classic movies—including the notoriously difficult to pin down Bill Murray. Murray only agreed to take part in the game if Winston, who was famously underwritten in the movies, was given a more substantial role this time around.
Dan Aykroyd, who wrote the game with the late Harold Ramis, described it as "essentially the third movie", and it really feels like it. Grabbing ghosts with your proton beam and slamming them around the destructible environments is incredibly satisfying, and exploring the firehouse—which is packed with details, callbacks, and easter eggs—is a real treat for fans. With Ramis gone, this is the last time the original crew went ghostbustin' together, which makes it extra special. A final film would have been cool, but this is the next best thing.
Alas, this was not the beginning of a new era for Ghostbusters video games. Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime (2011) and Ghostbusters (2016) were both terrible—the latter reviewing and selling so poorly, developer FireForge went bankrupt. As it stands, the 2009 game remains the highlight of the busters' long-running video game career. The release of Afterlife is a perfect excuse to have another go at it, but no one seems to have stepped up. The future of Ghostbusters video games is uncertain, but at least we got one great one.
