Game Of The Week: Ghostbusters II (NES)

Hello again dear readers and welcome to this week’s edition of game of the week. Today I’ll be talking about a near and dear gem from my childhood on the good old Nintendo Entertainment System. It might not be a classic, but it has a special place in my heart as one of the very first games I ever remember playing and enjoying as a young child. Yes, I’m talking about Ghostbusters II on NES.

Released in 1990, I have distinct memories of picking this game out at Toys R’ Us and proceeding to play the hell out of it as soon as I got home. It’s a simple, average game that doesn’t stand out too much from the crowd, but it’s one of my favorites due entirely to the nostalgia factor I get from playing it. Also, it’s worth mentioning that I have a bit of an unhealthy obsession with Ghostbusters. It was just my childhood thing. I mean, I’m one of those people with a full scale proton pack replica and costume that I break out every Halloween. Anyway, in the 26 years that have passed I still had never beaten this game myself, so after all this time I set out to do just that and along the way I took a more critical look at it. And what perfect timing, as the folks down at Cinemasssacre just recently did a video on this very game (and, not to mention, the imminent release of the Ghostbusters “reboot” in a few weeks which I have many mixed feelings about, but I digress).

So for the starters, the previous Ghostbusters game for the NES that was based on the first movie was…well…not very good at all. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that it’s probably one of the worst games in the entire NES library (official, anyway). At any rate, there was pretty much nowhere to go but up after that train wreck, and Ghostbusters II certainly makes improvements in just about every category. It has a decent mixture of side-scrolling stages ala Contra, stages of driving and dodging obstacles, and stages of blasting away enemies falling from the sky using the Statue of Liberty reminiscent of games like Space Invaders. Not extremely diverse, but again, definitely an upgrade over the first game. The graphics are pretty nice. Nothing supreme or anything, but good enough for the kind of game it is. I particularly like the little in-between stages graphics, especially the one for the Statue of Liberty stage.

 So should I start using the NES advantage here or...?

In the side-scrolling stages, you’ll take control of one of the four Ghostbusters (who all play exactly the same and even have identical sprites, with the exception of Winston) and simply navigate a stage from right to left. These are the primary stages of the game, with the driving and Statue of Liberty stages in between. It’s interesting that none of the Ghostbusters use their signature ghost-catching weapons, the proton packs, at any point in this game; instead, they all use the slime blowers (which, now I’m going to get really nerdy here, there were only two of in the movie). Not really that big a deal, just an interesting choice. Plus, it does make sense when you consider the context that they were really pushing the “slime” aspect in the second movie to the max (much to the chagrin of Bill Murray, apparently). In fact, now that I think it about it, it wasn’t just Ghostbusters…slime itself was EVERYWHERE in the late 80’s/early 90’s. I think it probably started with Ghostbusters, but there was just this really big deal about slime back then. But now I’m getting off topic here.

Anyway, the levels each have the extremely simple objective of getting to the end of the stage without dying. You’ll have to dodge a variety of ghosts and other things like severed heads and hands, spiders, and..uh, random objects. Yeah, sometimes you just get pelted with random things that come flying in from off screen, but I’ll discuss that in more detail later. Shooting slime destroys the ghosts in one hit, but the other things will have to be trapped. By pressing the select button, you’ll drop a ghost trap that sucks in anything directly above it, including ghosts and Ghostbusters logos. Yeah, there are a lot of those in this game. They come flying in at the top of screen, and you’ll gain one every time you hit one with slime or suck one into a trap. Collect 20 and you get an extra life. I always found it kind of funny that you’re collecting logos to gain lives…kind of like if Mario was collecting Nintendo logos instead of coins. Anyway, just run to the left, dodge the ghosts, collect logos, and you’re through the stage. However, one pretty annoying thing about this is the spider that crawls along behind you all through the stage. Yeah, for some reason the developers decided that a simple time limit wasn’t quite enough and put in a little invulnerable spider that slowly crawls behind you as you progress in the stage. Most of the time you probably won’t even notice it, but if you stand still too long it will catch up with you and instantly kill you if you touch it. I guess they were trying to make the game a bit more difficult but it’s mostly just annoying, especially during the last stages of the game that get quite difficult and you’re just trying to take it nice and slow.

 That little spider always annoyed the crap out of me. I ain't afraid of no ghosts, but spiders, that's another story.

The stages are all pretty short and sweet and follow the story arc of the movie quite nicely. After the first stage at the river of slime, you’re at the first of the two driving stages. It’s much the same as before- just move up and down, dodge ghosts and other hazards. You can also collect more logos and other powerups such as invincibility and a better slime blaster. The most difficult parts about these stages are the jumps. I don’t know who’s been paying attention to the roads in New York City for a living, but it seems that huge chasms have opened up in the middle of the street (perhaps a bigger problem than ghosts?), and you have to “jump” over them in order to proceed. Yeah, the Ecto-1A jumps, just go with it. But you won’t be able to make it simply by jumping- no, you have to drive over little arrows that serve as speed boosters to successfully clear the ditches. It’s not too bad in the first level, I think there’s only two or three jumps to make. However, in the second driving stage, there will be areas of two consecutive jumps in a row, and if your timing and placement isn’t precise on hitting the arrow and jumping, you’re going down. Also, another annoying aspect is that if you fall into the hole, you’ll lose a life AND have to start the stage over again from the beginning. This doesn’t happen if you get hit by a ghost and lose a life, as you’ll be able to start up again right where you died.

 The jumps in the driving stages, especially ones like this one pictured, are really difficult until you've practiced enough that you can get the hang of them. I also like how it says "Jump!!" at the bottom of the screen, as if you wouldn't know what to do when confronted with a giant hole.

Next up is another side scrolling stage in the courthouse (which is interesting that you play as Winston in this stage since he wasn’t in that scene. Well, actually he was briefly in the beginning of it, but then disappears later on when the Scolari brothers appear. Where did he go, anyway? Damn it, I’m getting sidetracked again). In this stage, big ghosts start to appear- ghosts that can't be blasted and can only be trapped. This is followed by the second driving stage, and after that comes another side scrolling stage in the abandoned subway. Then, it's onto something quite different- in the next stage, you’ll control the Statue of Liberty (with an NES advantage controller, perhaps? I just love the irony here) and have to blast away ghosts that fall from the sky while dodging projectiles. This is quite different from the previous stages, as the stage scrolls automatically while you move the Statue left and right on the screen. There’s a few powerups to grab in this stage- one that lets you shoot at an angle as opposed to just straight up, one that launches a bomb that destroys all the ghosts on screen, and one that grants you brief invincibility. There are technically two of these stages, but they both play the same and really the only things that change are the backgrounds and the patterns of the ghosts.

 As as kid, I assumed that the big ghosts that appear in the courtroom stage were supposed to be the Scolari brothers.

Once you complete the Liberty stages, you’ll be at the last section of the game- four different stages in the museum in which you’ll have to guide each of the four Ghostbusters to the end where Vigo the Carpathian waits for you in his painting. I mean, he literally waits there and doesn’t even do anything, but I’ll touch on that more in a moment. The four stages all look the same, but enemy placements are different and gradually increase in difficulty. By the time you get to the last one, you’ll really start getting frustrated by the level design. As I mentioned earlier, some enemies just come flying in from off screen with little time for you to react. These enemies will bounce along the floor in different patterns, and the best strategy is to quickly run in the opposite direction and drop a trap that they’ll get sucked into. However, when you have a bunch of slimers flying above you and the spider inching its way toward you to the right, this isn’t always easy to do and you might end up getting hit and losing a life. And that’s another thing- the one hit deaths are kind of annoying. The game is pretty generous with the opportunity to earn extra lives, but maybe two or three hits before death would’ve been nice. And lastly, the most annoying part of the last four levels is the fact that if you lose all your lives and have to continue, you need to start all the way back at your first Ghostbuster again. So, say you get to the fourth and final stage and then lose all of your lives, you'll need to go back to the first and do all four all over again. It’s far from impossible, but this part had me repeatedly starting over again and was the major reason why I could never complete the game. However, I refused to give up and powered through, eventually conquering the four stages and…that’s it. Yeah, there’s no final boss or anything, the game just ends with a short scene where the Ghostbusters shoot Vigo's painting with slime and….that’s it. A final boss challenge would’ve been better, but at the same time, I’m just happy I finally put this 26-year vendetta to rest.

 Only a Carpathian would come back to life now and choose New...wait, the game's over? That's it?

Overall, Ghostbusters II might have been an inferior movie (certainly not a bad movie, as some people on the internet like to claim), but it definitely was a superior game. And interestingly, there was an even better Ghostbusters II game called “New Ghostbusters II” that never made it to America and was only released in Europe and Japan. I would’ve loved that one as a kid for sure, and maybe I’ll get my hands on it one day to give it a proper review too. But for now, Ghostbusters II on NES, it ain’t all that bad and still manages to bring me back to my early childhood every time I pop it in. So until next time: two in the box, ready to go, we be fast and they be slow.