Collection Additions Volume 14: Catching up again

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room. Once again, I've taken quite a bit of time off from the 'ol blog. I'd like to say it's because I've been busy, but in the interest of full disclosure, I've just been pretty damn lazy. However, I haven't forgotten about it, and since forming opinions on video games constitutes roughly 40% of my daily thoughts, it's unlikely I'll stop posting any time soon. As long as I can get myself to keep writing, that is.

Anyway, seeing as I'm always buying new things, here's another edition of collection additions to tide you over until I get around to writing another review (which, by the way, I have several drafts of things sitting around on my computer waiting to be finished, so one of these days I will probably get around to finishing and posting them).

So first up, I've completed the Super Mario Bros. trilogy on the NES. I've had all the games for a while of course, but I wanted boxes for all of them because they're just such iconic games for the NES. I bought Mario 3 complete a long time ago, and it just looked lonely on my shelf without Mario 1 and 2 next to it. So, being the completionist that I am, I hunted down boxes for 1 and 2 and was able to get them both in decent condition and for good prices. The box for 2 is very good, but 1 is a little bit rougher around the edges. That's alright with me though, since I don't put too much stock in condition. It's got some creases here and there, but for a 30+ year old game, I'm happy to have a decent box for it at all.

Speaking of boxes, I also picked one up for another iconic game, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. Once again, this was a game I had purchased a while ago that had just been sitting around on my shelf. Then, a few months back, I purchased a wholesale lot of manuals and boxes and such for SNES games on eBay, which came with the both the manual and the map from Link to the Past. With those two items in tow, I really wanted to get my hands on a box so I could complete the whole thing. I searched high and low for a while, sometimes finding decent ones, but never at a good enough price tag to justify purchasing it. Then, a few weeks ago I found a good one and jumped on it. Like the Super Mario Bros. box, it's got some creases here and there, but I'm happy enough with it.

Moving on to Sega Genesis, we have a game I've been meaning to pick up for a quite a while now: Ghostbusters. As you all should be aware of by now, Ghostbusters is one of my favorite things in existence (and if that statement doesn't convince you, read this review of Ghostbusters: The Video Game for Xbox 360 I did last year). I had never actually known about this game until seeing a review of it by the Angry Video Game Nerd a few years back, which is a real shame because I absolutely would have loved this game as a kid. I only had Ghostbusters II on NES, which is a fairly mediocre game but was still loved to death by me nonetheless, so I likely would've bought the Genesis one and played it nonstop, had I known of it back then. Anyway, Ghostbusters for Sega Genesis is actually on the more uncommon spectrum of Genesis games, so getting a nice complete copy is no easy task. I finally found a good one for a reasonable price recently, and now it's probably the second rarest Genesis game I own, behind Castlevania: Bloodlines.

Next up, we have MediEvil II for PS1. MediEvil was a game I played a long, long time ago on one of those random demo discs for the PS1 that you'd get from gaming magazines or video game stores. I liked it a lot, but never got around to buying the actual game until I was much older. I thought that it was possibly just nostalgia clouding my memory, but to my surprise, the game is actually really great. It sort of reminds me a little bit of Devil May Cry, before that was even a thing. I also had no idea that it had a sequel, so when I spotted it at my local retro gaming store, I had to pick it up. I haven't played it yet, but if it's anything at all like the first one, I'm sure it will make a solid addition to my PS1 library.

Next, a smattering of random games...NFL Football and Operation Wolf for the NES, and Super Punch Out!! for SNES. Very common NES games, two I'm not all that interested in, but when you can get a boxed NES game for under $8, it's pretty much always worth it. And now I can say I own an LJN game...perhaps the worst offender for bad games on the NES. As for Super Punch Out!!, I loved the original Punch Out!! on NES, so this one is a no brainer. I've never played it before but I've seen videos, and it looks just as fun as the original. I'll definitely check it out soon.

And lastly, we end on not an actual game, but an accessory. So, long before people built mods for their games in order to hack the game and do whatever they wanted with it, there was a little thing called Game Genie which seemingly allowed ultimate control over your video games. Want unlimited lives? Invulnerability? The ability to skip levels on command? Game Genie let you do it. It's interesting to think that we were actually using this thing to reprogram the game by rewriting it's coding right before our eyes. But we didn't know how the hell it worked, nor did we care- we just wanted to bend games to our will. I specifically remember using the Game Genie for Game Boy in order to hack myself a Mew in the original Pokémon. Anyway, this Game Genie for the NES is pretty beat up (as evidenced by the crack in the top covered up by an ancient blob of dried glue) and corroded-looking on the contacts, and though I haven't tested it, it likely doesn't work. However, what I find most interesting is the little code book that came with it. Back in the 80s and 90s the internet wasn't really a thing, so we had no way of looking up the codes. As such, this book was an absolute necessity in order to make the Game Genie work. I think some versions had pre-loaded codes on them, but it seems this one didn't.

Anyway, thumbing through the book is kind of interesting because it doesn't just list out the codes for a game, it actually has a little synopsis of each game and other little blurbs. I was also surprised at just how many games it has codes for: over 150, including some of the most popular titles for the NES.

It does get a little weird, however, when it starts talking about some strange and unintended effects that code alterations can have on your games. For example, look at this blurb in the Super Mario Bros. 3 section:

That's actually pretty funny, and not just because they spelled "Bowser" wrong.

Anyway, that's all for now. Thanks for reading and as always, game on.

Gaming Memories: Ghostbusters: The Video Game

Hello dear readers and welcome back to the game room, where the ectoplasmic residue is the real thing and all of our nuclear accelerators are licensed, thanks for asking. We all have that one special childhood thing that we have the fondest memories of as we grew up. For some of us it was Star Wars, for others it was Batman, and still others it was Ninja Turtles, Disney Movies, Transformers, what have you. For me, that thing was Ghostbusters.

The 1984 comedy classic that spawned a sequel, a lengthy cartoon series, and a huge amount of toys- yes, it was just my thing as a kid. I'd spend day after day playing with my toys until they were so worn down that they were practically falling apart. I'd run around in my backyard with my plastic proton pack strapped to my back having adventures and capturing ghosts everywhere I went. And even though the world's enthusiasm for Ghostbusters started to fade as the 80's turned to the 90's, my own certainly didn't. I was definitely one of those people always waiting in vain for a third movie that would never come. However, in the year 2009, I did get something awfully close. But let's back up a minute here.

When the cartoon series "The Real Ghostbusters" ended in 1991, Ghostbusters as a whole almost seemed to end with it. The original actors moved on with their lives and careers, the toys stopped getting made, and the brand name just went quiet for a while. Sure, there were minor resurgences here and there- Dan Akroyd dropped rumors about a possible Ghostbusters 3 all through the 90s, a short-lived cartoon show called "Extreme Ghostbusters" aired in 1997 and had it's own brief merchandise run, and of course "Ecto-Cooler" lived on for quite a while in the lunch boxes of kids all over the country. But for the most part, Ghostbusters as a franchise went dark as the 90s gave way to the new millennium and for a while, it seemed like it might stay that way forever. Then, in late 2007, something big happened.

Throughout the mid-2000s I had a subscription to the magazine Game Informer which I received monthly in the mail. This was back when I was still hip to the cutting edge of gaming and had all the latest consoles as they arrived, so I still had plenty to read about as the magazines came in. I loved seeing all of the latest news and goings-on in the gaming world, as well as checking out the current hottest games on the market. However, I was totally shocked when I opened my mailbox in December of 2007 and saw this:

Ghostbusters in a video gaming magazine? I never saw it coming. I frantically flipped through the pages to get to the article, where I read all ten pages of it from start to finish. A Ghostbusters video game was in the works for the latest generation of consoles. It had a script written by Harold Ramis and Dan Akroyd, just like the original movies. It had ALL FOUR original actors (Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, Dan Akroyd, and Ernie Hudson) reprising their roles as Peter Venkman, Egon Spengler, Ray Stantz, and Winston Zeddmore. Hell, even Annie Potts and William Atherton were returning as well (unfortunately no Sigourney Weavor or Rick Moranis, but I was still happy with what I got). 

I read the article again and again and again. I scrutinized every picture and piece of concept art. And then read it one more time. The new game was set to take place three years after the events of Ghostbusters 2 and would have the player assuming the role of a nameless rookie who joined the team as the fifth Ghostbuster. As per the article, the game would have the player clashing with familiar foes such as Slimer, the library ghost, and even the Stay Puft marshmallow man himself. It all seemed too good to be true. I couldn't wait to see how things would play out.

There was a long time of silence between the announcement in the article and any further news, but the silence was broken in December of 2008 when a trailer was finally released to the public. I remember jumping on my computer with my face glued to the monitor as the trailer started. Just like the article I had read earlier, I watched it from start to finish. And again. And again. It was really happening. There was Murray delivering his deadpan Venkman lines, Ramis and Akroyd spitting out scientific technical jargon as Egon and Ray, and Hudson doing his down-to-Earth Winston. It didn't seem real, but somehow it was. We were going to get as close to the third movie as we ever would.

Some time passed and while I anxiously waited, the advertising campaign ramped up. Commercials were on TV and various alternate trailers were released. For a short and beautiful time, Ghostbusters was back. It was delayed a bit for some time but eventually was released on June 16th, 2009, nearly coinciding with the 25th anniversary of the release of the first film on June 8th, 1984. I promptly arrived at Best Buy that morning to procure a copy, which I did and rushed home to play.

While previous Ghostbusters games may not have lived up to the franchise's potential (or have been downright awful), Ghostbusters: The Video Game is just about everything you'd want as a GB fan. It wasn't the third movie we all wanted, of course, but it was close enough to be it. Picking up where the story last left off, the Ghostbusters' business is still booming and they've even started pushing for franchises (much like Venkman mentioned in the first movie). They've hired a new member to the team, a so-called "experimental weapons tech" who basically serves as a guinea pig for the Ghostbusters' many untested gadgets. You assume the role of the nameless rookie, who also has no speaking lines in the game. Some people might scoff at this but I think it was a perfect idea because it preserves the interactions between the four main Ghostbusters that we loved so much from the movies. Anyway, shortly after the newbie joins the crew a massive spectral energy force is unleashed upon Manhattan and it's up to the Ghostbusters to figure out what's going on.

With a third person point of view, you guide the rookie in and out of situations where you trap ghosts and solve puzzles throughout levels. Ghosts aren't entirely uniform, however- there's a wide range of types that have different strengths and weaknesses and must be dealt with accordingly. For example, many ghosts require the typical method of blasting them with the proton stream and then sucking them into a ghost trap, but others require you to freeze them in place with a different type of beam and then disintegrate them with a shotgun-like blast. Trapping ghosts earns you money, which you can then use to purchase upgrades for the four different proton pack weapons you switch between. There's the regular proton stream and the stasis stream which I just mentioned, as well as the slime tether and the meson collider. The slime tether is pretty much exactly what it sounds like- you use it to shoot a tether of slime at at object, which you can then attach to another in order to move it out of the way. You also must use the good slime to neutralize the effects of black slime which you'll encounter throughout the game, as well as defeat certain enemies. Finally, the meson collider acts sort of a like a powerful machine gun version of the regular proton stream.

By far though, the most fun I had in the game was by trapping ghosts using the regular proton stream, just like in the movies. It works a tad differently however, as they needed to add some extra layer of challenge to the game. In order to be able to trap a ghost, you need to first substantially weaken it by slamming it around using the proton stream. Holding onto it for longer charges the "slam meter", and once that is high enough you can deal greater damage to it, thus making it easier to drag into a trap. It sort of feels like fishing, except way cooler because, well, it's Ghostbusters.

As you progress through the game, you can also use the PKE meter practically to locate ghosts and also find hidden areas (usually that lead to an achievement or trophy for the Xbox 360 and PS3 versions, respectively). You can also use it to scan different ghosts, which gives you more info about them that you can read about in "Tobin's Spirit Guide", which was mentioned by Egon and Ray in the movies. It's little tie-ins like that to the lore of both movies that made it such a fun experience for die-hard fans of the movies like myself. There's tons of little references everywhere if you look hard enough. There's also so-called cursed artifacts all around, which can be picked up and examined to even further expand the Ghostbusters lore. There's even a few nods to the cartoon shows for eagle-eyed players, such as the PKE meter at the workbench in the basement that looks suspiciously like the one from the Real Ghostbusters. Also, there's a reference to the hilariously badly translated ending screen of the first Ghostbusters video game for NES on one of the computers in the firehouse. Like I said, I couldn't get enough of it all.

 The appearance of the infamous ending text from the NES Ghostbusters game was just one little nod to a franchise with as rich of a history as Ghostbusters.

As you play through the game, you learn that the spectral energy surge has been the result of Ivo Shandor, the servant of Gozer who was discussed at length in the first movie, attempting to break through to our world and take control. You visit many familiar locations such as the New York Public Library and the Sedgewick Hotel, which all tie into the story nicely. You also get to sit back and let the four Ghostbusters work their comedic magic together again. For instance, one part that cracked me up was when Egon and Winston are assessing a giant machine.

"What if we try locking those things down?" asks Winston.

To which Egon replies- "I can calculate 54 likely outcomes...we'd survive three of them."

Winston then nonchalantly responds- "That beats our usual odds."

Aside from the comedy, you also get to experience a lot of the strange and mystical spirit world qualities of Ghostbusters, the kinds that were only alluded to in the movies, most likely because of a lack of production budget to bring them to life. For example, one chapter has you crossing through a dimensional portal into a nightmarish "ghost world" version of the New York Public Library. Also, there's a boss fight with a "giant Slor," which was only briefly mentioned in passing in the first movie. And of course every Ghostbusters fan wondered what the hell a Slor was! After this game, we finally knew- and it was just one more indication that the developers clearly recognized the franchise and its fanbase, treating it with the due respect it deserved.

Ever wonder what a giant Slor is? Well, there you go! Many Shuvs and Zuuls knew what it was to be roasted in the depths of the Slor that day, I can tell you.

The game mostly felt, to me, like a big combination of both the movies and the cartoon show. For example, in the chapter where you follow the Stay Puft Marshamallow Man through Times Square in an attempt to suck him into a massive trap mounted on top of the Ecto-1 called the "Super Slammer," it reminded me very much of some of the plots to episodes of The Real Ghostbusters. To further illustrate that point- in an episode called "Cry Uncle", the climax has the Ghostbusters chasing Mr. Stay Puft through the city in order to trap him, very much like in the video game. Also, in another chapter the Ghostbusters are riding a boat around that Ray refers to as "Marine Ecto-8." That had to be a direct reference to the cartoons, in which the Ghostbusters often used a helicopter called Ecto-2.

From an episode of The Real Ghostbusters...

...and the second chapter of the game. Once again, you can clearly see the influence with the right set of eyes.

This was all perfectly fine with me because I love the cartoons, probably just as much as I love the movies. Seeing them both mixed together and thrown into a video game was just about everything that could've made me happy as GB fan.

Just about. Now, I've said this to many people before and also alluded to it in a previous review, but I'm always quick to defend Ghostbusters 2 from the many people who claim it's a bad movie (many of which, by the way, seem to have suspiciously emerged within the last year or so. Wonder why that is?). Firstly, no, it's not a bad movie, and if you think it is then get out of my life. Secondly, as a fan of the second movie just as much as the first one, I would've liked to see more references to it throughout the game. There's a few minor ones here and there such as the discarded firehouse sign outside the window that can just barely be seen, or the cursed artifact of the "hot beverage thermal mug and free balloons for the kids," and even the painting of Vigo the Carpathian that's hanging around in the firehouse, but for the most part it is much more strongly connected to the story of first movie as opposed to the second. The closest the game comes to having a tie-in with the second movie is during the chapter on Shandor Island, in which you run around in a sewer-like area following a flow of dangerous black slime, which was quite reminiscent of the river of slime in GB2. However, that's about it as far as references. Personally, I would've loved to have seen a return of the Scolari Brothers- I mean, what a perfect opportunity for a boss battle would that have been? We got to see three of the big monsters from the first movie return to play prominent roles in the story, so why not the Scolari Brothers? Seemed like a missed opportunity to me.

The chapter which has you following an underground flow of black slime was about the closest the game got to a Ghostbusters 2 feel.

Anyway, beyond my gripes about the lack of Ghostbusters 2 references, there really isn't much I had to complain about while playing through. Just some minor things- for instance, sometimes the dialogue becomes noticeably unsynchronized with the character's mouth movements during cutscenes, something that seemed a tad amateurish even in 2009. And speaking of dialogue, it's pretty obvious in his voice acting that Bill Murray was not that into the project. You can tell almost every time he was speaking that he really phoned in his performance. In fact, sometimes you can't even tell what he's saying at all because he's mumbling his lines so much. It's a bit of a shame that he couldn't muster up at least a little more enthusiasm, especially since he didn't even have to do anything besides speak into a microphone, but I can look past it because at least he did it at all. At the end of the day, I don't even care if he decided to speak in a pirate accent the entire time, I'm just happy he was on board enough to be a part of it and step back into his role as Peter Venkman one last time. And lastly, the game is generally pretty short. It's fine because it gave it more of that authentic movie feel, but I only complain about it because I didn't want it to end. I wanted to see the Ghostbusters keep going forever.

Alas, nothing gold can stay. After the game came and went, it seemed like Ghostbusters was primed for a comeback. Talk of a third movie once again reared its head on all corners of the internet. Both Dan Akroyd and Ivan Reitman, the director of both movies, repeatedly stoked the flames for several more years. It was all speculation, but there was talk that a script was in the works. Would the world actually see a bonafide Ghostbusters 3 in the theaters? For a short period of time, it seemed plausible.

However, the end finally came on February 24th, 2014, when news broke of the death of Harold Ramis, the original actor for Egon Spengler and writer of the scripts for both movies and the game. With Ramis went the original Ghostbusters, and it seemed that now, once and for all, it was over. But you all know what happened next- shortly afterward, the "reboot" of Ghostbusters was announced, and despite all the doubt surrounding the franchise and the finality of Ramis' death, it continued to build steam and was eventually released in the summer of 2016. I have many mixed feelings about the reboot that are pretty much beyond the scope of this post, but suffice it to say that I think the whole thing was unnecessary. I actually enjoyed Max Landis' pitch for Ghostbusters 3 that has since surfaced on the internet and wouldn't have minded seeing that movie, but it's not what we got and unfortunately will never be. I also thought it was bitterly ironic that the original cast did a reunion for Entertainment Weekly magazine just 9 months after Ramis' death. I remember seeing it and thinking to myself "why couldn't they just put their differences aside like this when Ramis was still alive? He should have been there with them." We'll probably never truly know why.

Anyway, all of this only serves to illustrate how much the game meant to me as a fan. It is, for all intents and purposes, the Ghostbusters 3 that we all were waiting for. It was all of the Ghostbusters back together again for one final encore and it was the last sweet sendoff to a franchise that went away a little too early, as far as I'm concerned. Some might say that Ghostbusters has never really gone anywhere, but I'm in the camp that I would've liked to see all of the guys strap on the proton packs one last time on the big screen. However, I'm very happy with what I got in the game. As a video game it's a blast, as a continuation of the Ghostbusters franchise it's fantastic, and as the last remaining testament to the true fans, it serves its purpose well.

 I can't possibly describe to you how great it was to see the Ghostbusters back for one last ride.

The future of Ghostbusters is somewhat of a huge question mark right now. After the reboot had a mediocre showing in theaters, plans for a sequel were most likely scrapped. There doesn't seem to be anywhere left to go now, but I'm confident that the franchise will find a way to live on. It's my sincere hope that another cartoon series makes a return for a new generation. Hell, even as an adult you can bet I'd be parked in front of my TV every Saturday morning ready to watch further adventures of Peter, Egon, Ray and Winston. One can only hope. However, despite what may happen, the originals will always live on as unforgettable classics in the eyes of every nerd and geek who hoped they could build their own positron collider as a child. And right next to the two movies, you can add the video game to that list. Thanks for reading.

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.