Ghostbusters
1984 · Action / Strategy · Commodore 64 / Multiple
Overview
Ghostbusters (1984) is David Crane's Commodore 64 film tie-in, a business game in which the player runs a ghost-catching franchise while the city's psychokinetic energy rises toward disaster.
Deep Dive
The player starts a Ghostbusters franchise with a sum of money, buying a car and equipment, then drives around a city map responding to hauntings. At each haunted building two Ghostbusters lay a trap and steer a Slimer into it; a miss slimes one of the team. Ghosts drifting toward Zuul's temple push the city's PK energy higher, and sometimes merge into the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, who crushes a block of the city. The game ends when PK energy reaches 9999, and it is only won if the player has earned more than was spent on equipment.
Developer Story
Activision reportedly gave the team six weeks to make the game while the film was in cinemas, so Crane adapted a project he was already working on, a game called Car Wars that already had a resource-management side. It was released on the Commodore 64 on 26 October 1984 and sold over two million copies by 1989; it spent three months at the top of the UK chart in 1985 and remained Activision's best-selling Commodore game.
Did You Know?
- Finishing the game gives an account number that starts a new game with the money already earned.
- Crane added digitised speech from the film and a bouncing-ball sing-along to Ray Parker Jr.'s theme song.
Sources & further reading
- Ghostbusters (1984 video game) — Wikipedia
