There is an expectation to be able to drop into a game with minimal reading ahead of time nowadays, especially since physical manuals are mostly not a thing anymore, but even back then a handful of games made an effort to tell players what to do, or at least made the controls very simple so that players could figure things out quickly. There is a very deliberate art to good game design which doesn't require prerequisite reading; Just look up a breakdown of Level 1-1 of Super Mario Brothers to see how that very first level forces players to learn how to play the game in just a matter of minutes! :o

It was originally a rough driving/maze game called "Car Wars". When the Activision devs saw the movie and really liked it, David Crane in particular felt he could turn that particular game concept into a Ghostbusters game, so they called up Columbia Pictures and pitched the idea, then when they got the call back to go ahead with it they were told they only had six weeks to do it. At least, that's my assumption as to what happened given that the events differ depending on who's telling the story, but the rough game it started out as and the rushed development time are the two big constants between all of the accounts. :B

@@Pixelmusement Oh wow! I'll admit, it's hard to see what we have here working as just a car game--although of course much may have changed there. I mean, there's the "on-road" bit, and the map, which makes sense--but there's not much to either. The short development time, sadly, does not surprise me--especially for a licensed game. :/ Well, thank you for the information! It's appreciated! ^_^

There's more than those for sure, but I do understand the sentiment of what you've run into. Some more examples of shareware games which gave you a proper boost in content when buying the full games include Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, Traffic Department 2192, Tyrian 2000, Terminal Velocity, and Commander Keen.

@@Pixelmusement Indeed. :)

Yep. Also "Little Computer People" which showed up on NNRG on Week 30! kzfaq.info/get/bejne/jJehlbGC2MzYm4E.html

No, for a couple reasons. The first is that there's a chance for Stay Puft to start trampling buildings as PK Energy goes up and you have to be VERY quick on the draw to prevent that from happening, as you will lose money if you don't stop it, but more pertinently you MUST have more money than you started with or you're simply not allowed to go into the Zuul building when the time comes. :P

Yes. :P

From what I understand, this game didn't start life as a Ghostbusters game, but the Activision team then went and saw the movie and David Crane was like, "Hey, that theme would work for my game!" and then the rest is history. :P

Actually, if you want to get VERY technical, a better approach would likely be to have both ghostbusters facing the SAME direction, as in, both facing left or both facing right, thus allowing you the greatest amount of squeezing of the viable movement area for the ghost and again not risking crossing the streams. :B

@@Pixelmusement Oh yeah, true!

Though if you play it as a score attack game where you need to make as much money as possible, then not only do you get the late game madness, but in subsequent games you want to get the faster car which limits what you can take, making the game harder but you have more capacity to make more money. Which makes the game more challenging and fun.

The early days of gaming really were quite experimental; Designers weren't really sure how to measure what kind of logic in a game was too obscure to figure out or not. This led to some pretty inventive stuff compared to what you would typically find in a mainstream title now, but as demonstrated, also led to plenty of frustration from confused gamers. :P

I can't imagine anybody ever made it past the stairway in the NES version without cheating. But this version is pretty disappointing too, no big finale other than sneaking past Stay Puft.

Or a turbo controller. I have beaten the NES version before and turbo was the answer to the staircase. :P

Or in this case, picking games which I had played on other systems but never the C64. ;)

@@Pixelmusement Sure, but you clearly knew you're way around regardless. I do enjoy the "blind" format of this series, but there's definitely something to be said for a good, informative let's play type video too.

I noticed that during initial testing before I began recording, but wasn't really amused by it so didn't decide to comment on it. :P

I prefer the one where Magus uses the lightsaber to defeat Voldemort

That explains A LOT. :o

IMO, the bad rap is 100% due to the NES version being a genuinely awful port - not to mention coming out several years too late - and it's the version that probably most people saw. The earlier releases on C64 and PC Jr and such were quite well-liked at the time. For a 1984 licensed game, it did a great job capturing the vibe of the movie.

@@jasonblalock4429 Exactly. The NES port came out in North America 4 years after the C64 Original. Hell it came out 2 years after the Famicom release. The Atari 2600 version was released in 1985. Along with the PCJr, MSX, and most other versions. C64 in 1984. It also managed to have worse graphics despite on a newer, graphically more capable system, and the additions to the gameplay just sucked. the Master System at least has better graphics. I still have a tradition of running Ghostbusters on every new computer at least once, since I discovered emulators way back in the 90's. It took over 30 years for me to get past Stay Puft. :P I have an account sitting around $70,000 in my game notes binder. I think my dad has about $50,000 some odd written down at my parents' house. Starting from scratch, I pick the compact, three traps, and the bait. You can stretch the game out more with the vacuum, and the Image Intensifier is useful for the busting sequences, but not really necessary. The Hearse IS the traditional selection for a car though. As the PKE rises, you get more calls, and eventually around 8-9k you start having a chance for Stay Puft to arrive. At 10,000 or so you'll see the Gatekeeper and Keymaster head to Zuul, and you'll be drawn there for the final battle. Which is probably the weaker part of the game; you just have to get two Ghostbusters past Stay Puft, which is a matter of timing and positioning. After that it's a quick cut scene and you've blown the top off an uptown highrise. I prefer to have faster (relative) games, and be cheaper on equipment at first to make it easier to get more cash for the New Game+. Granted, I've probably played this a thousand times; hell just on building computers I've probably played it over a thousand times.

Once I figured out how everything worked, I found the NES version to be fine. Except for the stair-climbing part, that really soured the game for me and I imagine everyone else. I only got past it due to a weird glitch that somehow disabled the fail state of taking too many hits which allowed me to brute force my way up to the admittedly fun final confrontation.

You have prooved the justice of our culture!

There comes a point where modding an existing game becomes more trouble than just building something new. With Bart vs. The Space Mutants in particular, that game's levels weren't really built to be modified and have a massive number of hard-coded elements, thus if you wanted to make something which was "better" it would be easier and faster to just make something new. :P

No... In fact, that shouldn't be possible, but I will admit, I didn't test teleporters enough to know how the camera responds to them so I'm going to guess that's where the glitch is? I'll go test it myself and if that's the case it's an easy enough fix: Just move the teleporter. :B

OH WAIT... I see what the problem is now... Those walls I THOUGHT were solid walls are actually breakable with the gun! Yeah, that's not supposed to be breakable; I'm gonna go fix that and reupload the level! :P

@@Pixelmusement No worries. I didn't want to give too much details in case it was intentional (so that I don't spoil the surprise). Thanks again for the levels and all the best to you!

@@AttilaMihalyBalazs Update is online! :)