The Haunted Hoard: Ghostbusters (Genesis/Mega Drive)
The Ghostbusters may have used their advanced technology to hunt down the spirits plaguing New York City in the first film, but that doesn’t change the fact that they run a business, and if there are no ghosts to bust, they’re not going to get any work. Ghostbusters on Sega Genesis sees the spiritual exterminators in a bit of a slump, but when an earthquake stirs up an unusual amount of supernatural activity, it’s little surprise to see them so excited to get back to work. Whether it’s Peter Venkman who cares only about the business side of things, Raymond Stanz who is eager to understand how the earthquake and apparitions are connected, or Egon Spengler who will be putting his equipment to good use, the three Ghostbusters set out to do their job, although perhaps the lack of work was more dire than it seemed, since Winston Zeddemore is conspicuously absent for this side-scrolling run and gun platformer.
Ghostbusters on Sega Genesis opens up with you able to tackle a few different jobs in whatever order you like, certain locations having bigger payouts but proportionally more difficult work. Whether it’s the frozen over apartment building or the burning home, you’ll face a slew of specters as you traverse about looking for your initial targets, the Middle Ghosts. Essentially minibosses, you need to clear out all the Middle Ghosts in a location to open the way to the boss monster, a mystery surrounding a strange tablet each boss ghost holds a piece of building up over the adventure. When you begin the game, you’ll be asked to choose between the three available Ghostbusters, each of them represented with a fairly fun and cartoonish big-headed look in-game that allows for some expressiveness and fun little animations. Egon is quick but vulnerable, Raymond can take a hit but is fairly slow, but Peter serves as a middle ground if you don’t want to deal with any detriments. Whoever you select will be who you stick with, but more important than your buster of your choice will be the gear you use to fight the ghosts.
The money you earn on missions in Ghostbusters, whether it be as a reward for completing a stage or it’s just found laying around the target location, can be used at a shop accessible between missions or back at the start of the game’s fairly open but compact levels. Your starting weapon is fairly decent, it fires beams a good bit ahead of you and at a decent speed, but there are many specific spooks that can be better tackled with a specialized weapon, and bosses in particular are unfortunately overly long if you only rely on your Normal Shot. Get yourself a 3-Way Shot and you not only can cover more space in front of you, but if you land all your shots on a target, it can chew through their life quickly. The Bubble Projectile is practically useless in a boss fight, but many small and pesky spirits, especially ones positioned so there would be no safe way around them normally, can be shot with it to send them flying away. All of the special weapons pull from an Energy meter and some like the Explosives are very costly both in their initial buying price and their energy requirement, but over the course of the game you will become more flexible in battle and can also buy things like extra energy reserves or a single serving of Peking Duck for an any time heal. Bombs are also pretty cheap and easier to use in battle than the weapons that require pause menu use to swap between, a press of the A button immediately tossing it so you can sometimes clear out a screen too filled with little baddies or get some extra damage when you don’t have a good angle for your weapon.
The correlation between your cash reserves and your increasing arsenal encourages a pretty safe path through the story, especially since you won’t be able to buy everything unless you really devote some time to scrounging up extra cash. However, even if you go with the simplest stage first, it comes out swinging pretty quickly with its initial Middle Ghost. Despite the somewhat underwhelming title, Middle Ghosts can be just as fearsome as bosses, and the first one is already a strange sight. While you’ll fight possessed kitchenware, standard spirits, and zombies along your adventure, your first miniboss is likely to be a portly magician without a head that makes a demonic looking rat come out of his hat to attack you with cutlery. Not every spirit is quite as creative in its appearance, you have some more straightforward insectoid creatures and mythical monsters, but almost all the bosses can impress with their different fight formats. Fighting the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man on top a building that he bombards with fists and eye lasers or having to keep up with a possessed snowman who keeps calling in new little helpers keeps you on your toes and makes for some fairly tough fights.
In fact, Ghostbusters on Sega Genesis understands it is quite difficult with it letting you have 10 continues for your quest, so while some save or password system would be preferable, you are given a lot of room to learn the patterns of the bosses. Many of them are strong but predictable once you recognize their tricks, so while a first run will likely end in failure, there is some satisfaction in finding the holes in the boss ghosts’ attacks to exploit. It doesn’t make a late game boss rush that takes the wind out of the sails of the climax any better, but there is still a strong amount of variety before then to make these encounters the most thrilling part of the game despite their toughness. Every boss fight does end with a moment where you need to capture them in a more generic spirit form though, the little tug of war to pull them into a ghost trap not really an interesting touch mainly because of its fiddly nature and the possibility of the spirit slipping away.
The stages aren’t slouches either, packing their own impressive monsters like a spiritual squid and little fiery hedgehogs, and looking around for the Middle Ghosts or helpful goodies makes their layouts interesting even if sometimes there are one-way doors that can be a bother. You do have a map in the pause menu to help avoid such mistakes, and while there are moments like leaping over fire walls or running through swinging scythes that feel like they’re timed specifically to be so tight you’re bound to get hit by a few, most of the level navigation has a good mix of trying to discover the right path and contending with dangers unique to the area. Luckily, if you die, you will come back to life right where you were provided you have extra lives remaining, this good not just for clearing the tougher bosses, but it means some of the rougher trap areas won’t necessarily slow you down. Using a continue does reset the stage somewhat though, but you keep your map progress and cash, letting you build up and go back in with most levels not taking too long to traverse when you know where you wish to go. Despite a rather poor first impression with its rough version of the Ghostbusters theme, this Sega Genesis game’s music is also pretty enjoyable and effective, hitting a good point between eerie and fun like the Ghostbusters franchise itself.
THE VERDICT: Ghostbusters on Genesis is a challenging run and gun platformer but one with the means of making yourself a much better specter hunter. Ample continues and healing not being too rare mean you can learn the patterns of the difficult but interesting middle and boss ghosts, and exploring levels becomes more rewarding when you consider that any cash you find can go towards useful upgrades, healing, and most of all the weapons that all have their specific uses. Some bosses still drag and the final level feels like a bit of a retread, but Ghostbusters still brings plenty of creative area designs and ghost fights before then to keep you on board with this particular ghostbusting adventure.
And so, I give Ghostbusters for Sega Genesis/Mega Drive…
A GOOD rating. It’s easy to be committed to your flexible and simple Normal Shot, but once you start buying the new equipment and seeing how it can really shift the flow of a ghost fight, you begin to appreciate the boss battles and even regular spiritual encounters a good deal more. Those ice golems that won’t move away from the ladder you need to climb can be dealt with if you bring the right tool, and while you might not clear the full game on your first attempt, you can definitely get fairly deep thanks to how much room the game gives you to learn even when it’s killing you. There are definitely a few areas it could tidy up, some bosses wear on quite a while, perhaps because certain weapons could otherwise speed up the encounter too much, but it feels like the weapon design should have been adjusted first rather than it making the toughest bosses a bit more of a slog. Some traps really do feel like they expect the exact right moment to cross or you’ll get heavily injured, so a little more leeway there would be appreciated as well. Different difficulties can ease things up though, and the store opens some extra doors like being able to approach the tough fights with healing in reserve or even special shields that use your weapon energy to lessen incoming damage instead. Ghostbusters gets you thinking about how you’re going to overcome the malevolent specters not just in terms of tackling them in battle, but how it factors into the business side of things as capturing Middle Ghosts and plundering locations is key to getting you the good gear to make future jobs easier.
Ghostbusters on Sega Genesis feels like it could have been made into a fairly good co-op game save for some of its trickier platforming situations, but generally, working out how you can become the best buster of ghosts is a rewarding and player-lead process that makes it all the more satisfying when you use the bubble gun to skip a problematic foe or quickly wear down a tough boss with some heavy firepower. Your work may not always go smoothly in this run and gun platformer, but once you’ve figured out your foes and what tools to invest in, you’ll walk away feeling like it was a job well done.