New Ghostbusters II (NES Review) and Ghostbusters II (Game Boy Review)

New Ghostbusters II
Platform: NES/Famicom
Developed by HAL Laboratory 
First Released December 26, 1990
Never Released in the United States
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Ghostbusters II
Platform: Game Boy
Developed by HAL Laboratory
First Released October 16, 1990
NEVER BEEN RE-RELEASED

Slimers in this game look like their eyes have been sewn shut. It’s creepy.

There are three 8bit versions of Ghostbusters II on Nintendo platforms. The one released by Activision and developed by Dan Kitchen is universally regarded as the inferior game, but because of licensing rights, that’s the one and only NES version that was released in the United States. HAL Laboratory had the global handheld rights to Ghostbusters II, but only the Japanese and European Ghostbusters II rights for the NES/Famicom console. In terms of long term reputation, it was probably the best possible thing to happen to title christened “NEW Ghostbusters II.” Being the one that never came out in America elevated it to the status of hidden gem. An out-of-reach treasure. A status it absolutely does not deserve, because folks, New Ghostbusters II isn’t really that good a game. Or much of a game at all, for that matter.

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First thing’s first: the NES and Game Boy versions of Hal’s Ghostbusters II have a similar play style, but the Game Boy release isn’t a port. It’s an entirely different game and plays like a much more ambitious version of the Famicom release. Then again, there’s so little ambition in the Famicom game that it honestly feels incomplete. I’m not even kidding. It seriously plays exactly like a proof of concept or prototype that’s maybe 75% finished. One of those prototypes where all the action is there and (mostly) complete, but all the bells and whistles are still lingering on the drawing board, waiting for someone to add them to the code. You do one thing and one thing only on the Famicom’s Ghostbusters II: control a main Ghostbuster of your choosing who stunlocks ghosts with their proton pack, then you press a button for the AI-controlled NPC to throw the trap out. Clear a room of ghosts, then walk to the next room and do it again. Rinse and repeat until the credits roll. There are bosses, but the only difference with them is you have to hold the proton stream on them until they change color before throwing out the trap. The final boss doesn’t even have the trap part. All the normal baddies are done-in with a single zap and a trap.

For what little it’s worth, it actually does capture all the set pieces from the movie, like the two ghosts from the courtroom scene.

And.. that’s the whole game. There’s no items (except an occasional points bag that seems to happen in random rooms). There’s no upgrades. You have unlimited proton pack energy and unlimited traps. Despite adding tons of scenery that’s begging to be searched, like filing cabinets, chairs, etc, you don’t search for anything. Just zap, trap, and move on through five levels, four of which have bosses, then you fight Vigo and that’s the game. When you first fire-up New Ghostbusters II, it really does feel like you’ve found buried treasure. It is satisfying to catch a ghost in your beam and then suck it into the trap. But, that wears out very quickly. There’s nothing to break up the tedium. It’s not even a maze game, really. Even if the room has multiple doors, a gigantic arrow appears in the center of the screen and points you to the next room after you bust the current room’s final ghost. While there’s a nice variety of ghosts, some of which throw projectiles, the offensive game of New Ghostbusters II is just too limited. As far as action games go, New Ghostbusters II is one of the most tedious, mind-numbing grinds in the entire NES/Famicom library. It gets so boring doing the same thing over and over, in stages that feel like they’re taking forever.

The best level is probably the second one, where you fight ghosts in minecarts, but even this wears thin.

I first played New Ghostbusters II a while back, when I was sampling NES/Famicom games. It seemed like it would be decent. Who knew that I’d already, more or less, experienced everything the approximately hour-or-so runtime had to offer. From the second level onward, the only excitement I had was whenever a new enemy first appeared, excitement that lasted about as long as it took for me to perform the zap and trap on it. I figured “maybe this was made with co-op in mind. Everything is better in co-op, right? Then again, I don’t remember an option for two players..” Well, guess what? There’s no co-op. What an absolutely baffling oversight. Would it have saved the game? Maybe. It certainly would have helped. You’re stuck with an AI partner who can generously be described as “often confused.” With the exception of the second-to-last boss, the only challenge in New Ghostbusters II comes from those times where your partner can’t figure out how to walk through the narrow gap you just walked through. Other times, it might require wiggling back and forth with your beam before they get themselves in a position to accurately throw the trap. They might as well have one character do both. The only positive thing I can say about your partner is that, in the Famicom version, they’re completely invincible, and I didn’t appreciate how wise that decision was until I played the Game Boy version.

I mean god damn, Venkman,, it’s a wall. You, Peter Venkman; one of the most witty film characters in movie history, are being outwitted by a wall. A WALL! Not even a haunted wall!

Ghostbusters II on the Game Boy lost “New” in its title, but added basically everything the NES version desperately needed. Alternative weapons? Here. Being able to play as all four Ghostbusters in a single play session? It does that. Game worlds are also no longer gigantic maps that you zig zag through. Instead, they’re broken up into levels where you must find and catch a specific amount of ghosts. It sounds fantastic, especially since it retains the core zap-and-trap gameplay from the Famicom game that would have been so fun if it wasn’t literally the only thing you did, with no upgrades or alternatives. So, go figure that it’s one of the worst Game Boy games I’ve played so far, and it’s ALL on your NPC partner.

Well, mostly the partner. The enemy design is weak, too. There’s two types of enemies that are invincible while they’re spinning, a message they seem to have gotten loud and clear. Sometimes they spun so long I worried the game had glitched out. I have a feeling stuff like this might be possible, because when you run out of time, you actually don’t die. Instead, the enemies all turn into the Ghostbuster logo and become absurdly easy to zap and trap. So really, timing out is practically a reward for doing a terrible job. Ghostbusters II on the Game Boy was letting people fail upward before that was cool.

This time around, your partner is vulnerable. This would make things difficult enough by itself. But you also have to deal with the fact that the collision detection is also weirdly inconsistent. The majority of the times my player or especially AI partner got hit, it took me by surprise because they weren’t really that close to the enemy. Like, several times where I rewound the game trying to figure out what exactly caused me to take a hit. Usually, it happened when myself and the AI player had to double back and we crossed over each other, as if the act of doing that gave us both bigger collision boxes. Other times, I literally could have so much of my sprite on the enemy that there was more of me than there was of it on screen and nothing happened. I even went so far as to walk back and forth on the enemy, practically offering it a free hit, and all that happened was I did a little dance with it. I might as well have, since my attacks weren’t working either. It was like the most unintentional stalemate of my gaming life.

See!

Pretty bad, huh?

And the poor collision also combines with the fact that, unlike the Famicom game, you can’t push the trap through the wall, or most solid objects for that matter. The beam works fine, but the trap typically can’t have anything obstructing it. But hell, sometimes the AI had a wide open shot at the damn ghost and STILL couldn’t hit it unless I jiggled MY character around like I was trying not to let hot coals burn my feet. It’s so frustrating because this is the game doing what I so badly wanted the NES game to do. If you see a character hanging out on a wall, you can tag them in, an act that often grants you an item. Besides the invincibility shields, those are mostly all really fun to use. You get what I think is a Dust Buster that allows you to suck up ghosts for a few seconds without bothering with the AI partner. I was always happy to get that, and there’s also a gun that just vaporizes the ghosts, again circumventing the AI partner. There’s a pickaxe that lets you knock down a wall. I really wish they’d done more with that. The only item that’s missing is a radar that points you towards where the ghosts are. Sadly, Ghostbusters II overly relied on restocking rooms you’ve already cleared out, which reduces the game to a mindless grind by the end.

Uh.. hey wait a second.. is that a Suezo? By the way, enemies lingering in the walls, where your trap can’t reach, is so common an occurrence that you’re really better off just walking away and coming back later. So frustrating.

But, the worst part is so stunning that I honestly feel the game should have been cancelled if this is the best they could do, and that’s simply the act of the AI partner following you. Because, well, they can’t. They get stuck behind everything, and just getting them to follow you in and out of a room is a fight half the time. If anyone wants to make a list of the worst uses of an NPC partner in gaming history, the movement alone seals it for Ghostbusters II. Hell, about halfway through the game, I realized why the tag team-like “walk up to a Ghostbuster and swap places with them” is a feature in the game. It’s not really because it’s more fun to cycle through the full team. That’s just a bonus. No, the feature is really a band-aid to compensate for a situation that I think would have certainly been a soft-lock otherwise. This part.

Maybe if the ability to do a swap hadn’t been there, I could have come up with some other way to wiggle my partner out of the mind-bending jam of “being able to walk next to something” that’s right up there with the three body problem. But, I’m thinking there’s probably at least a couple swap locations in the game that were put in place to prevent soft locking. And, I can’t stress enough, your partner also takes damage, and can end your game. If they lose all their hits, YOU game over, regardless of how much health you have. Health refills are plentiful, but still, given how problematic the AI is in general, having them be vulnerable was a bad idea. Thankfully, they’re invincible against the bosses. In fact, during the battle with Vigo, I found hiding behind them to be a successful strategy. So, hey, you’re not totally useless, AI partner. You’re 99% useless.

While it doesn’t look different, this screenshot is from a nearly finished US prototype of the game, before Activision chose to go their own direction, presumably. Honestly, I could see an executive in 1990 playing this and saying “it’s boring. We’ll take our chances on something else.” I have much love for the Kitchens and Dan’s brother Garry is a good friend, so I take no pleasure in saying I’m not a fan of Dan’s version of Ghostbusters II, either. But, damnit, at least it tried to change things up instead of settling for a slog. And that’s what HAL did. They gave up and settled when it’s clear they had bigger plans.

Another thing neither game does that would have added some much needed depth is having the Ghostbusters each have unique abilities. The Famicom game even lets you play as Louis, but that version has no swapping. The two characters you pick are locked-in for the whole game, and in the same role, too. But, whether the game has four characters or five, they all play identically. This is where they really left a lot on the table, as they could have built around special traits or weapons for each Ghostbuster. While I greatly admire the ambition shown in the Game Boy release, both games could have done so much more. I really think a lot of the Game Boy version’s problems come down to having characters be too big for such a small screen. In a way, they probably got the two games mixed up. The console game should have been the more complex one and the Game Boy release should have kept things as basic and simple as humanly possible. As limited and dull as the Famicom game is, it would probably have been considered an elite-for-its-time handheld game. Meanwhile, all the problems on the Game Boy I’m guessing are largely due to the platform itself. The same mechanics would have probably worked better with the Famicom’s ability to take place on a bigger playfield.

You’re just going to have to take my word for it that there’s a guy in that little force field above my head. Also, during boss fights, items rain from the sky, including a very valuable one that allows the invincible AI to fire bullets. Oh, forgot to mention, you fire bullets in boss battles. No trapping or beam this time.

And that’s ultimately what the story of New Ghostbusters II was for me. Somewhere between the Game Boy and NES games is the perfect 8bit version of Ghostbusters II. The NES version’s AI is touchy, but never completely worthless. The biggest problem is the game does one thing and one thing only. On the Game Boy, it feels more like a normal game instead of the most basic concept of a potential game. The biggest problem is, well, nothing really works right. Combine the AI of the NES game with the mechanics of the Game Boy release and you’d have a quality licensed video game. But, that’s never going to happen. Your options are a bare bones action game or a game that feels like trying to lead a drunk through a crowded shopping mall. I mean while fighting ghosts.
Verdicts: NO! and NO!

“I, VIGO, DUUUUUUUUHHHHHHH!!”