I’d be willing to bet that unless you’ve been living under a rock in some impoverished land for the last 20-odd years you know about the Ghostbusters. I certainly had my fair share of memorabilia related to the series, but never actually picked up the game. It turns out that I didn’t need to, I saw all there was to see in a couple of evenings of renting it.
The game’s real straightforward. You drive around the city catching ghosts for money. You use that money to upgrade your equipment so you can catch more ghosts and buy gas. Eventually, when the ‘PK Energy’ gets high enough, you face off against the main antagonist of the first film, Zuul.
The running around and catching ghosts thing is real easy, and kind of fun. But when you go to the final showdown, the game does a complete 180° turnaround and turns into a tedious annoyance. See, Zuul is on the top of a multi-story building and you have to get up there to take him/her/it out. You walk up the building one step at a time by alternately pressing the A and B buttons. It takes about 30 or 40 steps to go up a flight of stairs and there are about 20 flights of stairs in the building. So you end up wailing on the buttons, trying to go up the building while trying to avoid the ghosts. Your arms will be screaming by the time you get to the top.
And once you get there (I cheated and used a turbo controller) you have to face off against Zuul. I never actually figured out how to beat him/her/it. I assume you have to hit Zuul a lot of times with your proton pack, but I just didn’t have the reflexes to do that, especially after I cramped up my arms walking up that never ending staircase. I almost feel bad about that, but since I’ve already experienced most of the game, the feeling passes pretty quickly.
Of course, by ‘Zuul’ I mean ‘Gozer’. My Ghostbuster-fu is a little weak today.