At a Glance: As a child, my favorite show, toy, and movie was Ghostbusters. I had the proton pack, the gun, the PKE meter, the goggles, the trap, the car, the bedsheets, the figures, and every other form of Ghostbuster merchandise ever spit out of some dilapidated Taiwanese factory. My constant ghost hunting was the reason we couldn't have pets and why most of the other kids punched me. This game had the opportunity to give me the chance to finally live out my dream of busting ghosts. Instead, it killed off a large portion of my childhood.

Platform: Sega (Download Emulator here - 325k)

Download: Download ROM here - 369k


It makes perfect sense for the same guy who sells bombs and infrared goggles to sell peking duck. Which is sold out.Game Plot: It's Ghostbusters! Surely my favorite movie plus my favorite console would equal unparalleled bliss! Actually, because of this game, I now despise Ghostbusters, Sega, and my local hospital, who refused my pleas to inject me with morphine until I died. You have a choice of three characters; Ray, Peter, or Egon. I think they were going to include Winston as well, but he had to be cut to make room for a couple hundred thousand more bouncing blue amoebae enemies. If you ask me, Winston got off lucky. Each character has a complex balance of speed and stamina. Ray is slow but durable, Egon is fast but tires easily, and Peter is constantly stabbing me in the face and having sex with my mother... at least he did in my nightmares after I passed out. Here's what effect each category had:

SPEED - Although I didn't notice a difference in any of the characters, I'm pretty sure speed is supposed to affect how fast your character moves. Speed is also a street drug, which I would recommend consuming massive amounts of before trying to play this game.

STAMINA - When playing the game, there's a little stamina bar, and I think it goes down when you jump around a lot or something. I wouldn't know, I never actually stayed alive long enough for it to change.

Weapons: After carefully considering each character for weeks, I eventually picked Peter "This man has no dick" Venkman and got to work. My first mission was to clear a house of ghosts. In the actual gameplay portion of the game, your character is approximately three feet tall, one foot of which is composed entirely of his skull. Still, the fact that Peter was a fatheaded midget didn't bother me so much since I still got to use my bitchin' proton pack. However, when I fired, I didn't shoot a huge cool electromagnetic stream of something awful. I instead fired a pea-sized ray which hit ghosts and made them disappear. Needless to say, this was a huge letdown. 

Once you get enough money from suckers - I mean clients - you can buy upgrades for weapons like the bubble gun (it shoots... bubbles). You can also buy items from an unbelievably stereotypical fat, Asian man, who in addition to selling infrared goggles, will sell you some Peking Duck. Not having enough money to buy anything worthwhile, I took my pussy Ghostbuster and his pussy gun and I finally made my way through the level, which was designed by taking a bunch of platform shaped blocks, covering them with superglue, and throwing them at a wall. The inspired level design was enhanced by the fact that ghosts respawned the moment you move the screen in any direction. So when I fell off one of the 18 billion platforms, I got to run back through the entire level re-killing the innumerable amoebas. Lucky thing for me they had the AI of a real amoebae and their attacks consisted of "jumping back and forth."

How did he fit through the door behind him?Enemies: You may be wondering what will happen to your soul when you die. After playing Ghostbusters I can faithfully reveal that you will become one of the following: a cup, a plate, a chandelier, a huge blue amoebae, a red flying amoebae, a tablecloth, or a headless magician. These things make up roughly ninety percent of all in-game ghosts. Also, I'm sure you're asking yourself, "When I'm a ghost, will I still have sexual organs?" I can assuredly tell you NO. This will be explained later.

Number of Levels: Four. There's a small apartment, an apartment, another apartment, and a very tall apartment. Each level is fairly large though. The only thing I wonder is what kind of sick, sadistic people live in houses that consist entirely of platforms?

Number of Bosses: After I killed the first boss, I was supposed to trap a completely unrelated ghost. Of course I failed. Then the game immediately threw me at another boss, which I killed, but not without having my spirit sufficiently crushed. I didn't see anymore bosses because shortly into the second level, the blood pouring from my nose shorted out the game controller.

Defining Moment: After finally killing everything my in my path and jumping across a few hundred identical platforms, I finally made it to the end of the level boss. He was a headless magician that pulled a huge monster out of his hat. Instead of swiping at me with one of his enormous claws, this monster simply shot at me with pea-sized fireballs. At least he believed in a fair fight. At first, I thought my stunted-midget height had given me the advantage, as my gun was right at crotch level with the headless retarded magician. Unfortunately, as I pummeled his pelvis with my ray gun, I soon came to realize that this boss had no genitalia. I mean, if he did, he would have become completely incapacitated after at least the second shot. After that, I killed the magician and his monster, then some more ghosts, and then some more ghosts. In fact, the only thing I didn't kill was myself. Don't get me wrong, I considered slitting my wrists more than once, but I was dissuaded by the thought of dying and becoming a dinner plate or a goddamn amoebae.

If you like, or ever have liked the Ghostbusters, do yourself a tremendous favor and do not download this ROM. This game will make you hate Ghostbusters, ghosts, your dead relatives, your living relatives, cups, plates, chandeliers, and yourself. Who ya gonna call? A therapist.

Graphics-8
Gameplay-7
Story-9
Sound-7
Fun-9
Overall-40

Each category in the rating system is based out of a possible -10 score (-10 being the worst). The overall score is based out of a possible -50 score (-50 being the worst).

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About This Column

The Rom Pit is dedicated to reviewing the most bizarre and screwed up classic console games from the 1980's, the ones that made you wonder what kind of illegal substances the programmers were smoking when they worked on them. Strangely enough, the same illegal substances are often necessary to enjoy or make sense of most of these titles. No horrible Nintendo game is safe from the justice of the ROM Pit.

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