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NES Works #091: Ghostbusters (Patreon)

Published:
2022-05-19 10:20:18
Imported:
2024-04
Tags:

Content

This episode arrived a little late due to my travels over the past couple of weeks—I didn't have time or a space where I could really do much video editing while abroad. Probably because the group I was with spent about five hours per day eating bafflingly drawn-out multi-course Italian fare. I never knew food could be so exhausting. 

I did write and record the audio for this episode on the road; if my voice sounds a little different than usual, it's because I recorded myself on a small portable mic in the bedroom closet of a countryside villa in the boot heel of Italy (I think it came out well despite that, aside from some minor plosives). The good news is that thanks to those same travels, I was violently jet lagged this morning, which meant I had more than enough time to finish editing this video together. 

I wish it were all in the service of a better game! Ghostbusters is so much worse on NES than on home computers that it makes you despair for the future of the platform, and the tragedy of it all is that you get the impression the dev team on this adaptation genuinely thought they were making it better with their updates to the game flow and scenarios. (NARRATOR: They were not.)

Files

Ghostbusters retrospective: A haunt mess | NES Works #091

Continuing the trend of "games converted badly to Famicom in 1986 and published in America two years later," we have Bits Laboratory's disastrous adaptation of Activision's Ghostbusters. A fun, frothy, fast-paced little confection in its original Commodore 64 incarnation, Ghostbusters becomes a miserable and tedious experience on NES, bogged down by monotonous driving sequences and a viciously unfair endgame. You get the impression someone at Bits actually thought they were doing a good deed here and improving the material! And that person should be locked up in a ghost trap, or at least never allowed to touch a computer again. Production note: NES footage captured from @Analogue Nt Mini. Video upscaled to 720 with @Retro Tink 5X (which accounts for the tearing and distortion in vertically scrolling sequences). Video Works is funded via Patreon (http://www.patreon.com/gamespite) — support the show and get access to every episode up to two weeks in advance of its YouTube debut! Plus, exclusive podcasts, eBooks, and more!

Comments

Beefington von Barnstorm

I'd maybe cut the line calling Winston a diversity hire. I get the joke you're going for, he was done so dirty by so much of the merch and game adaptations, but it still lands a bit, I dunno, sour for me as it's such a go to "joke" aimed at minority staff and women in the workplace

Jeremy Parish
>>84281048

But the point I'm implying is just that: The franchise has treated both Ernie Hudson and Winston like someone they never wanted but were forced to bring into the fold for the sake of optics. (I had a longer segment lamenting his treatment and some of the other unpleasant elements of the film, like how gross Venkman's predatory behavior toward his student is, but cut them because it was too much of a tangent.) I wasn't making a joke here, I was making a pointed barb.

Moomoo

I remember the C64 version well all those years ago. Always wondered how they did those crazy border tricks. Never saw the NES version pre-internet, but man, what a travesty. The same kind of intercontinental divide (western ports of Japanese games and vice versa) strikes again here. Sidenote: This video also served as a great reminder how 1984 was a massive breakout year for pop hits from movies, from "Footloose" and "Against All Odds" to now "Ghostbusters". While the former two had a few additional movie hits later that decade (including "Groovy Kind of Love" from Phil), Ray Parker Jr. had no such luck, with the added misfortune of getting sued by Huey Lewis for ripping off "I Want A New Drug". (And almost poetically, Huey was next in line the following year with Back to the Future and "The Power of Love".)