I was late to the party on every pop-culture phenomenon, it seems.
I'm not exaggerating: I didn't become familiar with The Fresh of Bel-Air until I was in 8th grade, and I starting watching it mostly because I got tired of having to pretend to understand my classmates' show-related references ("Oh yeah--she's a 'brick house,'" I'd say to one of them. "That part was, like, really funny!"). I didn't see a single episode of Saved by the Bell until I started my first year of college in 1998 (every morning, I watched reruns of the show on TBS as I was getting ready), which was five years after the series' run had ended. I failed to view the original Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back in their entireties until the mid-late 90s, which was years after the franchise's cultural relevance had peaked. And I didn't watch Raiders of the Lost Ark, the progenitor of two of my all-time-favorite movies, until the turn of the century.
Back then, I was, for a number of reasons, frequently oblivious to what was happening in the entertainment space. I repeatedly failed to notice most of the era's biggest cultural events. And usually I didn't become aware of a popular property until it was too late and everyone had already moved on to the next big thing.
That's why I was so late to discover Ghostbusters, the quintessential 80s comedy, and gain an understanding of how influential it was and why everyone loved it. When it arrived in 1984, I wasn't paying attention, so I missed out on it for several years. And then I put off watching it until 1996, when I was in the process of playing catchup.
Now, in 2015, things are different. I'm intimately familiar with Ghostbusters. I've seen it dozens of times over the last 18 years (mostly on cable), and I know almost everything there is to know about its world and its characters. Also, I've become very much aware of how it impacted the film genre and influenced pop-culture.
I'm pretty much a Ghostbusters scholar!
But back in the mid-80s, that was far from the case. I didn't know anything about the movie. I had no idea what it was like tonally or what its plot entailed. What I did, mostly, was conceive of what it was by taking what I saw from the cartoon spinoff--The Real Ghostbusters, which aired every Saturday morning--and extrapolating on it. And what I concluded was that Ghostbusters was a "serious" movie whose subject-matter was close in character to Poltergeist's. "If it's anything like this cartoon," I thought, "then it's probably a darkly themed movie about exterminating ghosts, and thus it fits into the horror genre."
Never once did I see anything that made me consider the possibility that Ghostbusters was instead a comedy or that it starred comedic actors like Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray. I wouldn't have been able to even imagine those two guys playing earnest and serious-minded characters like Ray Stantz and Peter Venkman.
That's how far off I was.
But that was the other weird way in which I consumed media. I didn't watch most of the popular shows or movies, no, but, for various reasons, I was always interested in engaging with their offshoot products and buying the merchandize that was attached to them.
In the case of Ghostbusters, I watched the cartoon spinoff, I bought all of the toys (including the ones whose faces would contort when you pulled their legs), and, of course, I exposed myself to the movie's most infamous video-game adaptation.
I always want to begin these negatively toned flashbacks by saying, "I have no idea why I decided to buy this game!" and attempting to give myself some cover, but usually I can't do so because it's simply not the truth. The majority of the time, I know full well why I decided to buy games that I knew were substandard. Ordinarily I did it for dumb reasons.
And that's how it was with Ghostbusters: I bought it for a really dumb reason. I purchased it not because I thought that it was a good game but because I was a slave to my current inclination. At the time, I was in my copycat phase, and I just couldn't restrain myself: If one of my friends or cousins owned an NES game, then I had to have it, too! It didn't matter if the game was good or not. If I played it somewhere else, I had to own it. That was my rule.
So with Ghostbusters, I knew exactly what I was getting myself into. I had fresh memories of playing it at my friend Mike's house and not having any idea of what the hell I was supposed to be doing. I remembered how I thought of it as one of the weirdest, most inexplicably designed games I'd ever played.
The problem was that its concepts were so far removed from the norm that it was difficult for us to comprehend them. We'd never had that problem before. Almost every action game we'd played to that point was easy to understand. It had put us in a control of a hero character whose function was to traverse a side-scrolling or top-down world and take down hordes of enemies. That, to us, was how an action game was supposed to work.
That's why we were so confused when Ghostbusters instead put us in control of a Ghostbusters logo, of all things, and had us rigidly traveling around a mundanely designed grid-like city map whose spaces were completely devoid of obstacles and actual enemies. The only noticeable activity was being carried out by the ghosts, which were repeatedly spawning in from the corners and, for whatever reason, gravitating toward the central "Zuul" building.
"What the hell's a 'Zuul'?" I kept wondering. "And why are these ghosts so intent on entering into it?"
You could freeze the ghosts in their tracks by making contact with them, we found, but doing so seemed to be pointless. The PK Energy number would continue increasing even if they weren't entering into the Zuul building. "And so what if the resultant PK Energy overload results in the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man showing up and destroying an entire city block?" we thought. "That's just one less location we have to worry about visiting!" (Our priorities may have been a little warped.)
We liked it when Stay Puft appeared, otherwise, because his showing up and stomping buildings was just about the only interesting thing that would happen in Ghostbusters! Every other aspect of the game was mundane and uneventful.
Traveling to map locations, for instance, was an exercise in tedium. To get to any of them, we had to endure a long, boring vehicle sequence that seemed to be expressly designed to drain our cash-total and our will to continue on. And usually we didn't know what to do when we reached the location in question. We would just press buttons randomly and hope for something positive to happen.
We busted some ghosts on occasion, but only when we were lucky enough to buy the correct equipment, reach the flashing buildings in time, and survive the driving sequences, in which the city's increasingly erratic drivers were constantly trying to murder us. And the rest of the time, we'd continue wandering the city map and waiting for something--anything--to come along and communicate to us that we were making actual progress.
We did this while working under the assumption that such a thing as "progress" was possible in this game. Because we weren't certain that it actually was. "Maybe this is all that you're meant to do in this game," we thought at times. "You just continue to bust ghosts and collect as much money as you can."
In time, though, we discovered that Ghostbusters did indeed have an endgame sequence. It occurred in the Zuul building, which we could enter only after an undefined goal had been met. (We didn't know what the conditions were or if they had anything to do with the PK Energy number or our dollar-total, and the game's manual, strangely, had nothing to say on the matter.)
And what awaited us inside in the Zuul building was one of the most maddening action sequences we'd ever seen in a video game. It was comprised of a series of staircases that led up to what we assumed was the final boss.
"All you had to do was climb stairs?" you ask with a confused look on your face. "What was so difficult about that?"
Oh, ye of untainted heart.
Let me tell you what the problem was: This stage area was a terror, you see, because some complete jackass of a game designer decided that button-mashing was the best way for players to control the Ghostbusters' left to right movement. So in order to advance or retreat, you had to furiously mash the A button and continue doing so until you reached the area's top floor.
Honestly, we would have been fine with needing to button-mash had the sequence been straightforward--had it been a simple test of dexterity--but it wasn't because the same designer also decided to place four pursuing ghosts within the stairwell. These ghosts were persistent as hell, completely unassailable, and capable of passing through surfaces and colliding with the player whenever they felt like doing so. And having to continuously react to their unpredictable movement and accelerate a high speeds, which we weren't skilled enough to do in a reliable fashion, was both mentally taxing and physically exhausting.
And what compounded the frustration was that the ghosts' hitboxes extended far beyond their sprites! So they could inflict damage just by being near you. Also, the Ghostbusters couldn't take more than two hits! If they were hit a third time, the game would end.
"But it had to be the case," you naively counter, "that the number of floors was small, right?"
Oh no--there was a crazy amount of them! We weren't sure what the exact number was, honestly, because we were incapable of making it beyond the fifth or sixth floor, but still we knew that the total was very high. It was at least 20. (We even thought there could as many as 50 floors!)
Now, sure, we might have advanced farther had we prepared better and taken the time to earn some additional funds and buy some "ghost food," which functioned to lure in the stairwell's ghostly occupants and keep them busy for a few seconds. But doing so, realistically, would have only bought us enough time to advance one or two floors. That's how slowly the Ghostbusters moved.
And the other problem was that the ghost food, gallingly, didn't remain where you placed it. Rather, it scrolled upward as you ascended and dragged along the ghosts that were feeding on it; and because the ghosts' hitboxes remained active during this period, they could still hurt you and function as a large obstacle (especially so if we were dumb enough to place the ghost food near one of the stairway's bases)!
So basically we had no real chance of ever making it to the top floor.
And all I could think in every subsequent play-through attempt was, "What the hell is going on here? What does any of this nonsense have to do with the cartoon?!"
None of what Ghostbusters was doing made any sense to me.
"Why aren't the Ghosbusters displaying their unique personalities?" I continued to wonder. "How come they don't resemble the characters from the cartoon? Why is it that there are only two of them in the driving and ghost-busting sequences but three of them in the stairwell stage? Where'd the other Ghostbuster go? Also, where's Winston? Where are Slimer and Janine? Where's anything from the cartoon?"
The game had no answers for me.
I mean, it wasn't like I'd never encountered a game like Ghostbusters before. I'd seen plenty of its kind on the Commodore 64. I'd spent countless hours playing (and suffering through) games that had similarly bizarre presentations and gameplay that was the same awful combination of arcane and super-difficult. But those games weren't based on properties that I liked, so it was easy for me to give up on them and then ignore them (because I knew that someone of my skill-level wasn't meant to beat them).
But I couldn't ignore Ghostbusters. It was the hot new thing, and all of my friends and cousins owned it. So I had to play it. I had to be around it.
The whole time, though, I couldn't help but think that Ghostbusters would have felt more at home on computer platforms, where novel management-type simulation games made more sense. "Computer enthusiasts probably love those types of games," I believed.
So I didn't understand why Activision thought that it would be a good idea to bring such a game to the NES, whose audience had vastly different tastes.
"So tell me," you say while bearing a perplexed expression on your face. "If you were baffled by this game and felt as though it was out of place on the NES, then why the hell did you go out and buy your own copy of it?"
Because, as I already told you, I didn't have any choice. At that point in my life, I was a slave to my inclination. I couldn't resist the urge to own a game that all of my friends owned.
And, also, I really liked the game's theme music! It was a nice rendition of the cartoon's opening theme, I thought.
That's a reasonable enough excuse to plunk down $50 for a game, right?
Hello?
So now I was stuck with a game that I considered to be badly designed, mechanically flawed, and inexplicably arcane. I was in a position in which I owned a game that I felt was unbeatable.
But still I refused to bend to common sense, and I kept trying to conquer it anyway.
By then, the ghost-busting and driving sequences were no longer a problem for me. I had them figured out. The only real obstacle was the stairwell stage. It was unfairly difficult, and I simply couldn't get through it. Even on my best day, I couldn't make it any farther than the 8th or 9th floor. And I'd be left feeling as though I hadn't come close to reaching the top.
For months in following, that stairwell routinely tortured and defeated me. It continued to beat me down and demoralize me. And eventually I reached a point in which I got tired of taking its abuse. That's when I decided to finally move away from the game.
I returned to Ghostbusters a few years later, but I only did so because I got a hold of a Game Genie and decided to try to beat the game using extra-money and invincibility cheats, which, I believed, would help me to achieve a long-overdue victory. Sadly, though, the trauma of the experience has warped my memories so much that I don't remember how, exactly, my attempts played out. I'm pretty sure that I still failed to win. I say that because I have a vague recollection of the invincibility cheat not working during the final boss fight. So I probably got destroyed by Gozer's bullet-hell onslaught.
The only thing I remember for certain is that I was completely done with the game at that point.
Honestly, I felt that it was a pretty good version of the game. And certainly it was superior to the NES version. It featured better music and sound design (and an actually comprehensible "Ghostbusters!" sound sample), more attractive visuals, a better item system, and more manageable driving sequences; and, most importantly, it gave us directional control in the stairwell stage and allowed the Ghostbusters to fire shots horizontally and diagonally! So now we actually had the chance to succeed!
This version also contained an extra sequence: a memorable transitional stage in which you had to gain entry into the Zuul building by maneuvering your three Ghostbusters around or underneath the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, who was guarding the building's door by hopping back and forth in front of it. It was a fun and interesting challenge.
What I remember most about the stage, though, was how much it stressed me out. At the time, I didn't have faith in my reflexes or my ability to read enemy movements, so I'd get shaky and start mistiming my movements. And I'd only make it in the building if I was lucky.
Mike and I came up with a pretty reliable strategy for the Zuul-building entry: We'd sidle up against the building's left side and then dash toward the doorway the instant Stay Puft began to leap rightward. And if our timing was exact, we'd make it in.
The problem was that our timing wasn't always exact and we'd usually wind up losing all of our Ghostbusters and throwing the whole run away. Then we'd have to spend another 15 minutes getting back to that stage. (When I replayed this version for the purpose of snapping screenshots of it, I had no trouble getting into the building. It was very easy to do. So the only thing I can conclude is that Mike and I were, at that point in our lives, just really bad at games.)
And in those instances when we were able to make it inside the building, we'd have a rough time of it, and our story would end the same way: in complete failure. Having directional controls was great and all, but not even they could help us to reach the stairwell's top floor. They could provide us no advantage over ghosts that would suddenly spawn right on top of the Ghostbusters and others that would toss blades at them from afar and speedily home in on them from below.
And inevitably we'd get picked off.
I mean, we'd last much longer than we did in the NES version, yeah, but still we'd fall well short of the goal.
Still, we always had a good time with the game.
Here's the stupid part: Not long after I purchased NES Ghostbusters, I discovered that we already owned a version of the game! My brother, James, had the Commodore 64 version in his library the entire time, and somehow I failed to notice it.
I didn't give it a fair chance. I loaded it up and then exited it immediately because I observed that it looked almost identical to the NES version. "Absolutely not," I thought to myself as I flipped the disk drive's switch to the off position. "I've seen enough of this game already." (It's purportedly the definitive version of the game, so I should probably give it a look one of these days.)
I returned to the Commodore 64 version multiple times over the years, but I only did so because I liked to listen to its version of the main theme. It was pretty great! It had the best instrumentation (that horn, baby), and it even had the "Ghostbusters!" sound sample weaved into it.
So if I can say anything positive about the video-game adaptations of Ghostbusters, it's that they nailed the musical aspect.
So the story with Ghostbusters was that it came to exemplify one of the 80s- and 90s-eras saddest trends: It, like so many other licensed games, was popular simply because of how bad it was. It stayed in the public consciousness not because it was enjoyable in any way but because kids found it fun to mock and riff its most poorly designed gameplay elements.
And these day, it remains popular for the same reason. People are always bringing it up and talking about how bad it was. They're always reminiscing about the awful experiences they had with it and laughing about all of the pain and suffering it inflicted upon them. They find great entertainment in doing such things.
That's an example of the dubious side of nostalgia doing its work.
I don't absolve myself of blame, of course. I know that I'm just as guilty as anyone for helping Ghostbusters to maintain its undeserved popularity. I, like every other old-school enthusiast, am always fondly reminiscing about my experiences with it and talking about how much fun it was to mock. I'm absolutely part of the problem!
I can't help it, though. It's hard for me not to feel sentimental about Ghostbusters considering how ubiquitous it was and how much time my friends and I spent playing it and trying to make heads or tails out of it. We built a lot of good memories around those experiences. And when I think about those memories, I can't help but smile.
As for the game's creator, the legendary David Crane: I'm not, I tell you, going to denigrate him for what he did here. I'm not going to criticize him for being experimental, endeavoring to defy convention, and bravely eschewing the standard practice of retrofitting licensed material onto generic, pre-made platforming engines, no. He did those things, I'm certain, because he thought it would be great to create something genuinely unique. Something that could deeply enrich our childhoods. Something that could never, ever damage the reputation of the Ghostbusters brand or the Nintendo Entertainment System.
Ghostbusters: The Video Game.
Nice thinkin', Crane.
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