The Real Ghostbusters
October 10th, 2023
Out of sheer boredom and a desire to spend every waking moment of my life talking about video games, I used this randomizer to pick a random retro game to write a blog post about. This is what happened next...
The Real Ghostbusters (presumably titled that way as to not to be confused with the notorious FAKE Ghostbusters) is a puzzle platformer tie-in game developed by Kemco for the OG Game Boy that’s based on the 90s cartoon of the same name. Contrary to the game’s title, you play as one Ghostbuster— Dr. Peter Venkman— as he... falls down a random bridge and into a medieval dungeon?
Seriously, where am I
The game begins with a cutscene where the aforementioned bridge mishap happens, which also contains a short tutorial (kinda surprising for a Game Boy game, honestly). After that, your goal in each level is to collect a bunch of sparkles which, once you gather them all, grants you the key to the next level. Along the way, you’ll have to use Peter’s proton gun to dig up holes in the ground Lode Runner-style in order to solve puzzles, navigate tricky terrain, and find various items which will help you recover your health, open doors, or fend off enemies. You don’t do any actual ghost-busting in this game, weirdly enough. Rather, the only way to fight enemies is to find bombs scattered throughout the level, then lay them down and wait for the enemies to walk into them
Peter looks awfully happy for someone stuck in a mediocre licensed game
I’ll get this out of the way: The Real Ghostbusters is not good. It’s a piece of very forgettable Game Boy shovelware with clunky controls, irritating music, and some truly bad level design. I had several classic Mega Man-esque moments in the game where I literally couldn’t see the upcoming hazards onscreen, and thus had no way of avoiding damage
Can YOU guess where the pool of deadly acid is? Trick question: you can't because it's below the fucking screen!!!
At this point you might be asking yourself: “What does any of this have to do with Ghostbusters?”. The answer is not much, as it turns out. According to Wikipedia, The Real Ghostbusters is actually a nearly identical copy of another game called P. P. Hammer and his Pneumatic Weapon, a puzzle game for the Amiga and Commodore 64 which was (unsurprisingly) inspired by Lode Runner. Not only that, but The Real Ghostbusters is only one of three versions of this exact same Game Boy rip-off! The Japanese version is a Mickey Mouse game, and the European version is based off of Garfield. The dev of P. P. Hammer even stated on Twitter (no I am not calling it X) that Kemco never even contacted them— it was a complete, shameless rip-off. After briefly checking out the Amiga version of P. P. Hammer, I can confirm that the level layouts were indeed almost exactly copied, with very minor alterations. I guess they weren’t The Real Ghostbusters after all...
In P.P. Hammer, you can actually SEE the hazards! Crazy!!!
This has been my first impressions of The Real Ghostbusters for the Game Boy. I really don’t need to say much more
