Ghostbusters (Arcade, 1987, Data East) is the kind of cabinet that lurked at the edges of the pizza parlor, just beneath a peeling poster for New Coke and sandwiched between the cigarette machine and a Ms. Pac-Man that hadnât had a working joystick since the Reagan inauguration. Itâs based on the 1984 movieâa phenomenon that convinced a generation you could weaponize an unlicensed nuclear particle accelerator and still afford rent in Manhattan. And yes, the arcade game is as gloriously weird and patchwork as the premise deserves, a licensed labyrinth pieced together by Japanese developers who probably thought Bill Murray was a Shinto god and American kids were all sugared-up on Twinkies and neon.
You boot up, and hereâs the loop: select your Ghostbuster (though licensing restrictions mean âPeter Vankmanâ here looks suspiciously like Rick Moranis, and donât expect so much as a whiff of Ernie Hudsonâunless your local operator coughs up for the extra sound ROM), then youâre off careening through blocky isometric cityscapes. As the âGhostbustersâ synth-bounce mangles Ray Parker Jr. into MIDI oblivion, you stalk, zap, and trap Slimer variants and spectral furniture through haunted banks, hotels, and that vaguely Seussian graveyard level that may or may not be inspired by Japanese folklore, copyright lawyers be damned. The proton streams? Think yellow spaghetti noodles lashed to your avatarâs hand, wiggling like theyâre animated by caffeinated gremlins. The ghosts? A rotating cast from Saturday morning cartoonsâsome you might remember, others look like The Stay Puft Marshmallow Man had a regrettable night with the Garbage Pail Kids.
Controls are typically Data East: a joystick thatâs taken more abuse than a Wall Street phone in October â87, action buttons whose springs grew limp in the face of so many frantic, panicked kidsâkids who, by the way, scream âDonât cross the streams!â even though the developers never bothered to program the streams to cross, because in Japan maybe thatâs just considered good etiquette. Throw in a trap button so unresponsive it feels like a lie, a secret handshake known only to the guy in the trench coat who lives off cheese fries and high scores.
What the game gets right is the feeling of hustle: that frantic chase, the orchestral chaos of flying debris, cartoon ghosts, and one truly bad pixel-art cat that flickers between states of existence. Every stage ends with a boss fight, usually the size of a Buick, always flinging âectoplasmâ at you with the abandon of a toddler at a birthday cake. You lose? Insert another quarter. You win? Well, your reward is another round, a slightly different palette swap, and the smug satisfaction that comes from saving New York, again, via joystick.
The cabinet artwork deserves mentionâa garish lime-green city skyline, warped caricatures of the crew, and a giant warning: DO NOT OPERATE IF PREGNANT OR EASILY FRIGHTENED. Okay, I made that up, but it wouldnât feel out of place amid the dense smoke of the â80s arcade jungle. You could always spot this game by the cluster of kids, all clustering around for that split-second cameo from Stay Puft, all fever-dream optimism and sticky soda hands.
Was it a classic? Depends. Some say itâs shameless movie cash-in at its messiest, a Frankensteinâs monster of genre tropes. Others remember it as the first place they ever experienced the heady thrill of busting ghosts for a crowd and not just the couch cushions at home. Me? I remember playing on a Saturday afternoon, twenty minutes deep into a sugar rush, quarters clutched in fist, Ray Parker Jr. echoing through my skull as I epically failed to trap a pixelous librarianâreminding me early and often that, in the world of arcades, bustinâ made me feel… well, broke.
But god, Iâd do it again in a heartbeat.
