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Old 11-22-2020, 12:28 AM   #10436
Leo656
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Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: nWo Country
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A couple of games came in the mail today.

- TMNT (Game Boy Advance) - I never played this one. I'll check it out one of these days when I hook my Gamecube and Game Boy Player up.

- Super Fire Pro Wrestling (Super Famicom) - The first Fire Pro on the Super Famicom and the first Super Famicom game I've ever bought. I know that it's primitive compared to the later games but I look forward to playing it anyway. I ordered a Super NES-to-Super Famicom converter specifically to play this and a couple of other wrestling games from Japan, but it hasn't arrived yet. It might arrive by Wednesday. Some of the games I ordered are coming in from Japan so they probably won't be here for a few weeks, anyway. But I really look forward to playing all of them, since I've only read about and watched videos of them.
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Last night I played and beat New Ghostbusters II for NES. It originally only came out in Europe, for some reason (although the Game Boy version of Ghostbusters II released everywhere was essentially the exact same game as this, only in black and white with slightly worse graphics). Other than "general confusion", I have no idea why it never came out in America; it's not a masterpiece or anything but it's easily the best Ghostbusters game on the NES, although that's not a high bar by any means.

It follows the plot of the movie pretty closely in some respects, with large levels to play through based on scenes from the film. Most levels end with Boss fights (very loosely) based on the movie as well, and on the whole it just feels like a much better interpretation than the "regular" Ghostbusters II game we got over here. The game we originally got felt very generic, and was altogether more about avoiding obstacles and catching power-up icons than "busting" ghosts, and the driving sections they added to keep things from getting stale weren't very good, so it wasn't much of a diversion. The Statue of Liberty level near the end was kind of fun, but way too unforgiving if you didn't have a lot of lives stockpiled; most people who played the original Ghostbusters II game never even made it to Vigo, and if they did, the final stage was a bit of an anticlimax, more of an endurance test than anything. "Beat the stage four times, once with each Ghostbuster, then stand there and watch the 'Boss Fight' essentially play itself." Yawn.

I don't hate the Ghostbusters II game as much as most people do, and I maintain that it CAN be fun if you play it long enough to get the hang of its "quirks", but it's definitely a test of patience and even as a kid I was baffled as to why a better game couldn't come out of such good material. When I heard about and saw pictures of "New Ghostbusters II", I was quite upset that we never got that game instead, or at least in addition to. I played it once on an emulator, but the gameplay of it just doesn't lend itself well at all to playing it on a keyboard. I recently found a reproduction cart at a reasonable price, and I'm very glad I did.

It's a very simple game, but fun and doesn't wear out its welcome. I can see it being a big hit by 1989 standards, easily. Basically, you pick two of the four Ghostbusters - or Louis, in a nice little bonus I guess - and play through five levels from the movie: The Courthouse, the Subway, Peter's Apartment, the River of Slime, and the Museum. You control both Ghostbusters; your main one fires a Proton stream with the A button, and your secondary one traps ghosts with the B button. There's a bit of strategy involved, as sometime there are a good number of enemies onscreen and some of them throw things at you, so avoiding attacks (which kill you in one hit) while catching ghosts becomes most of the challenge. Your primary Ghostbuster is the only one who takes damage, though, which makes things a bit easier. It's not a very hard game at all, though, which might be the "worst" thing about it; the ability to catch and trap ghosts through walls while they can't even get close to you to attack sort of makes certain parts far too easy. It's not always that simple, though, as your second Ghostbuster usually follows some distance behind and can get hung up on obstacles occasionally, so they might not be in position when you try and trap a ghost, in which case the ghost can get free and potentially kill you, but that rarely happens. Most of the enemies have very predictable patterns, but occasionally they'll spawn right on top of where you're standing, so you do have to stay alert. You have to catch all the ghosts in a room before an arrow directs you to the next room, and once you capture all the ghosts you either head into a Boss Fight room or the level ends with a cutscene.

There's a good bit of enemy variety, although only a small number of them actively attack or present much of a threat. Most of them are very easy to simply avoid until you can get close enough to capture and trap them, but in some spots there's at least a good bit of activity on the screen, which is nice. The Bosses are fun to play against but all have fairly predictable patterns, even Vigo. You'll probably die at least once on each of them until you master the pattern but after that they're pretty simple to beat without any problem at all. Slimer in the Subway is hardly even a "Boss", as he gets beaten and trapped in one hit like any other enemy, you just have to time it so you can sneak past his block. The River of Slime, Museum, and Vigo Boss Fights are all pretty good, though.

The character sprites are alright by NES standards; you can tell more or less who each of the Ghostbusters are, although Winston is like a greenish-gray for some reason. It's not like there's no brown hues in the game, so I can only assume that the Japanese people who programmed the game were racist. The ghost sprites like Slimer are pretty good and all of the Bosses are very large and detailed. Vigo takes up most of the height of the screen, a visual that almost makes up for his rather pedestrian fireball attack. Graphically, it looks MUCH better than the tiny sprites of the first Ghostbusters II game, and about ten years removed from the original Ghostbusters on NES.

The music is surprisingly good, too, with some fun "chiptunes" versions of several of the songs from the soundtrack. You get the original "Ghostbusters" theme, of course, but not constantly as in the original NES game. And you also get some pretty decent versions of "We're Back", "Flip City", and so on. I was a huge fan of the movie's soundtrack so it was neat to hear it represented decently on an NES cart.

There's really not much bad to say about it. It's very easy, and very short, and that's about it. But those don't have to be bad things. For an NES Ghostbusters game, it's pretty much exactly what it should be. Peter's Apartment is by far the longest level, and by the end of it things start to feel a bit tedious, to the point where the change of scenery in the next level is welcome. Like, you do the exact same things for the entire game, but the way that level goes on for about twice as long as the others, with most of the rooms looking nearly identical, makes it feel a bit of a slog in ways the other levels simply don't. It's less about what you're doing that becomes repetitive - although it is - and more the fact that looking at the exact same enemies and backgrounds for that long in a single level gets tiresome. But it's not even really a concern, as the game can easily be beaten in about 30 minutes. It'll take longer the first time through until you memorize enemy patterns, and a few semi-cheap deaths are a given regardless, especially in the later Boss fights, but it's a VERY easy game. You get extra lives simply for catching lots of ghosts and earning higher and higher scores, and you get three continues on top of that. So there's really no excuse not to finish it.

Overall, I'm very pleased with it and I wish I'd been able to play it as a kid. It easily would have been one of my favorite NES games and gotten a ton of play. It's very short, and very easy, but MILES better than either of the other two Ghostbusers NES games. There's not much to it, but for a fan, it's a perfect game to pick up, mess with for an hour, and go do something else. Which is refreshing, honestly; going back to some older NES games recently, it's very jarring how much artificial and cheap difficulty was used in order to pad the length of so many games. Not a problem, here. It's not in any way "deep" but it's exactly what it needs to be.

Definitely one of the best licensed games on the NES, doubly-so given how it was based on a movie. Check it out if you're interested and missed it, or are only familiar with the other two Ghostbusters NES games and are curious what one that's actually "All Fun/No Frustration" would be like.

I wish it had the Ecto-1A and a Statue of Liberty level, but I guess you can't have everything.
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