The 20 floors in the Zuul building is entirely a reference to them climbing the stairs and getting tired in the movie. Of all the things they could've referenced, they probably could've left that out.
The infinite lives trick looks like an "underflow" bug. Basically, loose 2 lines when you have one. You end up with -1 lives which the game interprets as "max" lives.
Pretty much. Though it doesn't become '-1' because then it could theoretically expand to an infinite number of lives. It has a cap of 255 and causing the glitch makes it that number. Which...Is still more than enough for the staircase sequence.
@@saltystick_99 I'm not sure what you mean by "theoretically expand to an infinite number of lives". As a signed 8bit value, 0 - 1 will result in 0xFF, which is interpreted as "-1". As an unsigned 8bit value, 0 - 1 will result in 0xFF as well. Only this value is interpreted as "255" rather than "-1", being unsigned -- (this is the case with the game, with the ghost in the door likely forgetting to call the "check if we're out of lives" code and allowing the player to continue playing with "0" lives) Neither of these cases (the value being signed or unsigned) can possibly make the player's lives "infinite" though. The ghosts can still kill the player and correctly check if the game over screen needs to be called once the player's 255 lives run out.
@@rollanddev I meant in the sense of when Samer Karim up there said -1, it sounded to me like they were saying it would go "up" to -2, -3, -4, ect., not stopping at all even when it reaches like, I don't know, -600. I know if one were to die 255 times (or 254, I don't know if dying to underflow would count to that), then the player would get a game over. But at that point you'd have so many lives it would take hours before that happen, and _looooong_ after you would reach the exit.
I figured it was an underflow error. Now I'm wondering, if some of the doors heal you, can you get killed and activate the underflow error, then activate a healing door and kill yourself by getting an overflow error? 'Cause that would be hilarious.
The distance you need to drive is the path you created with your logo on the map screen. What is not displayed in the NES version are the path marks you leave on the map. In the C64 version that is displayed. You are drawing a path, that hits as many ghosts as possible, then you drive somewhere, following the path and you will encounter the ghosts on your way that got stuck on your path, so you can suck them up with a ghost vacuum cleaner you can buy at the shop.
@@GoneFishingAmalgam That is so true. c64 ports of NES and arcade games were often just disposable toys like a cup-and-ball or one of those little plastic maze games where you try to get the BB into the hole. Looking at the packaging is ultimately where most of the enjoyment came from.
@@gmorris7897 As a weird fan who has played all the versions, I have come to the conclusion that the master system one is the best, followed by c64, and then way in the back is the NES
In all seriousness, the Ghostbusters in this game are not the four from the movie. The manual explains that you're starting your own Ghostbusters franchise.
Apparently, this wasn't originally conceived as a Ghostbusters game, but it was revamped into one to cash in on the massive success of the movie. That's why the game features so much driving and other things that shouldn't be in a Ghostbusters game. It's also telling that the Master System port that came out later felt a bit more like a Ghostbusters game.
@@MasterZebulin It was. As far as I know, the NES version was a mere port of the Atari 2600 version with little to nothing changed, beyond some graphical updates.
The game started on the C64, the driving part already coded, they tweaked that for the game so it could make it to market quickly. It was a fully featured game for the time and quite successful and by no means a shameless cash grab. The driving wasn't very excessive on the original c64, but that also came down to your play style..
Programmer here! I am betting that the ghost behind the door takes away 2 lives. If you have one life left, and you lose two lives, then you have -1 lives. If the game checks for death by saying "if lives == 0, die()", then that's why you live forever. Not a guarantee that this is the reason, but makes sense.
It's kind of funny watching someone play this game after like 35 years... I still remember every detail of this game from when I was a kid. Watching all the small mistakes and questions you had made me want to yell at the screen, lol. Like how you can walk up to the top of the sidewalks in front of every building to get more height for catching the ghosts in your beams, or how the more you move around the map the longer the driving distance is. I never knew I was glitching the game, all I knew is that if I opened every single door on the way up, I always seemed to make it to the top every time.
You can also control the other guy on the right when doing the regular ghost busting sequence. It's a button to swap which guy you control. It's how you get them caught quickly.
This is a game I had an incredibly hard time with as a kid. However, when I picked up an NES in my 20's I went back to this title and finished it in 10 minutes... I found that most of the difficulty was from poor mechanics information and documentation.
Now to be fair: the movie does indicate Dana's apartment is on the 22nd floor, so that's pretty close attention to detail in a game notorious for not paying any attention to details. lol. Edit: okay...well they have Zuul in her undies, Stay Puft climbing the building as a timer for the boss and you die if you cross the streams. So maybe they paid a lot more attention to detail than I gave credit.
That isn’t Zuul, that’s Gozer. Zuul is the dog thing that possessed Dana, the Gatekeeper; companion to Vinz Klortho, the Keymaster. The woman in underwear is Gozer the Gozerian.
I also discovered that glitch by mistake. This game came with my console and I've beat it using this tactic but as a child I didn't even understand this was a glitch. Only now in perspective I realize I've glitched the game.
I played this on the Atari 2600 back then. Never knew what was going on and always thought that marshmallow man was just there to randomly mess up your game.
I had the ZX Spectrum version, in that one Marshmallow Man would spawn randomly and you had to drop a piece of bait to attract him. Do this and you got a large cash reward for saving the city, if you didn't have any bait he would instead cause damage. Can't remember if you got fined by the city or if it just made the PK skyrocket.
I never knew you could open doors in the Zuul building! It took me about a month to figure out this game as a kid. That was just how to get to the Zuul building with all the equipment needed. Still never made it to the top.
I remembered beating this game at my cousins house with just ghost food as a kid. It took me almost 45 minutes due to having to backtrack up and down the stairs to avoid the ghosts. Really hated the fact you would pay $50-$60 back in the mid 80's for a game that only took 30-45 minutes to beat.
Most games in the era were like that. They made them crazy hard so you'd try and fail for months and feel like you got your money's worth before either finally beating it or giving up. Cartridge space didn't allow for that much content, at least until programmers mastered it.
This was one of my very first games as a kid and I actually got good enough to get to the Zuul building, then never could get past a few flights of stairs.
"I don't know why is it so far driving to the shop" It's because you drive the same path and distance as logo on main map. At the start you frantically moved logo without a purpose, and ended up driving in the same way, that's why it was so long.
I feel a good candidate for this series would be castle of dragon. I remember when i was a calf i couldn't beat it even with game genie but then when i came back as a adult i realized all the things i was doing wrong.
I've never seen this channel before. But thank you my dude, for finally showing and explaining to me what this game and the items are actually all about, as well as a solid way to play the game. I'm always looking to play old school games over the nicer more modern Xbox and playstation games of today. I just love the nostalgia. Amd I've heard all the trash talk on ghostbusters, and I've seen avgn and his entertaining review of it. But this is what I've always wanted. A real and honest showing and explanation of the game. I'm gonna check out more of your channel. Glad I came across this video
sounds to me what happends with that door is the game is coded to end when you hit 0 lives. When you lost two lives at the same time your life count rolled over to possibly 99 or even 999 lives. This means if you gained a life right after you did that glitch you could still lose by gaining life.
Infinite life trick sounds darn near close to the Home Alone Lost in New York health glitch as well. Still Wet Bandits strangling you at the end still kills you
3 things. The door glitch drops your lives to 255. Never back down gozer as it refills it's health. Last play the top down Ghostbusters 2 game. It's actually good.
The C64 version was a lot better. It would give you codes that you could use to save your progress, so you didn't have to farm everything in one session.
I genuinely liked this game as a kid. I knew the staircase was bullshit and I think I accidentally got that glitch a handhful of times, but I just actually liked grinding the money and trying out different things from the store.
I love the SMS version alot. Played that all the time as a kid except could never beat Gozer, until I showed it to my kids for the first time and went clutch to beat it the first time ever.
The reason the distance in the car segments changes is because its based on how much you move around on the map. It makes you drive longer the more you move the cursor on the map. So if you move from the gas station directly to the shop the driving distance will be low. If you move the cursor from the gas station down to the hq then to the zuul building and end at the shop, even though the destination is the same you route you took with cursor is longer so the driving stage reflects that.
You know what they were thinking? They were thinking "I WAS GIVEN TWO WEEKS TO PROGRAM AND DEBUG THIS MASSIVE IP GAME AND IF I DON'T I WILL BE FIRED BUT IF I COMPLETE THIS I WILL GET A PAYCHECK."
I had this game when I was a kid and it was so frustratingly difficult. Funny thing is I did get passed the stairs multiple times but couldn’t beat the end boss. With the ghost meat, I seem to remember as a kid I would use it and it worked well, but, you had to wait until the hosts actually got to the meat(right on top). If I remember right you could then go up the stairs for a while before they would go onscreen again. Though sometimes it would still offscreen and do what it did there. Oh well game is jank!! 😂
I had this for the Commodore 64 as a kid. I was never fast enough to do anything useful before entering the Zuul building, so the PK would always be too high and I would always encounter Stay-Puft and get rekt. It was pretty garbage on C64, too.
It's hilarious how adults today cannot comprehend what kids did successfully 40 years ago. Going just from memory, get the better packs for longer streams (which you can aim btw). & get the ghost vacuum to suck ghosts in while driving. The energy meter on the map screen is like a timer. Don't let it build. Move your cursor around the map to block the ghosts attracted to zuul. Those are the ghosts you vacuum & the distance you drive is the distance you covered on the map using the cursor. Tap on the doors to try & get the ghosts to go inside. We used the NES Advantage for turbo mode. Get sound gen & ghost suit. Ghost bait messes you up. We did this constantly. GIT GUD. Props for beating it.
Nice! I had this as a kid and never got past the stairs. Thanks for the walk down memory lane and also showing me what happens when you know what to do.
7:05 it's probably overflow on the 'lives' counter. So assuming it's an 8bit counter, if you're at 0 lives but you subtract 1 before the game over is triggered, it will wrap around to 255.
One of my favorite NES games to play was Pinball Quest. Very random, probably not that popular but super fun to play and I am hella good at pinball IRL because I played that game so much growing up. (You should play it Ryu 😎)
Okay, there are differences between the C64 and the NEW versions of the game, but if I recall correctly, the Zuul Temple opens when the city's PKE reaches 5,000. The game ends when it hits 10,000. The ghost vacuum (which you ignored) can let you capture ghosts on the road, which otherwise give the PKE a boost when they get to the Zuul Temple.
Now, the 2nd GB game.. nngh. That's a bit of a brutal difficulty. Not impossible, just... hard. But not "almost impossible" hard. I can usually get to the final set of 4 levels past the Statue of Liberty part, but trying to survive long enough to get all four GBs to the painting is where I usually run out of lives and continues.
It actually seems easier than it was on the 8 bit computers, c64 and Spectrum. I seem to remember the streams being diagonal and the ghost would dodge about in the triangular area you created, making the trap firing harder.
Yes, I had the spectrum version and the streams were indeed diagonal. They also simply worked as barriers rather than sticking the ghosts to them. I would always lay the trap at the far right of the screen, wait for the ghost to move above it then start the streams, trapping it in a small area using the streams and the edge of the screen.
- the distance your car spends on the street traveling is related how much movement you did on the map. - the HQ is where you get your troops refilled. Ye, pointless in the sense you don't visit it, but it is an element of the game. Also, maybe you empty your traps there? Was a long time ago. - NES ofered ingame shopping? Woah! - shop items: there's a sucktion to catch the yellow map-ghosts. They are the time-limit of the game, so... There's also a google which makes you easier to catch ghosts invading houses (the ghosts float otherwise behind the walls, and can be seen only when at windows). There's also the Marshmanllow Man trap - any time MM destroys a house hurts you 5-10K $, which is a lot. - the supertrap has I think 15 charges - not entering a red house happens if you accidentaly entered the house on the other side of the street. You have to push the direction beside clicking the action button. - the Zuul-building opens up when the city accumlates enough PK-energy. Nothing to do with your money. -
i'm late to comment on this but in regards to the distance travelled, it depends on how long you are "driving" on the map, basically your icon you control is setting the driving course, so the more you drive around, the longer it takes to get to places
"I don't know why it's so far to get to the shop." I can answer that. The distance you need to travel to get to your chosen destination is actually directly tied to how much you moved around on the map screen before choosing where to go. "I don't know why but I just got kicked out of there." Maybe you actually drove to the building to the left rather than the one that was blinking. Can't say for sure. "The Zuul Building always opens up once you get a certain amount of cash." That is correct. The Ghost Vacuum is a good item because it lets you catch the ghosts you see on the map screen by going over them, then using it when they appear on the road screen. The game manual itself recommends using a turbo controller. Probably more like ~127 lives if it's an underflow. I feel like you can shoot the Marshmallow Man to push him back down the building if you really need to.
1:30 It was 1000m the first time and 200m the second time because the game determines distance by the actual path you traced moving the GB icon around town. The C64 version actually drew your path as you moved the icon. Trace a short trip, drive a short distance. 3:40 The Zuul building opens when the PKE level reaches the max. If you buy the PKE meter you can track it. 4:45 Stay Puft comes out when the PKE level reaches a certain point, but not enough to summon Zuul. You can buy the ghost vac to catch the ghosts in the map screen. Equip the ghost vac, trace a path through a ghost then catch it with the Ectomobile as you drive through them. You can buy ghost bait and drop it if Stay Puft begins to form to stop it. Every ghost on the map that reaches the Zuul building raises the PKE level by 100. 8:00 Why 20 floors? Watch the movie. Why are they so slow? Watch the movie. Why'd they choose that mechanic to move them? IDFK.
May I suggest you to try the very same game on Sega Master System? It has better graphic, less glitches and it can helps understand a few game design decisions in the NES game (i.e. the change in Kms when visiting a building).
I liked this game. First played it on the c64 The mileage you have to travel in the driving minigame is based on how far you move the cursor on the map screen, including backtracking
This is kind of my favorite youtube series now! But please always be smug about how easy it is and not that you don't know... gives it a certain charm.
Liked this on atari 7800 as a kid. Give it a try. Would love to see ur frustration dealing w staypuff attacks XD. Aand as another mentioned ur trip length is determined by the path u create on the map. Ty and take shprt trips.
To be clear, the atari has these weird little switches on the front (i dont remember what theyre for, reset maybe?) and staypuff runs on the screen, u flip the switches a particular way and he runs off the screen w out attacking a building.
Awesome series man, this reminds of a small set of videos called Bootsy Beats, but fully realized and an actual series. Hope you do more of these, my picks are for Zelda II and Festers Quest!
"Conglaturation" is amazing. At the end of Bad Dudes it says "Congraturations" Those L/R's were messy back then. I get why with localizations but it's still super funny to me.
I think I managed to lose after triggering the glitch randomly as a kid. Even with 255 lives, you can get death looped by a ghost deciding to stay on top of you. Great game design there.
Either beat it faster with glitch or typical spam even now with the 100k which makes you own it, I would suggest laying ghost food half way and everytime they are atleast a floor below you put one each time on the far right, it should keep them out of the way and slower.
I had the master system version, and geez this almost looks like a beta version of it. This the sms version works. During the city stage your main objective is to get 1mil in cash before the time runs out. If the pk energy gets too high the marshmallow monster starts destroying parts of the city and you lose a big chunk of money everytime it happens. You decrease pk by capturing ghosts in town and stoping the map ghosts from reaching zuul. In the city screen the ghostbuster logo actualy traces a route that you will take to reach the place and in the sms version you can see the route being drawn. The capture ghosts screen makes much more sense and plays better in general with different kinds of ghosts as well and if you take too long they attack one of you guys. After each ghost section you need to empty the traps on hq. There are a lot of items on the shop all that affect things in different ways and you can even change cars all which have different speeds and inventory space. It gets pretty hectic as the time starts to run out and is rather fun, as a whole is a much better game than this. And looks waaay better as well. If you can find the manual or a faq that explains the mechanics i definitely recommend trying it
The only thing that grinds my gears about everybody who plays this game doesn't understand the driving distances. The more you move the logo on the overhead map screen, the longer your drive is, which is why you should buy the Ghost Alarm ASAP, then you can drive straight from bust to bust once you get the super trap, and cut down on drive time significantly. Of course I played the game when new, like 35 years ago, so maybe that knowledge was lost between then and now, and only I remember it.
If you don't feel like having a real boss fight, you can go to the bottom screen and start shooting Stay-Puft in the face. Eventually you'll start blinking and become invincible and can go kill Gozer with no difficulty.
The 20 floors in the Zuul building is entirely a reference to them climbing the stairs and getting tired in the movie. Of all the things they could've referenced, they probably could've left that out.
Ya think?
or they could have made it fun with a run button and a stamina bar...
To quote some random guy I heard. “What the fuck were they fucking thinking?!”
@@kaom4713 guy sounds like an angry nerd
@@hentaidude666 Some sort of angry nintendo nerd if I'm understanding properly. An angry atari sega nerd, even, perchance.
The infinite lives trick looks like an "underflow" bug. Basically, loose 2 lines when you have one. You end up with -1 lives which the game interprets as "max" lives.
Pretty much. Though it doesn't become '-1' because then it could theoretically expand to an infinite number of lives. It has a cap of 255 and causing the glitch makes it that number. Which...Is still more than enough for the staircase sequence.
@@saltystick_99 I'm not sure what you mean by "theoretically expand to an infinite number of lives".
As a signed 8bit value, 0 - 1 will result in 0xFF, which is interpreted as "-1".
As an unsigned 8bit value, 0 - 1 will result in 0xFF as well. Only this value is interpreted as "255" rather than "-1", being unsigned -- (this is the case with the game, with the ghost in the door likely forgetting to call the "check if we're out of lives" code and allowing the player to continue playing with "0" lives)
Neither of these cases (the value being signed or unsigned) can possibly make the player's lives "infinite" though. The ghosts can still kill the player and correctly check if the game over screen needs to be called once the player's 255 lives run out.
@@rollanddev I meant in the sense of when Samer Karim up there said -1, it sounded to me like they were saying it would go "up" to -2, -3, -4, ect., not stopping at all even when it reaches like, I don't know, -600. I know if one were to die 255 times (or 254, I don't know if dying to underflow would count to that), then the player would get a game over. But at that point you'd have so many lives it would take hours before that happen, and _looooong_ after you would reach the exit.
Yeah, its probably 254 lives he has left afterwards
I figured it was an underflow error. Now I'm wondering, if some of the doors heal you, can you get killed and activate the underflow error, then activate a healing door and kill yourself by getting an overflow error? 'Cause that would be hilarious.
The distance you need to drive is the path you created with your logo on the map screen. What is not displayed in the NES version are the path marks you leave on the map. In the C64 version that is displayed. You are drawing a path, that hits as many ghosts as possible, then you drive somewhere, following the path and you will encounter the ghosts on your way that got stuck on your path, so you can suck them up with a ghost vacuum cleaner you can buy at the shop.
The C64 version of this game was so much better.
@@gmorris7897 That may well be the only time that sentence has ever been used.
@@GoneFishingAmalgam That is so true. c64 ports of NES and arcade games were often just disposable toys like a cup-and-ball or one of those little plastic maze games where you try to get the BB into the hole. Looking at the packaging is ultimately where most of the enjoyment came from.
@@gmorris7897 but its still shit though...
@@gmorris7897 As a weird fan who has played all the versions, I have come to the conclusion that the master system one is the best, followed by c64, and then way in the back is the NES
"Don't cross the swords" - you're breaking my retro nostalgic heart man, they're streams.
Thought the same thing. Also when he talks about “the man climbing the building.” Lol
@@kingofmadprops …I mean it is a man…
@@phosphorus4 a man of marshmallow
Also refers to Gozer as a 'he'...Ryu, go watch Ghostbusters!
Fake gamers cashing in on nostalgia. Even AVGN is guilty of this.
“Conglaturation” - 18:17
There you have it. The most iconic typo in gaming probably. Almost sounds sarcastic and mocking when you beat the game.
Sounds like they’re mocking themselves when they say “You have completed a great game.”
I dunno, "All your base are belong to us" is a famous video game typo/translation mistake.
@@mikevisby8744 Not a typo though, just bad grammar. After the internet sensationalized it, it's good as-is to me lol.
8:17 “Why can’t I shoot the ghosts? None of it makes any sense!”
Why are there _only three Ghostbusters?_ Winston is clearly missing.
1980’s passive aggressive racism at its finest right there.
Im really hoping winston called in sick that day..
True, but having a fourth character in the staircase level would make it a million times harder then it already is.
In all seriousness, the Ghostbusters in this game are not the four from the movie. The manual explains that you're starting your own Ghostbusters franchise.
Apparently, this wasn't originally conceived as a Ghostbusters game, but it was revamped into one to cash in on the massive success of the movie. That's why the game features so much driving and other things that shouldn't be in a Ghostbusters game. It's also telling that the Master System port that came out later felt a bit more like a Ghostbusters game.
Wasn't this game on the Atari as well?
@@MasterZebulin It was. As far as I know, the NES version was a mere port of the Atari 2600 version with little to nothing changed, beyond some graphical updates.
@@NeoKokoro20 So I DIDN'T misremember things...
Master system version was much better.
The game started on the C64, the driving part already coded, they tweaked that for the game so it could make it to market quickly. It was a fully featured game for the time and quite successful and by no means a shameless cash grab.
The driving wasn't very excessive on the original c64, but that also came down to your play style..
as a 90's kid that was born in the 80's this is all I ever wanted from a youtube channel talking about retro gaming. keep this series going!
Never played Ghostbusters for the NES, only played it on the Sega Mastersystem and you can shoot the ghosts and the climb isn't as long and tedious.
Master system version is much better. It is the version I grew up on.
"Conglaturation" Ryu you have "prooved" the justice of our culture.
I do like this Debunking the Difficulty series. Keep it up god sir.
Programmer here! I am betting that the ghost behind the door takes away 2 lives.
If you have one life left, and you lose two lives, then you have -1 lives. If the game checks for death by saying "if lives == 0, die()", then that's why you live forever.
Not a guarantee that this is the reason, but makes sense.
It's kind of funny watching someone play this game after like 35 years... I still remember every detail of this game from when I was a kid. Watching all the small mistakes and questions you had made me want to yell at the screen, lol. Like how you can walk up to the top of the sidewalks in front of every building to get more height for catching the ghosts in your beams, or how the more you move around the map the longer the driving distance is. I never knew I was glitching the game, all I knew is that if I opened every single door on the way up, I always seemed to make it to the top every time.
You can also control the other guy on the right when doing the regular ghost busting sequence. It's a button to swap which guy you control. It's how you get them caught quickly.
This is a game I had an incredibly hard time with as a kid. However, when I picked up an NES in my 20's I went back to this title and finished it in 10 minutes... I found that most of the difficulty was from poor mechanics information and documentation.
"Dont cross the swords" Ryu : Obvious ghostbusters fan
Now to be fair: the movie does indicate Dana's apartment is on the 22nd floor, so that's pretty close attention to detail in a game notorious for not paying any attention to details. lol. Edit: okay...well they have Zuul in her undies, Stay Puft climbing the building as a timer for the boss and you die if you cross the streams. So maybe they paid a lot more attention to detail than I gave credit.
That isn’t Zuul, that’s Gozer. Zuul is the dog thing that possessed Dana, the Gatekeeper; companion to Vinz Klortho, the Keymaster. The woman in underwear is Gozer the Gozerian.
@@endymallorn Yes thank you.
So if stay puft climbs to the top of the building is it game over or can you shoot him so he can stay down before climbing back up again?
“Disproving perceived hardness” “I cheated”
Kekw
I also discovered that glitch by mistake. This game came with my console and I've beat it using this tactic but as a child I didn't even understand this was a glitch. Only now in perspective I realize I've glitched the game.
I played this on the Atari 2600 back then. Never knew what was going on and always thought that marshmallow man was just there to randomly mess up your game.
I had the ZX Spectrum version, in that one Marshmallow Man would spawn randomly and you had to drop a piece of bait to attract him. Do this and you got a large cash reward for saving the city, if you didn't have any bait he would instead cause damage. Can't remember if you got fined by the city or if it just made the PK skyrocket.
Upvote for NES Home Alone for the series. That game traumatized me as a kid.
I have hazy memories of the gameboy one being utterly inscrutable to a first timer without an instruction manual
I like how it's called "Debunking the Difficulty" but in reality it's "How to be as awesome as Ryu on classic games, if only for one shining moment"
More like, "How to cheese BS games from the 90s." And I love it.
Great comment 😂
well this stupid game existed
I never knew you could open doors in the Zuul building! It took me about a month to figure out this game as a kid. That was just how to get to the Zuul building with all the equipment needed. Still never made it to the top.
Me neither.
I remembered beating this game at my cousins house with just ghost food as a kid. It took me almost 45 minutes due to having to backtrack up and down the stairs to avoid the ghosts. Really hated the fact you would pay $50-$60 back in the mid 80's for a game that only took 30-45 minutes to beat.
Most games in the era were like that. They made them crazy hard so you'd try and fail for months and feel like you got your money's worth before either finally beating it or giving up. Cartridge space didn't allow for that much content, at least until programmers mastered it.
This was one of my very first games as a kid and I actually got good enough to get to the Zuul building, then never could get past a few flights of stairs.
The amount of meters in the driving sequence depends on how far you've moved the cursor on the overworld map screen prior to selecting a location.
And the reason you can get "kicked out" when you arrive to capture the ghosts it's because you took too long to get there.
Debunking the difficulty Friday the 13th NES
"I don't know why is it so far driving to the shop"
It's because you drive the same path and distance as logo on main map. At the start you frantically moved logo without a purpose, and ended up driving in the same way, that's why it was so long.
Wow, the “Conglaturation” screen is absolutely ridiculous 😂
It's not as legendary as "A Winner Is You", but it's close.
I feel a good candidate for this series would be castle of dragon.
I remember when i was a calf i couldn't beat it even with game genie but then when i came back as a adult i realized all the things i was doing wrong.
I've never seen this channel before. But thank you my dude, for finally showing and explaining to me what this game and the items are actually all about, as well as a solid way to play the game. I'm always looking to play old school games over the nicer more modern Xbox and playstation games of today. I just love the nostalgia. Amd I've heard all the trash talk on ghostbusters, and I've seen avgn and his entertaining review of it. But this is what I've always wanted. A real and honest showing and explanation of the game. I'm gonna check out more of your channel. Glad I came across this video
sounds to me what happends with that door is the game is coded to end when you hit 0 lives. When you lost two lives at the same time your life count rolled over to possibly 99 or even 999 lives. This means if you gained a life right after you did that glitch you could still lose by gaining life.
The more u drive around on the main screen the longer it takes to drive where your going
Infinite life trick sounds darn near close to the Home Alone Lost in New York health glitch as well. Still Wet Bandits strangling you at the end still kills you
3 things. The door glitch drops your lives to 255. Never back down gozer as it refills it's health. Last play the top down Ghostbusters 2 game. It's actually good.
I love how there is a person listed in the Special Thanks as: Motoyuki "GOD" Kanayama.
The reason why the game is still hard to beat is that if you don't use that glitch on the stairway you'll still die like a casul.
Compared to the Atari 2600 version I had growing up, this looks amazing.
The C64 version was a lot better. It would give you codes that you could use to save your progress, so you didn't have to farm everything in one session.
Exactly, just play the C64 version to see how it was intended. (though apparently the Sega master system version is pretty good as well)
I genuinely liked this game as a kid. I knew the staircase was bullshit and I think I accidentally got that glitch a handhful of times, but I just actually liked grinding the money and trying out different things from the store.
Well you didn't debunk anything. But you did confirm how difficult this game is.
That boss reminds me a lot of the game King's Knight. You should do a Debunking the Difficulty on that early Square gem.
I love the SMS version alot. Played that all the time as a kid except could never beat Gozer, until I showed it to my kids for the first time and went clutch to beat it the first time ever.
The reason the distance in the car segments changes is because its based on how much you move around on the map. It makes you drive longer the more you move the cursor on the map. So if you move from the gas station directly to the shop the driving distance will be low. If you move the cursor from the gas station down to the hq then to the zuul building and end at the shop, even though the destination is the same you route you took with cursor is longer so the driving stage reflects that.
You know what they were thinking? They were thinking "I WAS GIVEN TWO WEEKS TO PROGRAM AND DEBUG THIS MASSIVE IP GAME AND IF I DON'T I WILL BE FIRED BUT IF I COMPLETE THIS I WILL GET A PAYCHECK."
This walkthrough might make the angry video game nerd less mad at this game. Great video
X men: Mutant Apocalypse for SNES was very difficult back in the day. Debunk it Ryu!
I had this game when I was a kid and it was so frustratingly difficult. Funny thing is I did get passed the stairs multiple times but couldn’t beat the end boss. With the ghost meat, I seem to remember as a kid I would use it and it worked well, but, you had to wait until the hosts actually got to the meat(right on top). If I remember right you could then go up the stairs for a while before they would go onscreen again. Though sometimes it would still offscreen and do what it did there. Oh well game is jank!! 😂
I had this for the Commodore 64 as a kid. I was never fast enough to do anything useful before entering the Zuul building, so the PK would always be too high and I would always encounter Stay-Puft and get rekt. It was pretty garbage on C64, too.
It's hilarious how adults today cannot comprehend what kids did successfully 40 years ago.
Going just from memory, get the better packs for longer streams (which you can aim btw). & get the ghost vacuum to suck ghosts in while driving. The energy meter on the map screen is like a timer. Don't let it build. Move your cursor around the map to block the ghosts attracted to zuul. Those are the ghosts you vacuum & the distance you drive is the distance you covered on the map using the cursor. Tap on the doors to try & get the ghosts to go inside. We used the NES Advantage for turbo mode. Get sound gen & ghost suit. Ghost bait messes you up. We did this constantly. GIT GUD. Props for beating it.
Pro strat: Don't ever play this game and you'll never lose to it.
Nice! I had this as a kid and never got past the stairs. Thanks for the walk down memory lane and also showing me what happens when you know what to do.
The stairs are the most difficult part and by using the trick you just proved how difficult it is.
And if you watched the entire video you'd see that he completed the stairs with using -GASP- patience.
@@Zancb Hope you don't think you "got me " with that bullshit. Does not prove the stairs are not hard.
You have prooved the justice of our gamer culture. Conglaturations!
Sometimes exploiting glitches in games feels like cheating, but these janky old NES games DESERVE to be glitched. It’s only fair!
7:05 it's probably overflow on the 'lives' counter. So assuming it's an 8bit counter, if you're at 0 lives but you subtract 1 before the game over is triggered, it will wrap around to 255.
Looking at the comments, I think the crossing swords joke went over everyone's heads. Don't worry, Ryu - I appreciated it even if noone else did.
One of my favorite NES games to play was Pinball Quest. Very random, probably not that popular but super fun to play and I am hella good at pinball IRL because I played that game so much growing up. (You should play it Ryu 😎)
I had no idea about the stair glitch. I beat this in 7 minutes thanks to you
Okay, there are differences between the C64 and the NEW versions of the game, but if I recall correctly, the Zuul Temple opens when the city's PKE reaches 5,000. The game ends when it hits 10,000. The ghost vacuum (which you ignored) can let you capture ghosts on the road, which otherwise give the PKE a boost when they get to the Zuul Temple.
If you haven't already, you should do River City Ransom. It's pretty chill.
I never knew this was on NES on any capacity... Still have it on Atari though.
This looks and sounds like an Atari game. Truly one of the most shameless movie cash-ins ever.
Now, the 2nd GB game.. nngh. That's a bit of a brutal difficulty. Not impossible, just... hard. But not "almost impossible" hard. I can usually get to the final set of 4 levels past the Statue of Liberty part, but trying to survive long enough to get all four GBs to the painting is where I usually run out of lives and continues.
Whatever you do, don't cross the swords! 😂
Musketeers be like:
i wasted a $1.50 by renting this game when i was a kid. I was so mad i went back and ask if i could exchange it. (they said no.)
It actually seems easier than it was on the 8 bit computers, c64 and Spectrum. I seem to remember the streams being diagonal and the ghost would dodge about in the triangular area you created, making the trap firing harder.
Yes, I had the spectrum version and the streams were indeed diagonal. They also simply worked as barriers rather than sticking the ghosts to them. I would always lay the trap at the far right of the screen, wait for the ghost to move above it then start the streams, trapping it in a small area using the streams and the edge of the screen.
- the distance your car spends on the street traveling is related how much movement you did on the map.
- the HQ is where you get your troops refilled. Ye, pointless in the sense you don't visit it, but it is an element of the game. Also, maybe you empty your traps there? Was a long time ago.
- NES ofered ingame shopping? Woah!
- shop items: there's a sucktion to catch the yellow map-ghosts. They are the time-limit of the game, so... There's also a google which makes you easier to catch ghosts invading houses (the ghosts float otherwise behind the walls, and can be seen only when at windows). There's also the Marshmanllow Man trap - any time MM destroys a house hurts you 5-10K $, which is a lot.
- the supertrap has I think 15 charges
- not entering a red house happens if you accidentaly entered the house on the other side of the street. You have to push the direction beside clicking the action button.
- the Zuul-building opens up when the city accumlates enough PK-energy. Nothing to do with your money.
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My only exposure to this game was on the Commodore 64. Those NES version proton-packs are weird looking.
I used to play this game on the Commodore 64. I had it in a cassette tape.
the hardest thing about this game is the constant freezing.
Can we please get a remake of this game, please!?
i'm late to comment on this but in regards to the distance travelled, it depends on how long you are "driving" on the map, basically your icon you control is setting the driving course, so the more you drive around, the longer it takes to get to places
U can also switch Ghostbusters in the capture screen by pressing Select. Also, it's cross the streams 😉
"I don't know why it's so far to get to the shop." I can answer that. The distance you need to travel to get to your chosen destination is actually directly tied to how much you moved around on the map screen before choosing where to go.
"I don't know why but I just got kicked out of there." Maybe you actually drove to the building to the left rather than the one that was blinking. Can't say for sure.
"The Zuul Building always opens up once you get a certain amount of cash." That is correct.
The Ghost Vacuum is a good item because it lets you catch the ghosts you see on the map screen by going over them, then using it when they appear on the road screen.
The game manual itself recommends using a turbo controller.
Probably more like ~127 lives if it's an underflow.
I feel like you can shoot the Marshmallow Man to push him back down the building if you really need to.
I remember playing the c64 version of this. Similar but different 😊
1:30 It was 1000m the first time and 200m the second time because the game determines distance by the actual path you traced moving the GB icon around town. The C64 version actually drew your path as you moved the icon. Trace a short trip, drive a short distance.
3:40 The Zuul building opens when the PKE level reaches the max. If you buy the PKE meter you can track it.
4:45 Stay Puft comes out when the PKE level reaches a certain point, but not enough to summon Zuul. You can buy the ghost vac to catch the ghosts in the map screen. Equip the ghost vac, trace a path through a ghost then catch it with the Ectomobile as you drive through them. You can buy ghost bait and drop it if Stay Puft begins to form to stop it. Every ghost on the map that reaches the Zuul building raises the PKE level by 100.
8:00 Why 20 floors? Watch the movie. Why are they so slow? Watch the movie.
Why'd they choose that mechanic to move them? IDFK.
May I suggest you to try the very same game on Sega Master System?
It has better graphic, less glitches and it can helps understand a few game design decisions in the NES game (i.e. the change in Kms when visiting a building).
I liked this game. First played it on the c64
The mileage you have to travel in the driving minigame is based on how far you move the cursor on the map screen, including backtracking
This is kind of my favorite youtube series now! But please always be smug about how easy it is and not that you don't know... gives it a certain charm.
Liked this on atari 7800 as a kid. Give it a try. Would love to see ur frustration dealing w staypuff attacks XD. Aand as another mentioned ur trip length is determined by the path u create on the map. Ty and take shprt trips.
To be clear, the atari has these weird little switches on the front (i dont remember what theyre for, reset maybe?) and staypuff runs on the screen, u flip the switches a particular way and he runs off the screen w out attacking a building.
I used to make my older brother beat the stairwell part at the end, I was always too scared lol
Awesome Ryu thanks for beating it, can’t say I need to now.
Ah yes, more 80s/90s NES goodness
This is crazy. Looking at my recommended, AVGN's Ghostbusters episode was 14 years ago. I'm so old.
Awesome series man, this reminds of a small set of videos called Bootsy Beats, but fully realized and an actual series. Hope you do more of these, my picks are for Zelda II and Festers Quest!
Bootsy Beats was very awesome, man really was a damn good player
On the MSX version, you had an item to trap the Marshmallow man and they gave you cash for preventing him from destroying the building.
You can also walk up closer to the building which makes getting them even easier.
"Conglaturation" is amazing. At the end of Bad Dudes it says "Congraturations" Those L/R's were messy back then. I get why with localizations but it's still super funny to me.
I think I managed to lose after triggering the glitch randomly as a kid.
Even with 255 lives, you can get death looped by a ghost deciding to stay on top of you.
Great game design there.
Either beat it faster with glitch or typical spam even now with the 100k which makes you own it, I would suggest laying ghost food half way and everytime they are atleast a floor below you put one each time on the far right, it should keep them out of the way and slower.
Debunking the difficulty Blaster Master NES please.
I had the master system version, and geez this almost looks like a beta version of it.
This the sms version works.
During the city stage your main objective is to get 1mil in cash before the time runs out. If the pk energy gets too high the marshmallow monster starts destroying parts of the city and you lose a big chunk of money everytime it happens. You decrease pk by capturing ghosts in town and stoping the map ghosts from reaching zuul.
In the city screen the ghostbuster logo actualy traces a route that you will take to reach the place and in the sms version you can see the route being drawn. The capture ghosts screen makes much more sense and plays better in general with different kinds of ghosts as well and if you take too long they attack one of you guys. After each ghost section you need to empty the traps on hq.
There are a lot of items on the shop all that affect things in different ways and you can even change cars all which have different speeds and inventory space.
It gets pretty hectic as the time starts to run out and is rather fun, as a whole is a much better game than this. And looks waaay better as well.
If you can find the manual or a faq that explains the mechanics i definitely recommend trying it
It is wild this game was originally designed for the Commodore 64. Explains all the jank lol
The AVGN video on this game is soooooooooooooo nostalgic! I’m actually crying, I’m only 17, but I feel so old. ❤😢
The only thing that grinds my gears about everybody who plays this game doesn't understand the driving distances. The more you move the logo on the overhead map screen, the longer your drive is, which is why you should buy the Ghost Alarm ASAP, then you can drive straight from bust to bust once you get the super trap, and cut down on drive time significantly.
Of course I played the game when new, like 35 years ago, so maybe that knowledge was lost between then and now, and only I remember it.
How about some arcade games?? AvP, Cadillac and dinosaurs etc??
Have you tried silver surfer on nes? I remember that one being broken hard
A game I had an unreasonable amount of trouble with growing up was RoboCop for the NES. One of the only games I can recall that I never conquered.
I always love a shout out or a reference to AVGN. Dude is an internet legend
If you don't feel like having a real boss fight, you can go to the bottom screen and start shooting Stay-Puft in the face. Eventually you'll start blinking and become invincible and can go kill Gozer with no difficulty.