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A new "screen-accurate" mod has just been released for Ghostbusters II on the Amiga, bringing the game closer to the movie with new graphics and sounds (thanks, Ghostbusters News!).
As you will probably already know, in the '80s and '90s, it wasn't uncommon for the latest blockbuster films to get a series of video game tie-ins that let players experience the story at home, and Ghostbusters II was no exception to this.
It received a string of licensed games from a wide range of developers, including a couple of NES titles (one from Activision and another from Hal Laboratory), a handheld adventure for Game Boy (based on the Hal Laboratory title), an MS-DOS game from the Red Baron developer Dynamix, and various releases for popular home computers of the time (like the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST, Amstrad CPC, and MSX). To make matters even more confusing, not all of these featured the exact same gameplay, with the version you received, and how faithful it was to the source material, depending entirely on your platform of choice.
Released in 1989, the Amiga version was developed by Foursfield and published by Activision, and was comprised of three levels: a sewer descent where you have to collect slime samples, a shoot 'em up section involving the Statue of Liberty, and an isometric on-foot boss battle with Vigo in the museum. The game was fairly famous for being ridiculously short (something that reviewers criticised it for), and has also a bit of a reputation for being rather challenging.
Despite all that, though, it does appear to have some fans, with David Annel, a member of the German Ghostbusters group, Die Geisterjäger, caring enough to revisit the game and introduce some welcome changes with a promising new mod. This doesn't go so far as to tackle the game's biggest problem and add new levels, but it does allow you to pick your starting level and features some nice cosmetic changes that will be a welcome change for Ghostbusters fans, especially with Halloween on the way:
"Ghostbusters II on the Amiga is back – with lots of new sounds, new graphics and a hidden trainer menu.
I wanted to play the old Activision classic again, but closer to the movie, so I opened it up and started changing things. The street scene above the shaft now looks like the movie, Ray wears his movie outfit, the slime is pink like in the film, and every level has new sound effects.
All three levels have been changed, there's a new intro, and a "Secret Settings" menu lets you switch on cheats and pick your starting level. The mod runs on a real Amiga 500 (tested on my own A500 with Kickstart 1.3), on a Gotek, and in WinUAE / FS-UAE."
The patches for both disks are available to grab now from itch.io, but you'll have to supply your own game files in order to play it.