Emulator Used

FCEUX 2.1.2-interim

Main Priorities

  • Aims for fastest time
  • Manipulates luck
  • Abuses programming errors in the game
  • Takes damage to save time

About the Run

Ghostbusters is a game in which you have to go to buildings, which you do so by moving around on an overview map of the city, and catch ghosts (you need to buy the proton beam and ghost trap to catch the ghosts). The more ghosts you catch the more money you make which is used to buy things to help you get up the stairwell in the Zuul Building. You also need the money (at least $15,000) to get into the Zuul Building. In the Japanese version of this game, there is a glitch where the player can go to the shop and buy the Ghost Alarm for $2,000 and trade it back in for $3,000. Every time you do this, you can make a profit of $1,000 which makes it easy to enter the Zuul Building early in the game.

The Making of This Movie

For the driving scenes, I moved the car around so that the stopping time is not so delayed. The most challenging part of this was the stairwell scene. The strategy I used for this stage was opening the doors on some of the floors which luck manipulates the ghosts so that they are easier to dodge. The final boss, Gozer, was also difficult because there were so many shots on the screen. The Ghostbusters can only take up to so many hits at a time and there is no recovery time which makes the boss even harder. Thankfully, Gozer doesn't take that many hits to kill, so I just avoided all the projectiles while shooting at the boss and it was over before I knew it.

Special Thanks

I would like to thank everybody on the forum for supporting me on my speedruns. I would have never completed this run if it wasn't for everybody's encouragement.

Baxter A game completed a lot faster than intended, and a well executed TAS. Nice in a technical aspect, but the actual gameplay is rather uninteresting and only the short length of the movie keeps it from getting (too) boring. There is enough support for this TAS to warrant publication. Accepting.

Alden: I got Ghostbusted trying to encode. Sorry.

nesrocks
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Player (241)
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
I have just discovered a 255 lives trick for the Zuul building. It's a stupid programming overlook. I'm testing some things.
Patashu
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Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4017
FODA wrote:
I have just discovered a 255 lives trick for the Zuul building. It's a stupid programming overlook. I'm testing some things.
How's it work, then?
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
nesrocks
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Player (241)
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
You need to die by opening a door when you have 1 life left. That way you'll go to 0 lives, but the game won't check for a gameover. It only checks for gameover if you die on a normal ghost. Pretty stupid, huh! The next time you die to any ghost it will go from 0 to 255 lives. So, after you're there, don't open any door because it might contain extra lives and you'll be over 0 again.
Patashu
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Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4017
Wow, what a terrible game.
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
Experienced player (620)
Joined: 8/28/2008
Posts: 443
I know, right? And get this: if you look in the hex editor (Rom File section) of the Japanese version (addresses 00A900 through 00ADFF), to the right of the hexadecimal numbers you can see the text for the game and they actually spelled the word "great" wrong too (they spelled it "grate" but it got fixed in the U.S. version). Apparently the Japanese version was supposed to have an actual English (or Engrish) ending but for some reason they just left it as two Japanese letters (they either forgot about it or didn't want bad translations in the game).
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria