Board Games Retro: Who You Gonna Call?
With the newest movie (maybe) right around the corner, what better time to look at the board game for the most essential of workers? The Ghostbusters.
The original Ghostbusters film is an absolute favorite film for many people, myself included. The visuals, the comedy, the action, they all hit their mark. The icing on any good 80’s film is good merchandising.
I had the ghost trap and proton pack and I loved them so much.
But if you’ve been following our board games retro series, you know movie tie in games are never worth your time, with only a few key exceptions. So, is The Real Ghostbusters Board Game a god?
When someone asks you…
Gameplay
Released in 1986, The Real Ghostbusters Game is a competitive dice rolling game with roll-to-move mechanics and a fun 13 Dead End Drive level of wackiness. The goal of the game is to be the first player to reach the end of the path. But, there are many obstacles in the way.
On each players turn, they’ll roll a die and move that many spaces. Landing on a blank space has that player spin the spinner. 2 of 4 spaces give the player a Ghost Card, which are required to progress to the next room. 1 of the spinner spaces has you lose a Ghost Card and the final spinner space gives a Slimed card, which (counter-intuitively) is kind of like a Get Out Of Jail Free card for getting Zapped!
If you land on a Zap! space (the thundercloud), you get to steal a Ghost Card from another player, unless they’ve been slimed, which protects them somehow? I’m not here to question things, I just report on them.
But all that isn’t the main draw of the game.
If the auto-timestamp doesn’t work, go to 10:43.
After each turn, the player drops a small skull into the center tower of the board, which will randomly tumble into one of the rooms, potentially knocking over some player pieces. If any piece on a red slime space gets knocked, they move back to the X space in that room. But considering you have to land by exact count to move through the door to the next room, it’s probably not your first go-around anyway.This is defintely the main appeal of the game. The Take-That mechanic is common in games of this era and it’s even more frustrating when it’s dished out randomly.
Players need 1 Ghost card to move through the first door, 2 Ghosts for the 2nd door and do on, needing 4 Ghosts to move up the final stairway to victory.
The first player to reach the top of the stairs wins!
Final Thoughts
This game isn’t great. It’s bad, in fact. It’s 100% chance with only frustrating setbacks which don’t even matter much since you’re going in loops with each room anyway.
The Real Ghostbusters Game is something of a re-skin of Which Witch? or Ghost Castle, with only a few minor changes to the rules. Still, the 3D game board is impressive and the board art is very quality. Still, unless you’re an avid fan and collector, I think you’re better off letting this one return forthwith to its place of origin or to the nearest convenient parallel dimension.
I always wanted to be like Venkman, but I know I’m Egon.
