Ghostbusters — stories left

The music in the game was developed by Russell Lieblich, based on Ray Parker, Jr.'s "Ghostbusters" theme, and is accompanied by the lyrics to the song in the game.

Crane said "I expected players to be disappointed with it.

Crane recalled that it would have been a better game with more development time, but also that it would then not have been such a financial success.

Crane said, as he does with all his games, he "spent every hour that the schedule allowed tweaking the game, and it came out OK in the end.

He stated that "By the time a game is being ported to other platforms, the designer of the original game has long since moved on to another original project.

In a retrospective overview of Edge, the publication stated that most ports had a "patchy nature".

These include the Master System version which adds on-foot shooting gallery sequences and loses some animations, while the Nintendo Entertainment System version had a different ending and was described by Edge as having "graphics so primitive it becomes hard to follow most of what's going on."

Ahoy! stated that the Commodore 64 version "incorporates a surprising number of elements" from the film, with audio even better than the "excellent visuals".

From retrospective reviews, Edge in 2007 called Ghostbusters "dauntingly good", noting that despite the action sequences expected of a licensed title, the game was a "polished, intelligently-paced strategic business simulation".

Reflecting on the game in 2006, Crane said "The game was a good one, but not my best work ever.

Ghostbusters actor Ernie Hudson said that his kids hated the Commodore 64 version of the game, believing that it "sucked.

All versions of the game were released in the USA except for the Amstrad CPC and ZX Spectrum versions, which were released only in Europe, and the MSX version, which was released only in Europe, South America, and Japan.

Antic in May 1985 called Ghostbusters for Atari 8-bit fun to play, describing it as the first adaptation to capture the feel and theme of the movie on which it is based.

Released before the film in the UK, it went on to be the UK's fourth best-selling home video game of 1985.

By late 1987, it was still Activision's best-selling Commodore game.

Crane recalled that it would have been a better game with more development time, but also that it would then not have been such a financial success.

In 1988, Mastertronic re-released the Amstrad, Commodore, Spectrum and Atari computer versions of Ghostbusters on their Ricochet label and it went on to become their most successful budget re-release, selling over 450,000 copies.