RIP Harold Ramis

I'm sure a lot of us are upset to hear about this. I've heard about the demises of lots of actors, but nothing has really upset me, personally, the way this has. Ghostbusters and my worship of it made up a significant part of my childhood, of course.

But more than that, Harold Ramis lived in Highland Park, Illinois, which was two towns south of where I lived for most of my life, and I always thought it was so cool living and going to school relatively close to one of the Ghostbusters. A couple years ago I went to a Q&A panel at the Highland Park Library and like many of the people in attendance brought Ghostbusters merchandise to see if I could an autograph, and ever since once of my most prized possessions has been my copy of Pumpkin Patch Panic. For a few minutes, I was close enough to touch one of my childhood idols. I didn't even mind that he kept the marker.

Goodbye, Harold. You'll be sorely missed.

Filmation’s Ghostbusters #1

As painful an admission as it may be for some of us, Pete, Ray and Egon weren’t the original Ghostbusters. In 1975, Filmation, the company best known for being behind the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe cartoon, released a comedy show about a pair of detectives and their gorilla who were sent after a different ghost in every episode. The result was a glacially-paced show that relied on lame puns and tired slapstick for its laughs, and the detectives were played by those two guys from F-Troop. Unsurprisingly only a single season of 15 episodes was made.

Although this might be a step up from The Crawling Eye.

Of course in 1984 a certain spooky comedy came out and busting ghosts was hip all of a sudden. Since they had a property called “The Ghost Busters” out first, Filmation was able to make a cartoon revival of their original show, starring Jake and Eddie, the grown sons of the original detectives. Most of their adventures had them battling the unimaginatively named villainous ghost, Prime Evil. This more than anything else is probably why the cartoon based on the movie was called The Real Ghostbusters.

But as you’ll remember if you were around back then, the movie property was huge, and to get a piece of the action Filmation had to pull out all the stops. Like getting a tie-in comic book. Not just a comic book either, an interactive comic book. And to release the first issue as a Halloween special, just when kids are thinking about ghosts and goblins.

So why am I not saving this for an October post, you ask? Because they didn’t save it for an October release, that’s why.

We open on the Ghostbusters’ office where pudgy, scaredy cat (boy is he in the wrong line of work) comic relief Eddie is trying on costumes before they go to a Halloween party (why’s everybody else wearing a normal outfit?). You wouldn’t think this would be something that would excite them, since ghosts are kind of their job. Heck, I don’t even know why they’d be planning anything social on Halloween. Not only would you assume that’s when the most ghosts are out, it was a plot point not only in this comic but an episode of the show too. And yes, I’m pathetic for knowing that.

Cleverly-named time-traveling sorceress Futura pops in then because…the story about to be unveiled involves time travel and she’d be handy to have around. Also along for the ride for some reason is intrepid female journalist Jessica Wray.

Because in the future they've solved racial differences by painting everyone purple.

Since Eddie can’t make up his mind what costume to wear, the comic asks you to help sort things out. That is, by presenting a picture of Eddie in his underwear and asking you to draw a costume on top of it.

Let’s just skip to the “plot,” which has Prime Evil traveling back in time to some nebulous medieval kingdom to enlist all the ghosts running amok there on Halloween. He sends Mysteria, one of the ghosts already working for him, to put out fires around the local castle to ward off the ghosts. Because that’s easier than having her make a circuit around the castle and pick up the ghosts that can’t get through because of those fires? If ghosts can put out the fires, how are the fires supposed to keep them away in the first place?

By the way, this comic spells her name with a Y, but considering the show calls her “mistress of mists,” I’m spelling it with an I. If Filmation doesn’t like it they can send me a letter.

A magician sees what they’re up to and runs back to the castle to warn the king, zapping ghosts in half with his wand on the way. Gee, that looks kind of lethal.

When said magician, who’s named Morton, tries to think of what he can do about Prime Evil he remembers how the original Ghostbusters saved the kingdom from a dragon once. This is picking nits, I admit, but that’s kind of a stretch considering Filmation was infamous for doing everything it possibly could to keep costs down. Every episode of the original show took place in the same haunted castle to save on things like time travel effects and new sets.

Ha...ha.

But whatever. After several unsuccessful (and unfunny) attempts to remember what it is future people use to talk to each other over long distances, Morton calls the current Ghostbusters just as Jake’s given up on the costume thing and is just mocking Eddie.

After agreeing to help, Jake has the others get a file from a living, smartass filing cabinet (which believe it or not was a running gag on the original show, which believe it or not they apparently thought was so funny it was worth bringing back). This explains the whole building fires to repel ghosts on Halloween thing, but since this show just made things up as it went along (I once read an interview with Jake’s voice actor who said the show didn’t even have a writer’s bible) I don’t feel compelled to find out if this used to be an actual Halloween ritual. Let’s move on to that tried-and-true time-consuming device, the transformation sequence.

Like on He-Man, almost every episode involved the heroes changing from their regular look to one more suited to fighting bad guys. Unlike in He-Man where the transformation gave him a tan and super-powers, in this cartoon it just involved them changing their clothes in this insanely elaborate machine in some kind of parallel dimension in the upper floors of their house.

If you think it sounds ridiculous, you should try watching it. When nothing was edited out, it could run for an entire minute and a half. On a show that, counting opening, end credits, and post-episode sermonette, ran for about 22 and a half minutes.

The comic actually skips over this part and gets straight to the Ghostbusters riding their talking car into the past, which leads into the next activity. It’s a maze through time, and warns you not to screw up or the Ghostbusters will show up too late to help. Even though they’re time traveling.

Presumably helping the busters to arrive in time, they find Misteria menacing a couple of knights as they build a fire. They distract her by having Jessica disguise herself as Misteria, distracting her long enough to be zapped by their Dematerializer gun. Which does exactly what it says, and makes the ghost disappear…for a while. So the writers can have them be back whenever a script might call for them. Suppose it's just as well they don't actually appear to be running a business. The grateful knights direct them to the castle on top of a giant hill and the busters ride off, right onto the next activity page. Which is the easiest hidden object puzzle in the world.

Good thing you were here, Gomez. We woulda never found it without you.

Prime Evil sees that the busters have come back in time to spoil his fun, and sends another of his ghosts, Sir Trance-a-Lot, to deal with them, and issues a strangely graphic threat for a comic meant for little kids.

Once they’ve gotten past the easiest hidden object puzzle in the world, the busters explain they’re not the ones Morton called for, since their dads have retired (because time’s continuous even when you’re doing something across time, apparently) then head up to his workshop to find something to use to get rid of Prime Evil. Witness Jessica’s hypocrisy, or perhaps just acknowledgement that even they don’t know why they let Eddie save the world with them.

Jessica finds a spell book with a spell to get rid of ghosts, but for some reason the words are in code and the spell has to be cast right after it’s decoded or it won’t be powerful enough to get rid of Prime Evil. Not sure how that works, since the show was actually fairly consistent about how magic works (in that magicians just learn how to channel the energy without words), but then we needed yet another activity page for some reason.

Sir Trance-a-Lot rides up the castle, so Jake has the princesses (and Eddie in a dress) distract him so their gorilla buddy can zap him with the Dematerializer. As opposed to hiding behind a corner and zapping him as soon as he comes into sight.

Not sure why this rigamarole was needed except to kill a page and a half, considering that when Morton casts the spell it makes all the ghosts, even the building Prime Evil lives in, disappear.

With the ghosts vanquished the kingdom gets to have its Halloween party after all. And Eddie’s still in a dress for some reason even though Jake changed into a Robin Hood outfit for the occasion. And the girls want to leave right as things are getting started. Women, huh?

Another activity page, but with no effort to connect it with the story. Just a word find and how to draw half of Prime Evil’s face.

 
Then there’s the answer pages to the other games, and then six pages about how you can draw the characters from the show. As if anybody in the show’s demographic has that kind of attention span.

The Real Ghostbusters - Xmas Marks the Spot

I’m not telling you the story behind Ghostbusters. If you really don’t know, rent the movie and watch it three times before you read this review. You’ll be doing yourself a favor. And if you don’t know anything about A Christmas Carol, watch the version with George C. Scott, David Warner and the Sheriff from Men in Tights. It’s the best one, really.

Yes, that J. Michael Straczynski.

The boys are cruising back to the Big Apple on Christmas Eve after a job in upstate New York that had something to do with scorching the hair off a cat. For once Peter has nothing sarcastic to say, either about the job or working on Christmas Eve.

They take the wrong turn in the snow and Ecto-1 conks out in the middle of nowhere. Peter’s even grouchier now, and once he’s out of earshot Ray explains his father was always away at Christmastime. “That affects you after a while.” On the other hand, we found out where Peter got his smartass huckster traits in “Venkman’s Ghost Repellers,” so you sort of wonder if Christmas was really worse without dad there.

“It’s easier to shrug that off if you pretend you don’t care about Christmas,” Egon opines. “And you pretend it long enough, pretty soon you believe it,” Winston adds ominously.

As they hike through the snow in search for a phone the Ghostbusters suddenly find themselves on a hill overlooking a village right out of Victorian England. Which they point out. Undaunted, Peter heads down because somebody down there has to have a phone.

Bob Cratchit and Tiny Tim buy a pathetically small bird for Christmas dinner in a touching scene that ruins all surprise that might still remain as to what’s going on. Was this added at the last minute because the final episode was a minute too short or something?

The busters hear a ghostly wail in their search for a phone booth and follow it just in time to see Jacob Marley’s ghost flying out a second-story window. Instinct takes over and the guys run upstairs and unleash their proton packs on three ghosts accosting an old man. One of them warns that if the Ghostbusters interfere, all Christmases to come will suffer.

 We recognize them as the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Future, and the Ghostbusters probably should too, but they also probably hear portents of doom from the ghosts they’re after all the time. Peter even confirms it.

The old man, who of course is Ebenezer Scrooge, thanks these daring young men but of course balks when Peter starts talking fees (Scrooge is so into money he even knows what   “big bucks” means despite living in Victorian England). He even tries to disbelieve those really were ghosts and trots out the “more of gravy than of grave” line. When they threaten to turn the ghosts loose again Scrooge coughs up a coin that’s pocket change to him but worth three ghosts in 1986.

Their duty done, the busters leave. But with the ghosts vanquished, Scrooge declares war on Christmas. Because they woke him up in the middle of the night.

Having failed to find a phone, the busters end up back at Ecto-1 and the old girl decides to turn over this time. As they drive away Egon has a sense of déjà vu about what just happened to them, but brushes it off and they drive away.

Egon goes to drop off the ghosts and the others go to buy a tree (on Christmas Eve?), but Janine and Slimer both “bah humbug” the very mention of Christmas. This throws Egon for a loop, seeing as they used to love Christmas. In Slimer’s case, the Christmas cookies. Outside the guys find people arguing with each other, yelling “bah humbug” and banners with Scrooge’s face all over the place instead of Christmas decorations.

They even find a book he wrote, A Christmas Humbug, which somehow shaped all of Western civilization’s perception of Christmas to match his own, and realize they went back in time and changed the course of history. Don’t you hate that? The guys run back to stop Egon before he puts the Christmas ghosts in the containment system and it’ll be too late to inflict them on Scrooge after all. They’re too late, of course.

The guys agree they need to go back and undo what they did, but they have to act fast because time’s passing on both sides of the time warp they went through. Egon thinks he can go in and find the three ghosts they need without letting all the dangerous ones out too, but that’s Plan B. In case he fails, he has the others go back to where they went back in time to find Scrooge again and impersonate the ghosts themselves. Peter’s dubious of their chances, which I thought led to a nice exchange, even if it was kind of predictable.

Ray: “Come on, Peter! Have a little faith, a little…Christmas spirit!”
Peter: “Are you kidding?! Christmas spirits are what got me into this in the first place!”

Scrooge is just sitting down to write his book as the busters spy on him from the adjacent rooftop. Peter puts on a dress and gets lowered down to start their little charade, which is helped by Scrooge losing his glasses when Peter lands on him. With the aid of a wheel chair and a View-Master, Peter runs around the room making Scrooge think they’re flying and seeing images from his past.

Hearing Scrooge’s recounting of his childhood neglect makes Peter realize he could be learning from this too. Scrooge didn’t even know he was supposed to be learning anything, so Peter has to spell it out for him.

“You were supposed to learn that just because you had a rotten past, that’s no reason to blame Christmas. Lots of us had Christmases that weren’t the best, but if you give up, you just end up denying yourself what you’re so mad about never having had before. I think maybe that’s a lesson we could all stand to learn.”

I'm sorry, I'M SORRY!!

Meanwhile Egon puts on a space suit and goes into the containment system to find the Christmas ghosts. He finds them and, barely, makes it out of the containment system ahead of a posse of evil ghosts. He then apparently sets off for upstate New York on foot to drop off the Christmas ghosts. In a spacesuit.

Winston impersonates the Ghost of Christmas Present in a patchy old bathrobe, holding Scrooge as they swing dangerously above the town from a rope. Ray does his able best as the Ghost of Christmas Future, but seeing as he has the hood closed real tight so Scrooge won’t notice he has flesh on his face, he’s reduced to playing charades to communicate at all.

Just in time, Egon shows up, releases the ghosts and they get to work on Scrooge. The busters get home to find out Christmas is back, because they're hit by an 11 AS attack.

From Silent but Deadly Night. Check it out, even if you don't usually like silly card games.

Settling in with the bluest eggnog I've ever seen, the guys hear what sounds sort of like a right jolly old elf and eight tiny reindeer on the roof. Hey, if ghosts are real, who’s to say Kris Kringle isn’t?

Ghostbusters: The Role-Playing Game

Most pen and paper role playing games are about tons of statistics and variables and whenever bad guys show up the experience sometime has to stop for upwards of an hour to game out the fight. Ghostbusters, on the other hand, is extremely easy to pick up and play no matter how short the players’ patience might be.

After saving the world from Gozer the boys decided to expand, making the office in NYC the headquarters of a worldwide ghostbusting corporation. The option to play as the guys from the movie was there if your group felt like it, but you were encouraged to run a campaign where your friends save the world from the forces of darkness in your own hometown.

Rather than the loads of numbers required by most RPG’s Ghostbusters has four: Brains, Muscles, Moves, and Cool. When you try to do something, the GM will assign it a number based on how hard it is, the harder the higher, which you try to equal or beat on the number of dice for your relevant attribute. Each attribute also gets a Talent, like driving, shooting, nuclear physics or picking up girls which gets you three extra dice in the appropriate circumstances.

There’s also Brownie points, which you can burn for extra dice on really hard rolls, and the Ghost Die, which has a ghost symbol instead of a six and causes some kind of annoying mishap when it comes up (although when it comes up for a ghost, it powers them up for a little bit). That’s pretty much all there is to the basic game. There’s no health stat because death and permanent injuries aren’t funny, and humor after all is what makes Ghostbusters what it is.

The game is so dedicated to not dissolving into boredom, in fact, that the manual comes with a number of “routines” for things like going to court or catching a plane that can alternately be used to breeze through such procedures or generate humorous role-playing during them. You roll a die, generally the lower the better, and consult the first column. What comes up may modify your roll for the second column, and when you resolve the third or fourth column, you’re done.

The simplicity of the rules can make the game easy to abuse, though. Especially when it comes to whipping up new gadgets; the GM’s basically expected to analyze how something could upset his campaign’s dynamic and just say no if it looks like things are heading that way. An entire section of the NPCs in the manual is “plot ghosts” the GM can use to take away anything too disruptive to his game. There are a few things in the equipment list that the book even says are so powerful the players should only get access to them for one or two adventures before the plot ghosts come to repossess them.

The game didn’t see a lot in the way of peripherals, sadly. Only three premade adventures were released during its intial run, and only a couple more when the advanced rules (which really aren’t much more advanced) were released at the same time as Ghostbusters II. Still, most of the premade adventures are fun and should provide a good basis for a sufficiently twisted GM.

In the interests of keeping this review on topic, heavy details on premade adventures aren't happening. As for recommendations, Scared Stiffs earns the Spectrum of Madness Editor’s Choice Award for its intriguing premise and great ensemble cast, Lurid Tales of DOOM! wins Most Original, but Ghostbusters II: The Adventure is a piece of krelm not worth your time. Its connections to the plot of the movie are pretty minimal, so having seen the movie won't actually ruin the adventure that much, but it's designed to play out in a very specific way. And for some reason there's a ton of content from The Wizard of Oz.

Ghostbusters The RPG has some balance issues, but there are few that are more dedicated, let alone suited, to keeping play moving briskly and the humor coming hot and heavy. If you’re looking for a good introduction to pencil and paper RPGs, who ya gonna call? This game, hopefully.

 

Return of the Ghostbusters

Three years after a new generation of Ghostbusters saved Denver from Freddy Krueger’s bladed glove, they’re still riding high on their fame as local heroes. Eugene died in a webcomic midquel and was replaced by Pavel Karnov. And like so many sequels, the magic Girlfriend Delete Button has been pressed so Neil can have a brand new romantic subplot.

Luckily for him, hot twentysomething reporter April Hunter is assigned to do an expose on the Ghostbusters, even though she’d rather be doing a report on a load of Egyptian artifacts discovered by Klaus Konstantin. The centerpiece of which is the Amulet of Anubis, which gives someone who knows how to use it all kinds of unholy powers.

Pavel used to be Konstantin’s assistant, and doesn’t think the guy can be trusted. Before long his suspicions are confirmed when Konstantin unleashes the amulet’s powers, and only the Ghostbusters can save the day.

Freddy vs. Ghostbusters was a fluffy movie that wouldn’t make you think, and even the real movies didn’t get too caught up in the particulars of what exactly the guys did. Return’s problem is it does want you to think, but isn’t sure how to deal with the consequences. It’s mentioned that people are starting to ask themselves where these cowboys with atomic backpacks get off cramming people’s souls into boxes. Insofar as the movie gives any answer at all, it seems to boil down to “If supernatural forces are threatening to destroy the world those same people are the only ones who can do anything about it. And if somebody's not paying them to imprison ghosts in their basement forever they can't afford to save us. So shut up.”

Conquering...I mean, saving the world! With SCIENCE!!

In fact, for something that calls itself a Ghostbusters movie, Return takes itself awfully seriously. Konstantin needs human souls to activate the amulet, but he doesn’t use ghosts. He steals a ghost trap and goes around sucking the souls out of living people, leaving a trail of lifeless bodies in his wake. Compare that to what they were trying to save the world from in the movie: a cartoon junk food mascot. Compare that to how Vigo was defeated in the sequel: the power of song. What jokes there are amount to things like “Listen to that! Ed’s ringtone is the Legend of Zelda music!”

All told, Return feels a lot more like a general action movie than a Ghostbusters film. It’s about three times as long as its predecessor and actually had an appreciable budget considering what kind of movie it is. The ghosts are more numerous, and the scenes showing Denver overrun by a legion of spooks are pretty good. Yet it also drags at times, the actors lack chemistry, and as mentioned it brings up questions it isn’t prepared to answer. And being three times as long as the battle with Freddy, it doesn’t have the luxury of having run its course before any questions the viewer has have the chance to sink in. Like, why does Konstantin want to make April his queen when he takes over the world? That was cliché when our parents were kids. Maybe it was explained in a cut scene, but then why was the pointless bar fight scene not cut down? Did they have some kind of deal with the owner?

I don't want to imply I hate this movie or went into it expecting the same things I do of a multi-million dollar film. It was a movie made by people who love Ghostbusters because they love Ghostbusters. I find that pretty admirable in and of itself, and they did a better job of making a supernatural action movie than I probably could've. But if the Denver Ghostbusters return again, please remember Ghostbusters is a horror-COMEDY.

It was this foul-mouthed game critic.