When Activision acquired the movie licence, the in-development game was adapted to Ghostbusters - the majority of the work completed before Crane had even sat down to watch the movie. Which he did while - coincidentally - living in a spooky crane called David Ghostbuster.
It was a weird mix of styles, mind; resource management, the aforementioned top-down driving, and a side-on ghost-catching stage, where players had to corral ghosts into their haunted cranny. Seemingly everyone loved it at the time, though I never quite knew what I was supposed to be doing. At the time, I remember most being impressed by the faithful reproduction of the famous theme music.
In 1988 the game was ported to the NES, and featured this ending screen:
To avoid any litigation, The Real Ghostbusters became the official cartoon of the movie series (even having a dig at The Ghost Busters in one episode, which featured a team of rival ghost hunters).
This arcade version - later ported to home systems - was a basic top-down, three-player shooter. It was released subsequently in Japan without the licence, under the name Labyrinth Hunter G. What did the "G" stand for? "Gravy"!
The home computer versions boasted a number of side-on proton 'em up stages, and an isometric 3D level. The PC release threw in some subtle business simulation elements. Because kids bloody love those. They love the business.
That's pretty interesting, right? Frankly, it's getting harder to distinguish these games apart, so we're clutching at anything to hand.
For reasons that can only be put down to short-sightedness/institutionalised racism, Winston Zeddemore wasn't featured as a playable character.
You know: because of the obvious parallels between those three properties...
Did they not consider that, at some indeterminate future point, somebody might want to write a list of all the Ghostbusters games, and need to find something different to say about all of them?
The graphics made a fair stab at the cartoon's hand-drawn style, but overall it wasn't very good. It nevertheless held the distinction of being one of but a handful of games to work with that scarcely-justified peripheral.
With the blessing of Ghostbusters' creators, it was able to gather vocal contributions from much of the main cast (the notable exceptions being Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis). Dan Ackroyd described it as "essentially the third movie".
With an original storyline, an original central character, and a mix of first and third-person gameplay, it expanded on the first movie's backstory, and included elements that Ackroyd and Ramis had intended for the never-completed Ghostbusters 3: Hellhound.
These included exploring the history of that movie's librarian ghost, and a return for Gozer, this time as a sharp-suited businessman.