The events of Ghostbusters – The Video Game begin in 1991 during Thanksgiving, as the city of New York once again trembles under the weight of unexplained phenomena—whispers in the streets, shadows dancing on the walls, and cold winds blowing through warm nights—as if something has stirred in the ghost world, something more powerful than anything the team has ever faced.

Here, the player takes on the role of the new recruit, nicknamed “Rookie”, a young and inexperienced individual but equipped with the greatest ghost-hunting technology—the iconic proton pack. The story kicks off when a surge of psychokinetic energy flows through the Museum of Natural History, turning New York into a battleground of supernatural chaos. The return of familiar ghosts like Slimer and the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man is just the beginning, as the Ghostbusters uncover a mysterious pattern linking haunted sites that leads them to the Mandala—a hidden energy network meant to summon a destructive entity more powerful than Gozer itself. The team’s journey takes them to iconic locations such as the New York Public Library, where they face Eleanor Twitty, the librarian ghost murdered by a Gozerian cult leader during his search for the Codex of Gozer. But this is only the prelude to a greater battle, as the cult’s power grows and the secrets of the sunken Ivo Shandor mansion resurface in the Hudson River, revealing that Alyssa Selwyn plays an unexpected role in the demonic scheme.

While Walter Peck interferes with the team under orders from the mayor, the threats escalate with the appearance of cultist machines pumping out mysterious etheric energy, enabling the return of another evil entity—Vigo von Homburg Deutschendorf. Nevertheless, the team manages to disable the system and stop the rituals, but the real twist comes when Alyssa Selwyn is kidnapped and the ghost containment unit is breached, unleashing a raging army of spirits. The Ghostbusters then face a final showdown inside the ghost world, where Ivo Shandor takes on a monstrous form known as “The Architect”, aiming to conquer the world. But using the reverse synchronization of proton wave frequencies, the Ghostbusters once again shift the balance, destroying the evil entity before it can reshape reality itself.

The game offers more than just an exciting story—it delivers an exhilarating gameplay experience where you control the rookie from a third-person perspective, equipped with the powerful proton pack, a high-tech weapon that lets you fire streams of ectoplasmic energy to trap ghosts and pull them into the iconic traps. But it’s not that simple—every ghost has a different escape tactic. Some are fast, others aggressive, and some can manipulate the environment around you, forcing you to adopt different strategies to defeat them.

The gameplay mechanics expand in an enjoyable way as you progress, allowing you to upgrade your weapons and add new functions to the proton pack, such as the green slime mode that lets you manipulate ghosts, or the micro-blaster mode that releases powerful electric shockwaves. That’s not all—the destructible environments add an immersive sense of realism, where you can see the aftermath of battles on walls, tables, and even cars in the streets of New York. Throughout your adventure, you can further enhance your proton pack with advanced firing modes like the stasis burst, positively charged slime thrower, and meson collider, each with alternate functions such as the boson dart, capture stream, slime tether, and overload pulse. These upgrades are unlocked by catching ghosts, discovering cursed artifacts, and encountering new spectral entities. As for multiplayer mode, it allows you to team up with friends to face waves of ghosts in different locations, where communication and coordination are key to survival. The PSP version offers a completely different experience, where the player uses the handheld controls to simulate the use of the proton pack as if holding it, making ghost hunting an immersive experience that fully pulls you into the ghost world with all its thrilling and terrifying details that have always defined the Ghostbusters.