As the great Norman Gagnon once said, Greetings and Hallucinations!

We’re all waiting on tender hooks for Ghostbusters: The Video Game to be released, and as such, I know that most (if not all) of you have seen the many screen shots and gameplay videos the internet has to offer on the subject; I sure have.

Those of you who recognize my name will also know that my thing has always been the Ghostbusters’ equipment (and subsequently prop-making). I devoted a lot of time to knowing all there is to know about the Proton Packs in the hopes of one day building one of my own. One decade and 5 packs later, I consider myself not an expert by any means, but yet still extremely well versed.

Okay, I promise I’ll get to the point now. I was watching the latest video with all of that new, exciting in-game footage when I noticed two lights on the proton pack in the game that aren’t supposed to be there in the movie. Now, before you start to throw roasted marshmallows at me, I know as well as the next ghosthead that there are MANY differences between the movie packs and the game packs. One glance reveals this obvious fact. From what I understand, the myriad of added lights and whatnot on the right hand side of the pack will be used to indicated health, pack heat, or whathaveyou. I can totally dig that.

Note the semantics of my assertion: I noticed two lights on the game pack that aren’t supposed to be there…in the movie.

In the first film, during the first call at the Sedgewick hotel, observant fans have undoubtedly noticed that there’s something slightly wrong with the pack Dan Aykroyd is wearing. The “power cell” (read: the little box on the left side with the blue lights) was either damaged by a careless stage hand or painted improperly, because the lights from inside the box - which are actually white lamps that shine through a blue gel of sorts - are prominently visible shining out of the front and sides of the box, as seen in the pictures below.

Clearly, this wasn’t by design, because nowhere in either of the two films do any of the other shots exhibit this detail. One viewing of the scene makes it obvious to anyone who has had the pleasure of constructing a proton pack that they simply didn’t paint the inside of the pack 100% thoroughly, allowing some light to spill through. Surely, this must have been noticed during viewing of the dailies, but what director would let such a minor inconsistency spoil a perfect take by these three comedic legends? I sure wouldn’t.

At any rate, the designers of Ghostbusters: The Video Game, in their thorough and amazing quest for ultimate attention to detail, very well might have gotten this production gaff confused for an intentional nuance, because these same two accidental lights appear quite intentionally in the in-game pack, as seen below.

How interesting! It’s much more noticeable if you actually watch the gameplay footage itself. Now it can be told, to those who might have had reservations before.

Alas, I am a huge nerd.  Hope to share more insight with you all soon.

- Astantax

Tags: astantax, Ghostbusters, Ghosthead Musings, props, proton pack, terminal reality, video game

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 27th, 2008 at 11:14 pm and is filed under Games, Ghostbusters, Ghosthead Musings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.