Update [Tue 2nd May, 2023 10:05 BST]: The Ghostbusters Special Edition hack is now available, BillyTime!Games announced earlier today.
You can download it now from romhacking.net, but as always, you will need a copy of the original game to patch.
As well as Winston, the hack also adds a new Nightmare difficulty mode, an SRAM save function, and more cheat modes and unlockables.
Here is a video of it in action:
Original Article [Mon 18th Jul, 2022 13:36 BST]: When Ghostbusters launched on the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis in 1990, fans were left to wonder "Where's Winston?".
The Ghostbuster had admittedly turned up kind of late in the original film, but by this point in the series's history, he was unmistakenly a pivotal member of the team, appearing in the 1989 sequel, the Kenner toy line, and the animated series The Real Ghostbusters. This made his absence all the more bizarre, with fans speculating what could have caused the character to be given such a cold shoulder.
Now, thirty-two years later, romhackers are here to finally correct this mistake, giving Winston back his proton pack inside a new 'definitive edition' of the Mega Drive/Genesis game (as spotted by Ghostbusters News). The team for the project is comprised of BillyTime!Games, Master Linkeui, and days_danilo. And, though it is still a work in progress, we have a few more details about it straight from the source.
Speaking about the origins of the hack, BillyTime!Games tells us:
"I purchased a complete copy of Ghostbusters on Amazon back in 2007. A copy I own to this very day. I was very impressed with how the gameplay felt, the quirky chibi look of the protagonists, and the catchy music, but Winston's absence was a bit of a sore spot, as I always felt he was just as important as the rest of the team. For me, it was all four Ghostbusters or nothing.
"I wrote off the idea as a pipe dream when Master Linkuei first contacted me about a potential project in early 2022, but I learned very quickly to never doubt Master Linkuei after some examination of the game's code."
For those unfamiliar, Ghostbusters for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis was a platform shooter, where players had to earn money by catching ghosts before collecting four pieces of a stone tablet to summon the final stage. You picked from Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler, and Peter Venkman, with each character having his own strengths and weaknesses. Peter, for instance, was a pretty good all-rounder, whereas Ray was tough and slow, and Egon was fast but not exactly the strongest of the bunch.