Last year, Christian Pearce, a senior concept artist at Weta Workshop, released a bunch of the concept art that he had created for 2021 film Ghostbusters: Afterlife. This included a fascinating glimpse at an unused, alternative spin on the Ghostbusters' PKE meter that was built out of a Nintendo Game Boy.
The "Ghost Boy", as the design was called, was a makeshift device that was repaired by Egon Spengler (played by Harold Ramis in the original films) in the early '90s and used a Game Boy running a hacked ROM to detect psychokinetic energy. Pearce notes in the illustration that it was considered "a well-built and relatively reliable piece of equipment" but states that it also had "the odd habit of playing the Tetris theme music at inopportune moments."
As far as we're aware, the illustration was never turned into a prop while making the movie and, as we know, the design was never used. But now it appears that a fan has gone to the incredible effort of building a real-life version of the design (as recently spotted by the Ghostbusters' fansite Ghostbusters News).
This amazing prop is the work of the redditor jpfzombie, who posted the finished build on the Ghostbusters subreddit less than a week ago. In the post, they explained that they had been inspired to create it after spotting an article about the unused concept on Ghostbuster News in April of last year.
The build uses a Rubie's PKE meter toy as well as a broken Game Boy and even includes a light-up display to show the PKE readings, in addition to a battery array along the side (as in the drawing), and a button that you can press to play the Tetris music (to match Pearce's note).
It's a fun little build and one that we're sure most Ghostbusters fans will enjoy.