Atari Shows Off Ghostbusters: The Video Game at New York Comic Con

The Atari booth at New York Comic-Con was packed all day today with people trying out the latest console builds of Ghostbusters : The Video Game for the Wii, PS3 and XBox 360.

We caught up with programmer/designer James Clarendon from Red Fly Studio, the Austin, Texas shop that is developing the Wii version of the game. He walked us through the Wii version and how it differs from the other console versions of the game. Here’s some select questions from our talk.

What are the principle differences in the Wii version versus the other consoles?

We didn’t have the same horsepower that we could get out of the 360/Ps3 for graphics, so we took a more stylized look to it. You’ll notice that the characters have cartoony iconic realism to them.

The Wii version tells the same story but in a different way. You’ll see all the same key components, but we were lucky enough to get all the actors to record custom lines for the Wii. We wanted to figure out the strengths of the Wii and not do a straight port.

When the player encounters ghosts, they will enter a mini-game and wrangle them in with the Wii-mote and then with a bowling motion, we throw out a trap. We’ve been working a lot on this wrangling system and Atari allowed us to do a lot of focus tests with them and we found out what worked and what didn’t.

Other than the voice acting, what other attributes make the game ring true to Ghostbusters fans?

Oh quite a bit. Ackroyd and Ramis came up with the story and worked with us to make it as good as we could. We went back and revisited some of the iconic areas that you remember from the first two films and tying them in.This is New York 1992 and you see a bunch of areas that give it that vibe of the city. We’ve obviously got some of the music from this films and, where would we be without the Ray Parker, Jr. song. And we’re going to do some very interesting things with that song.

Is the Wii version a little bit more accessible for casual gamers in terms of difficulty?

Yes, definitely. You can play it on three difficulty levels. You can play on Easy where your pack won’t overheat all the way up to Gozerian difficulty where you’re going to find yourself restarting back at checkpoints frequently and needing the help of a second player to get through.

Is the co-op version online?

It’s only local right now, we decided to spend our time polishing the game to make it as good as possible. But co-op is fun as one person can spend time wrangling and another trapping. You all can venture and explore at your own pace.

When do you anticipate that the game will be finished?

We’re going to be entering beta stage very shortly and from there it’s polish, polish, polish.

At this point, the Wii version of the game looks promising and definitely adds a totally different dynamic that the other consoles couldn’t capture. Given the accessibility of the Wii version, I expect it to be a hit when the game drops this June.