Ghost Hunters (video game)
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| Ghost Hunters | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | The Oliver twins |
| Publisher(s) | Codemasters |
| Engine | Enhanced Super Robin Hood |
| Release date(s) | February 1986 |
| Genre(s) | Platform game, Shooting game |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
| Platform(s) | Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum |
| Media | Cassette |
- For other uses of the name see Ghosthunters (disambiguation).
Ghost Hunters is an platform/action game that also combined Operation Wolf style shooting gameplay at the same time. It was released in February 1986 by Codemasters. This title contains elements from the survival horror genre despite pre-dating it, making it one of the fathers of the genre.
The series was developed by the Oliver twins at the age of 17 and was their second title published by Codemasters after the commercially successful Super Robin Hood. The twins credit the film Ghostbusters and the cartoon series, Scooby Doo for influencing the game.
Like their previous game, Super Robin Hood, the player controlled a person around the platformer style screen using the keyboard, however uniquely, to attack the enemy the player is required change modes and move around the targeting cursor Operation Wolf style to shoot the Ghosts and demons, causing the player to stand still. This resulted in the player requireing to shoot the targets quickly and operate their player to move around the screen before more would appear.
Codemasters paid the Oliver brother's £10,000 for the Amstrad CPC released and were offered another £10,000 for a ZX Spectrum release. However, the twins did not wish to produce a port by actually coding on the Spectrum, so to save time, they hired their friend Ivan Link to build a cable that links the Spectrum and the Amstrad. After which the twins produced the only software for the Spectrum they ever wrote called SPLINK (SPectrum and LINK) that enabled the code to be altered for the Amstrad and ported to the Spectrum.
| “ | This enabled us to write Spectrum games on our Amstrad, making the most of the benefits of its on-board source code and graphics, its very fast and reliable disk drive and a leading Assembler/Machine Code compiler called MAXAM. That way SPLINK gave us an enormous advantage over our competitors who were trying to write Spectrum games - using a Spectrum! | ” |
- Philip and Andrew Oliver [1]
After being released both Spectrum and Amstrad versions went to No. 1 in commercial sales, this in combination with their previous No. 1 title, Super Robin Hood being ported to other platforms gave the Oliver twins a large amount of media exposure, being dubbed "The Oliver Twins - Whizz Kids."
