Proto:New Ghostbusters II

This page details one or more prototype versions of New Ghostbusters II.

The unreleased US version of the game is very close to the released Japanese and European versions. However, there are a few differences with both of them. Some of them may be treated as evidence that the US proto is an early version even earlier than the JP release, or at least based on it. So it seems they did the US version first, then changed it to the JP release and later used it as a base for the EU release.

• The sound data is identical to the JP release, since both of them are NTSC. For the EU version they had rewritten the music data to play exactly the same on PAL systems.
• The PPU control bits for clipping the leftmost column are set, so the BG tiles and sprites are shown in it. As a result, we may see sprites disappear partially in the leftmost column. Later both released versions have corresponding PPU control bits clear. This is the usual method of solving that problem (obviously PPU has these bits exactly by this reason).
• The proto version has a BUG in sprite displaying routines, causing sometimes random glitches on the screen because of missing reinitialization of sprite ram buffers when clipping occurs. The both released versions has this bug fixed.
• Anyway, the proto haven't fixed the JP version original bug with sprites being not clipped at the right side of the screen properly. They fixed it only in the EU version.
• The enemy counts and layouts for the EU release and for the proto versions are identical and much simpler than enemies data in the JP release.

The rest of the differences are in some of the game's texts and logos.

(Prototype source: Nintendo Player)

Japan/Europe	US

The prototype uses the colorful HAL America logo, whereas the Japanese and European versions use a much more plain logo.

US	Europe

The prototype's copyright screen retains the two "GHOSTBUST" typos from the Japanese version. The European version fixes the first one, but not the second.

Japan/Europe	US

All instances of "HAL Laboratory" were changed to "HAL America, Inc." in the prototype.