DVD Reviews

The Real Ghostbusters: Season One
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Review by Blake Harmer

Nostalgia can be a pain in the arse. On several occasions I have seen something that I have liked as a kid, such as Ecco the Dolphin on the Mega Drive, only to experience it again and realise it was a big piece of crap. So when I was asked to review The Real Ghostbusters: Season One after it has finally been released on DVD, I was worried. I have been a big fan of Ghostbusters for years. I love the original films, I had a lot of the toys, I will most likely buy the game that has recently been released, and I regularly watched The Real Ghostbusters when it was aired as a Saturday morning cartoon along with my other favourite programs of my youth (namely Transformers, Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, and Thundercats). But is the cartoon still as good as I remember it?

For those few who have never seen the cartoon, the Ghostbusters go around clearing up New York from ghosts, ghouls and other assorted phantasms using their proton packs and traps, except for one ghost, their lovable mascot Slimer. A green phantasm that loves to eat food and cover people in slime.

The animation of the cartoon is good and still holds up well against today’s standards of cartoon animation, although it still isn’t as great as older cartoons like Thundercats. You get a good selection of episodes for the price of the DVD. The cartoon still retains some of its humour, such as Peter Venkman's one-liners that feel like a watered down kiddie friendly version of Bill Murray’s one-liners in the film, but are still enjoyable to watch nonetheless. His voice is like an annoying Garfield voice though.

This DVD collection isn’t without it’s flaws however, there is a distinct lack of bonus features which are normally expected with releases such as this, and the cartoons haven’t been fully cleaned up for the DVD quality as I had hoped with some of the colours being a bit too strong sometimes. There is also a little problem with Winston for about 5 seconds in one of the episodes where he is actually white. This error is made worse that it is also whilst he is having a speaking part, and this probably left the other Ghostbusters feeling slightly confused:

Overall, this is a good package and I recommend it if you enjoyed the cartoon like I did in its heyday, and I can thankfully say it is still good. However, there are just a few niggling flaws which I would I wished weren’t present to give it a higher score, and I would have to recommend better packages such as the Thundercats box sets for fans of animation. However, this is an excellent value for money purchase and hopefully there will be more special features in Season 2 onwards. - 7/10