During last night's (4/28/2008) X-Play "Grand Theft Auto IV Special", the first item in the Gaming Update segment was about the downloadable content for Ghostbusters: The Video Game.
Morgan Webb: Ghostbusters: The Video Game will feature unique downloadable content exclusive to both the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. Terminal Reality, the game's developer, revealed that the game will feature a timed online multi-player mode that will allow gamers to try blasting more ghosts than their opponents. However, a campaign co-op mode will not be included. The developer says co-op wouldn't allow them to control the comedic timing of the game's storyline. Ghostbusters: The Video Game is expected to be released this October.
As you can see in the screen shot above, the on-screen caption accompanying the story was "Ghostbusters" DLC Free. Does this caption mean that the downloadable content (DLC) is going to be offered free of charge? That would be great if it is.
Also, you'll note that Morgan only mentioned downloadable content for the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 versions, but not for the PC version as well. Does this mean that there will be no downloadable content for the PC, or has it just not been mentioned yet?
This news piece leaves more questions than answers. Stay tuned...
First, AJ Quick's new site, Ghostbusters Fans, is now open. There isn't very much there, but the groundwork has been laid. Sign up so that you can get all of the benefits, such as the ability to post something, edit something, watch streaming content (when it's added), or have your own profile page ala MySpace. Feel free to check out my profile page. Hey, it's a start.
Second, as previous reported, issue #3 of Cereal:Geek magazine is out and available for purchase. US customers (and anyone else NOT living in the UK) can buy a copy at Graham Cracks Comics. UK customers can buy a copy from the Cereal:Geek website.
Someone by the screen name Smwance (aka Scottmw1971) recently posted a collection of Ghostbusters Successories. What are Successories? Well, it's a company and a name to describe an iconic product that company produces. Wikipedia describes it as such: Successories is a producer and retailer of motivational office decorations, mostly featuring photographs paired with sentiments about motivation, teamwork, and perseverance.
You can find all 18 of Smwance's Ghostbusters Successories at Flickr (extremely large) and LiveJournal (medium at best). The extremely large images are desirable if you want to print them out and put them on your walls.
Scottmw1971 made a lot more Successories than just the Ghostbusters ones. You can find them all at Flickr and LiveJournal.
Oh, and if you'd like to make your own, go to Despair.com. I've made one so far, but it's not suitable for family viewing :-)
[UPDATE - 2/29/2008]
Spengs from Ghostbusters International wrote in to let me know that there are other Ghostbusters Successories out there. More serious, motivational posters were created last year by a fan whose name he does not remember. These 17 Ghostbusters Successories, which were originally posted to Proptopia, were archived by Spengs and can be downloaded from his site.
I gave Sebastian enough time to publish the book, but it's obvious he scammed us all. I've been very patient, but I've reached my limit. So I have finally decided to ask John Robinson of Graham Cracker Comics for a refund, and thus close my active order.
I'm not asking for the refund because I urgently need the money back (though obviously I *DO* want it back since the book is AWOL). I'm asking for it because I don't like to leave unfinished business open for very long, and three years is WAY too long. It's about time I closed this matter and put it to rest.
If the book is ever published, and John definitely has copies in his possession, by all means I want him to put one aside for me and let me know so I can reorder it. However, I will only do so when I know for a fact that he has the copies in stock. No more of this pre-order nonsense - at least not as far as anything from Sebastien Clavet or his company 88MPH Studios is concerned.
However, I don't put much faith in the book ever being published as just last week Sebastien started offering four individual lithographs for sale (one of each Ghostbuster) on his website. Granted, he started soliciting the Venkman litho back in October, but the other three are new. Obviously he still doesn't care to publish the book he promised to publish THREE YEARS AGO. I guess he'd rather waste money on other stuff than on what he actually TOOK PEOPLE'S MONEY FOR.
I will still continue to update the Legion Hardcover News Archive page from time to time to keep other folks abreast of the latest. I won't bother making notations of the future anniversaries of my pre-order date since the order is no longer active.
If you'd like to read my further views on this topic, and to see how Sebastien has been scamming us all since 2005 in his own words, check out my forum post (alt url).
Since the Legion hardcover isn't going to be published, and if you never bought the original four individual issues, you can now download all four issues (regular covers) and read the entire Legion story on your computer. Someone actually scanned in every page of all four issues and compiled them into nice, neat files - then zipped them up into one 67 Megabyte file. Inside this one RAR file are four files (one for each issue). The first three have the extension CBR, and the last one has the extension CBZ. You have two options on what you can do with these four files.
1. Extract them as is and use this program to view them. Since this program is only for Windows, and I do not know if there are ones for Macintosh and Linux, you might have to resort option #2 if you use a non-Windows system.
2. Extract them from the RAR into a folder on your hard drive. No go to that folder and rename each file, just changing the CBR to RAR and the CBZ to ZIP. Now you can open up each newly renamed RAR and ZIP file using your favorite archive utility (whatever you used to open the original RAR should work). Inside each one you will find the JPG image files, which you can extract to your hard drive and view with your favorite image viewer.
The awards ceremony airs February 24th on ABC, regardless of whether the writers strike causes it to be scaled-back or not. Although I personally can't stand ANY awards show, especially the Oscars because of the phoniness and BS of it all, I do hope that at least Jason and Ellen win their respective awards.
[UPDATE - 2/24/2008]
Juno only won one of the awards it was nominated for: Best Writing (Original Screenplay). So congrats to Diablo Cody. Very sad that Jason and Ellen did win as well.
As you may have heard, the members of the Writer's Guild of America (WGA) are on strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP). (To better understand the WGA's position, watch this short video.) You probably also know that the Screen Actor's Guild (SAG) has lent their support by encouraging its members to not participate in any productions in the interim, effectively shutting down Hollywood. The WGA has met numerous times with the AMPTP to have the issues resolved and a new contract drafted, but the AMPTP has steadfast refused to meet the WGA's demands. The last time they met was at the beginning of December 2007, where the AMPTP gave the WGA an ultimatum: take certain demands off the table or we have nothing to talk about. Thus the two sides haven't met since.
Now you may be wondering why I've brought all of this up. Well, I'm getting to that. Besides picketing the studios represented by the AMPTP, the writers and actors have taken to other means to get their point across. One such way is to use the very medium for which they want to get paid for in the first place: the internet. The writers and actors have banded together under the banner United Hollywood, and have started a short film contest, with the grand prize winner receiving an authentic WGA strike poster with over 175 signatures by writers, actors, and directors who autographed it while on the picket line and a copy of Final Draft scriptwriting software (1st and 2nd place runner ups just recieve a copy of Final Draft). Looking over the names of the folks who signed the poster, it makes me wish that I were a writer, actor, or director and thus were eligible to submit an entry. The Ghostbusters cast and crew members who signed the poster include David Gerrold, Walter Koenig, Michael Reaves, and Patricia (Patti) Carr - plus there are a lot more really cool people who signed it as well.
One of the entries is a short film entitled The Creature From the Black Casket, written and directed by David Twohy (Pitch Black, Chronicles of Riddick) and starring Kurt Fuller as Count Nicholas III (a parody of J. Nicholas Counter III, the President of the AMPTP). Kurt, as you may recall, played Jack Hardemeyer in Ghostbusters II (now you see why I wrote about this?).
To fully understand the video you essentially have to know what I wrote about in the preceeding parahraphs. Namely that Count Nicholas III is a parody of J. Nicholas Counter III, the President of the AMPTP; that the AMPTP broke off negotiations because the WGA would not take some of their demands off the table; and that one of the WGA's demands is to get a share of residuals for internet distribution of the works they wrote. Once you understand those points, you should be able to find the humor in this video which has been described as "Ed Wood meets The 2007-2008 WGA Strike".
Personally, I enjoyed Black Casket very much. I thought Kurt did a great job in the role, and wouldn't mind seeing him play a comedic Count Dracula in some movie in the future - once this stike is over with, of course. I also got a kick out of the count mentioning the new revival of American Gladiators, which is hosted by Hulk Hogan, because in 1989 Kurt played Hulk's nemesis Mr. Brill in No Holds Barred. Though I'm sure it wasn't meant to be an inside joke, and I'm sure Kurt would much rather forget that he was in No Holds Barred anyway.
Free free to view the rest of the contest entries. The contest ends on February 20th, with the winner announced on the 28th. Sadly, the public can't vote on which film they'd like to win. A panel of writers/directors will determine the winner.
[UPDATE - 2/29/2008]
First, the writer's strike officially ended on February 12, 2008. Second, the winner of the First Annual United Hollywood Short Film Festival is "The Creature from the Black Casket" by David Twohy. Although it technically broke the "four minutes maximum" rule, I am glad that it won.
James Eatock, publisher of Cereal:Geek magazine, wanted me to let you all know that issue #3 is "due out in the next few weeks". The mag will feature "an article summarizing all seven seasons of The Real Ghostbusters, along with a small article about Slimer's role as a sidekick, and even an article about why Filmation's Ghostbusters is disliked. Also, there's one double page spread showing Janine fighting another redhead of the eighties!"
As for what the future holds for Cereal:Geek, James says that "IF there is an issue four it's going to be the "horror" issue, and already there's a WEALTH of Ghostbusters articles and illustrations planned!"
Be sure to regularly check out the Cereal:Geek blog for the latest.
Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew
* Ghostbusters Cast Member: Jaimee Foxworth as Herself
* Date: January 10th
* Channel: VH-1
* Time: 10:00 PM
* Links: Journal previous mention
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
* Ghostbusters Cast Member: Thomas Dekker as John Connor
* Date: January 13th
* Channel: Fox
* Time: 8:00 PM
* Links: IMDB, Fox, Official Site.
The holidays are fast approaching, and if you're looking to buy something for the Ghostbusters fan in your life, I still have some Ghostbusters items from my personal collection that I'm selling. I also have lots of items for non-Ghostbusters fans as well. And if you haven't bought your Christmas decorations at this point, or want to add more to your collection, I have a Christmas village for sale in excellent condition.
(To keep this message at the top so it can always be seen during this relevant time period, I've pre-dated it for December 25th. Any new news will appear immediately below it.)
I'd like to wish all of my Christian friends a Merry Christmas, all of my Jewish friends a belated Happy Hanukkah, and everyone a very Happy New Year.
I'd like to thank Troy Sundt for making and sending me the amusing holiday Flash video (click the link above). The sounds not so great, but Bill is saying "GHOSTBUSTERS!"... and I think he hit the strong egg nog a little early judging by the burp-ish sound that occurs afterwards 
Although I probably won't be making any more updates to it until 2008, as I have to spend the next few weeks working on something else (possibly offline), rest assured that there will be lots to add over the coming year. That'll probably be the most updated page on the site for quite a while. So keep checking that page every now and then because unless I add a lot at once (which would certainly warrant a mention in this journal), you never know when I'll add something new to the page.
And if you'd like to pre-order the game, Amazon.com has begun accepting them. Here are the relevant links: DS, PC, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, Wii, Xbox 360.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
VH-1, the former music channel that now specializes in wacky tacky has-been celebrity reality crap and occasional nostalgia trips (sometimes in the same program) has a new show coming out next month: Celebrity Rehab with Dr. Drew. Set to debut January 10 at 10 p.m., the series hosted by Dr. Drew Pinsky, will follow the progress of nine celebrities over the course of eight one-hour episodes as they undergo intense treatment at a Southern California treatment facility for a variety of addictions, then have the option of residing in a sober-living community for a few months. According to TV.com one of the nine celebrities is Jaimee Foxworth, former Family Matters star-turned-porn star (briefly). In case you don't know Jaimee's connection to Ghostbusters, she was one of the Kiddie Funk Singers (think children's chorus) on the song "Movie Star" that appeared on The Real Ghostbusters soundtrack and an episode or two of the series.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Recently I have come across a few really cool multimedia items hidden around the internet that I plan to eventually add to my site. Since that won't happen any time really soon, and since the holidays are upon us, I thought I'd give all of you a present and give you the links now.
Paper Proton Pack Template
Yes it's exactly what it says. Created by "MMPR-TheGreenRanger" (The Paper Prop Maker), this is a 100% printed Proton Pack in the style of The Real Ghostbusters blue life-size proton pack toy! You can download the 1.5 Mb file which contains 11 PNG files and 1 Instructions TXT file, though if you don't like the blue toy look, you can view and download additional black templates on Page 2 of this message board thread. There are some photos of the final product there too.
Ghostbusters: Legion Issues 1-4 (Regular Covers)
If you missed out on buying the set when they first came out three years ago, and you're sick and tired of waiting for the non-existent hardcover edition; or you just want to have a readable copy on your computer so you can keep your printed copies in mint condition, then you'll love what I found. Someone actually scanned in every page of all four issues and compiled them into nice, neat files - then zipped them up into one 67 Megabyte file. Inside are four .CBR files (one for each issue). You can either rename the extension of the first four to RAR and the last one to ZIP, then extract all of the JPG images inside each one and view them with your favorite image viewer. Or, you can extract them as is and use this program to view them. Since this program is only for Windows, and I do not know if there are ones for Macintosh and Linux, you might have to resort to the rename and extract method if you use a non-Windows system.
Xentrix - Ghostbusters EP/Record
Chances are you've heard Xentrix's awesome cover of Ray Parker Jr.'s hit song, even if you didn't know it. Well, now you can download the entire album that it came from, complete with large cover art, in a 14 Megabyte file (RAR Password = slimer). Of course the album only has three songs (it's more of a single than a full-fledged album), and personally I didn't care for the other two, but it's worth a download just for the Ghostbusters tune and cover art as this is the best quality copy I've ever heard - just based on specs alone: 192 Kbps bitrate, 44100 Hz sample rate, Joint Stereo. The track listing and individual file sizes are as follows:
1. Ghostbusters (2:48) (3.86 MB)
2. Nobody's Perfect (3:48) (5.22 MB)
3. Interrogate (3:14) (4.45 MB)
Ghostbusters & On Our Own Music Videos
You're probably thinking that you've seen these before, but you've never seen them like this - specifically Ghostbusters. This large 76.4 Mb file contains two Near-DVD-quality AVI files (encoded from DVD-ripped VOBs according to the source I copied the url and data from) that may be the cleanest, clearest, and highest-quality copies of both videos in existence online! Both videos are free of station logos and other such crap, with only brief text in the lower left corner at the start and end giving the song title, artist name, record label, and "Promo Only" information. This is comparable to MTV back in the 1980s before they started stationbugging. In fact, the only problem - and sadly it's a BIG one - is that the Ghostbusters music video does not contain the original audio track with the celebrity shout-outs. If we can get the original music video audio track in crystal-clear stereo, we can match it up to this video and have a perfect copy. Here are the spec for each file, in case you like technical information:
Ghostbusters
Video: XVID 640x480 29.97fps 1131Kbps.
Audio: MPEG Audio Layer 3 48000Hz stereo 128Kbps.
On Our Own
Video: XVID 640x480 29.97fps 1134Kbps.
Audio: MPEG Audio Layer 3 48000Hz stereo 128Kbps.
I shoud note that I compared this new copy of On Our Own to that unaltered copy I found last year (which was backed-up by Rich over at GB International - I think he took it down temporarily). Although fantastic quality, that unaltered copy is slightly better in terms of the specs (see below). This new copy has sharper and brighter picture and clearer audio, but those aspects may have been artificially enhanced. So right now I'm keeping both copies in my collection.
Unaltered Copy Specs:
Video: DivX 5 640x480 29.97fps 1808Kbps.
Audio: MPEG Audio Layer 3 48000Hz stereo 224Kbps.
Michael The Turtle - Ghostbusters Music Video
Another old music video that I found an ever better quality copy of. This 35.2 Mb MPG video file has the following specs:
Video: MPEG1 Video 720x480 (329:240) 29.97fps 1700Kbps.
Audio: MPEG Audio 44100Hz stereo 224Kbps.
Universal Studios Florida: The Magic Of Movies (1991)
This 60 minute promotional video hosted by actor John Forsythe shows all of the various attractions at Universal Studios Florida in 1991, one of which is Ghostbusters of course. YouTube user ETAndElliot was kind enough to upload the entire video, albeit in 9 parts (file sizes range from 14 to 23 Mb each), for everyone to enjoy.
Part 1: Streaming / Download
Part 2: Streaming / Download
Part 3: Streaming / Download
Part 4: Streaming / Download
Part 5: Streaming / Download
Part 6: Streaming / Download
Part 7: Streaming / Download
Part 8: Streaming / Download
Part 9: Streaming / Download
(when downloading, save the files with a .flv extension)
Ghostbusters Deleted Scenes & Alternate Footage
No, sadly there's nothing here that the die-hards haven't already seen a million times over, but since I don't have any video files of these on my site (only audio files), and some of these are fairly high-quality (the non-YouTube links, natch), these are still worth a look - if not also worth a place in your digital collection.
-- Nobel Prize (laserdisc exclusive) (1.0 Mb): Streaming / Download
-- Did We Do It (1.0 Mb) (from the DVD): Streaming / Download
-- Ghostbusters Alternate Footage Collection (12.5 Mb)
Six avi files inside: Pure Fun, Funny Face, Oh No, Keymaster, Wally Wick, Stuff.
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