Long before there was Erin, Abby, Jillian, and Patty; there was Eduardo, Kylie, Garrett, and Roland - the Extreme Ghostbusters! It was 20 years ago today, on September 2, 1997, that I first saw this next-generation, mentored by original ghostbuster Egon Spengler (voiced by a returning Maurice LaMarche). (While the show premiered on September 1st in most parts of the U.S., here in New York it was pre-empted by the Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon. So, I saw Darkness At Noon, Part 2 first, and had to wait almost a week for the re-airing of Part 1.) Ten years ago, I did a little write-up for the 10th anniversary, so I'll try to do something a bit different for this article.

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Although I've been running this website for 20 years, my love of Ghostbusters goes back much further than that. In honor of my birthday today, let's take a look back at a few of my past birthdays and the Ghostbusters presents I received for them.

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For the past 10 years all video and audio files on Spook Central were played using a Flash plugin-based multimedia player. That was the ideal way to do it at the time, but since then, Flash has fallen out of favor (to put it nicely). If you've been viewing Spook Central on a mobile device, you wouldn't have even seen the embedded media player because all Apple and Android devices don't allow Flash to be used. That meant that I needed to eventually find a new way to play and display the media on the site.

Raffaele Ruffaldi, the Italian Stallion from the land of the Smurfs and damn fine waffles, has worked his butt off these past few months to help me find a solution to the problem. After lots and lots of testing and trial and error, and me being a general pain in the ass, we have found something that seemingly works in nearly every situation. Only one older browser (Internet Explorer v8 on Windows XP) and mobile device (an iPod Touch using iOS v6) failed our tests, but it's not likely that anyone reading this is using either of those two. If for some reason you can't see the video, there's a "Can't See The Video?" panic link at the top of the floated box that links directly to the .mp4 file which should allow you to view the video file.

When I committed to using videos on Spook Central, I grabbed the tiny "Play Video" image from the DVD-ROM content of the 1999 DVD and blew it up to 320x240. It got the job done, but it wasn't very pretty, and I wanted something that looked a little better, wasn't tied to a specific background color, and was of a larger size (as a way to plan for future use). I asked my friend, the Ghostbusting' Guru Matthew Jordan, for some help to make a new image that was a homage to the old one. What you see at the top of this post is the masterpiece he created. Those of you on desktop or laptop computers will, likely, not see the image very much. However, those of you on mobile devices will become quite familiar with it. When you click on any video thumbnail on the site (and I hope it's obvious which thumbnails link to videos on the various pages), a desktop/laptop computer will auto-play the video floated over the page. On a mobile device, you will need to click/touch the "Play Video" image to have the video start playing.

It should be noted that all I did right now is take the small (mostly 320x240 or 424x240) compressed .flv videos I already had on Spook Central and re-compress them to .mp4 files. They are being displayed on the site, floated over the pages, at DVD resolution sizes of 640x480 or 852x480. There will be a certain ugliness when seeing those small files enlarged to those sizes, but they are still perfectly viewable. Maybe in a few years, if I can ever find the time, I want to go back to my original video sources and re-encode all of the videos at those larger DVD image dimensions and with less compression. That will probably happen when I get around to transferring my VHS collection to DVD-Rs. For now, what's on the site will have to do. Oh, and ignore the black box in the lower right corner of some videos. It covers up an outdated watermark I had on the original files.

Okay, so that about covers it all. Raffaele and I would appreciate it if you would use the comments section below to provide feedback, so we'll know if there are any issues we need to address, or if everything is running as well as expected.

I spent a lot of time working with Paul Feig's 2016 parody remake of Ghostbusters (Don't Answer The Call - It's Coming From Inside The House!) for reviews here on Spook Central and multimedia on the Ghostbusters Wiki. In doing so, I discovered a lot of subtle secrets that you may not be aware of. I'm not talking about the obvious Easter Eggs, like the original actor cameos, the Twinkie ad in Times Square, and the other overt pandering...err, references to the original movies. Some of the secrets I will be presenting today may be known to some, but there are a few that I personally discovered.

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I don't do April's Fools pranks every year, lest you be able to predict it coming. This year I decided to do one after seeing the site for the band Spook (located at SpookBand.com) pop up in search results for "Spook Central" because their main page carries that title. I thought it would be fun to replace MY Spook Central with theirs for the day.

On the Spook Central Facebook page, I gave a little hint that the prank was coming when I posted that "Spook Central v4.1" was coming this Saturday. The version number is, of course, April 1st - April Fools Day. I tried not to make the hint too obvious.

If you came to Spook Central on April 1st and saw the website of the band Spook, I hope you clicked around to the other pages. I copied over the seven main files that make up their website. For the most part, I left the pages alone, to make the prank look real. However, if you clicked over to the Contact page, the prank would have been revealed to you.


I don't know how many people I fooled with my prank, though I know that I got a few people. I hope those of you who saw it, enjoyed it.

Last year, when I reviewed the soundtrack to Paul Feig's 2016 Ghostbusters parody remake, one of the things that I overwhelmingly enjoyed about it was the album artwork. Between July and September of 2016, I exchanged several e-mails with Grammy-nominated artist Annie Stoll about her work on the album. The idea was to post a mini Q&A on Spook Central at the time. Yeah, I'm quite late in posting this, but better late than never - right? Along with the Q&A are little tidbits of information from the e-mails that she has given me permission to share. I'll call these "Anne Anecdotes" because I love alliteration.

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Updated on September 1, 2018

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UPDATE - In an effort to make the photo documentation of the house trips easier to find, here are the quick links to all Facebook photo galleries about the East Rockaway house.

• Thu. March 9, 2017
• Tue. May 30, 2017
• Fri. June 9, 2017
• Wed. June 14, 2017
• Wed. August 23, 2017
• Mon. November 6, 2017
• Sat. September 1, 2018
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It was all supposed to be simple. It was never supposed to be a lot of work.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, back in October 2016, Ghost Corps and Sony released a bunch of "creative assets" for the Ghostbusters franchise on the official site at ghostbusters.com/creative-assets/. Thankfully, I stumbled upon that page just a few weeks ago, because it's since been taken down.

The files included a whole slew of images, sound effects, and effects video files, most of which have been used on official Ghostbusters merchandise and as part of the style guides for both the original movies and the 2016 parody remake. These were high-quality, print-ready, multi-layer files in .psd, .eps, .wav, .pdf, .mov, and .tif formats. Here's the blurb from the page to explain why they were so gracious to make these assets available to the fans.

Hi Ghostbusters fans and content creators! Over the past years, we have noticed and loved all of the amazing videos, art, stories, and more that you have created out of sheer passion for the Ghostbusters franchise. We wanted to say thank you and add some fuel to the fire by providing official source materials to help you create even more amazing Ghostbusters creations. You can explore the containment unit below that includes official Ghostbusters art, graphics, sound effects, 3D effects, and more! Let's see what you've got by using the hashtag #CreativeGB! Brought to you by Ghost Corps.

Being that I'm not graphics-proficient, I asked my compadre, Matthew Jordan to convert the images from the print-ready formats (.psd and .eps) to something more accessible to the average computer user, like me (such as .png or .jpg). I thought he could batch run them through one of his programs and have them outputted lickety-split. I thought wrong. Here's Matt to explain more...

Probably the most stunning thing is finding errors in one of the files. (I'm looking at ga_ca2.psd) Little dots towards the top going across. And a minute later I find more dots. All in the two base layers. I hope to god this was only a mistake for the website and not the whole campaign. There is a lot of money on the line, it would be BS to see this as the standard.

I must say this was one heck of a project. It turns out that really at the end of the day, you're are going to have to find someone else if you want the 4 large psd in actual size. I struggled at 3200 X 2--- size. The main image was made rendered at full res in jpg form. I then shrink them down and then made them tif files (to save them as transparent) as png's can't be in color setup cmyk (Photoshop won't allow me to change it to rgb either). I then cheated them into a blank png file in rgb by dragging them in. So yeah, it was a weird bitch. Had photoshop crash a large number of times while figuring out that it can't save those files as rgb pngs.

Had one computer freeze as well at the end. Mostly from over working it and running out of hard drive space (those things require many gigs if you want them in full size).

Weird little treasure I found in the one file, they had the video game version Logo in there in a turned off layer. Had a bit missing on the left side of the logo, but I fixed her up with the cloning tool. Both Slimers (one without any work, the other with a bit of work) have movable iris' so yeah if you want his eyes a different way it can be done.

Okay, so after a tremendous amount of work, Matthew made them into space-saving transparent PNGs. I then figured that I'd share the images by tossing them up on the Spook Central Facebook page as a gallery. Transparencies were lost, which is not a surprise, and no great loss for Facebook viewing. Unfortunately, the nicely formatted gallery description I included, turned into a big jumbled mess of text. I noticed Facebook doing this months ago, but I thought it was just a problem on my end. Matthew confirmed that it's one of Facebook's many screw-ups.

Since my gallery text was a mess, and since the original images are still available on Sony's servers (even though the Creative Assets page has been deleted), and because Matthew has made his transparent PNG conversions available on the Ghostbusters Wiki, I felt it would be best if I put in a little effort and wrote a Spook Central blog post to help straighten this all out and point you to everything.

Matthew deserves a BIG ROUND OF THANKS for going above and beyond the call of duty to do these conversions.

ORIGINAL FILES - Direct links to the files are in the list at the end of this post. PLEASE BE AWARE that these files are VERY LARGE! You will need over 2 GIGABYTES of space and bandwidth if you want to download them all.

TRANSPARENT PNGS - On the Ghostbusters Wiki, on the Ghostbusters Official Website article. For a VERY LIMITED TIME, Matt uploaded the entire set into this 413 Mb rar file. This file can, and likely will, be deleted without notice. For permanent access to the assets, visit the Ghostbusters Wiki.

GHOSTBUSTERS 1 & 2 ASSETS

• Character Art: Slimer Smiling (gb_ca2.psd) (38.3 Mb)
• Character Art: Slimer Scared (gb_ca3.psd) (29.8 Mb)
• Character Art: Stay Puft Angry (gb_ca6.psd) (27.8 Mb)
• Character Art: Ecto-1 Front (gb_ca8.psd) (244 Mb)
• Character Art: Ecto-1 Front Left (gb_ca9.psd) (234 Mb)
• Character Art: Ecto-1 Rear Left (gb_ca10.psd) (322 Mb)
• Character Art: Ecto-1 Front Right (gb_ca11.psd) (209 Mb)
• Ghostbusters Title, No Ghost Logo, City Border (gb_cover.psd) (28.2 Mb)
• Color Pallette: Slimer (GB_Color_Callouts_Slimer.pdf) (709 Kb)
• Color Pallette: Stay Puft (GB_Color_Callouts_StayPuft.pdf) (415 Kb)
• Color Pallette: Ghostbusters Suit (GB_Color_Callouts_Suit.pdf) (10.6 Kb)
• Blueprint: Proton Pack (GB_Icon_08.psd) (37.5 Mb)
• Blueprint: Containment Grid (GB_Icon_09.psd) (37.6 Mb)
• Blueprint: Particle Flow (GB_Icon_10.psd) (37.7 Mb)
• No Ghost Logo & Title (GB_Logo_01.eps) (237 Kb)
• Title (GB_Logo_02.eps) (219 Kb)
• Ghostbusters II Titles & Logo (GB_Logo_03.eps) (294 Kb)
• Nametag: Spengler (GBC_Spengler.eps) (237 Kb)
• Nametag: Stantz (GBC_Stantz.eps) (574 Kb)
• Nametag: Venkman (GBC_Venkman.eps) (580 Kb)
• Nametag: Zeddemore (GBC_Zeddemore.eps) (582 Kb)
• Beveled No Ghost Logo (CGB%20Classic%20Logo.psd) (32.5 Mb)
• Proton Beam Vertical (CGB%20Classic%20Proton%20Beam%20BOP.psd) (4 Mb)
• Hazard Strip (CGB%20Hazard%20Strip%20BOP.psd) (3.2 Mb)
• Proton Beam Horizontal (CGB%20proton%20beam.psd) (3.8 Mb)
• Silhouette: Three Guys (GB_Silhouette_01.eps) (136 Kb)
• Silhouette: Ray (GB_Silhouette_02.eps) (106 Kb)
• Silhouette: Peter (GB_Silhouette_03.eps) (241 Kb)
• Silhouette: Egon (GB_Silhouette_04.eps) (243 Kb)
• Silhouette: Ray With Trap (GB_Silhouette_06.eps) (1 Mb)
• Silhouette: Terror Dog (GB_Silhouette_07.eps) (270 Kb)
• Silhouette: Stay Puft (GB_Silhouette_08.eps) (98.1 Kb)
• Silhouette: Slimer (GB_Silhouette_09.eps) (236 Kb)
• Silhouette: Ecto-1 (GB_Silhouette_10.eps) (254 Kb)
• Slime Short Drip (GB_Slime_02.psd) (8.7 Mb)
• Slime Long Drip (GB_Slime_03.psd) (9 Mb)

GHOSTBUSTERS 2016 ASSETS

• Photo: Ecto-1 Front Left (GB_Ecto1_01.psd) (21.6 Mb)
• Photo: Ecto-1 Right (GB_Ecto1_02.psd) (13.8 Mb)
• Photo: Ecto-1 Front (GB_Ecto1_03.psd) (16.7 Mb)
• Photo: Ecto-1 Front Right (GB_Ecto1_04.psd) (20 Mb)
• Photo: Ecto-2 (GB_Ecto2_01.psd) (17 Mb)
• Photo: Ghost Trap Opened (150820_PROP_PLATES_106.psd) (106 Mb)
• Photo: Ghost Trap Closed (150820_PROP_PLATES_111.psd) (76.3 Mb)
• Photo: PKE Meter On (150819_PROP_PLATES_004.psd) (56.1 Mb)
• Photo: PKE Meter Off (150819_PROP_PLATES_003.psd) (34 Mb)
• Photo: Proton Pack (150820_PROP_PLATES_092.psd) (110 Mb)
• Dimensions: Proton Pack (pack%20dimensions.jpg) (51.4 Kb)
• Dimensions: Proton Gun (proton_gun%20dimensions.jpg) (45.5 Kb)
• Proton Pack Stickers (FJ_Gen3_proton_pack_stickers%20copy.jpg) (1.3 Mb)
• Sound Effect: Ecto-1 Siren (ECTO%20SIREN%202016.wav) (7.2 Mb)
• Sound Effect: Ghost Trap Sequence Combined Open Suction Close (Trap%20Sequence%20Combined%20Open%20Suction%20Close.wav) (6.6 Mb)
• Sound Effect: PKE Meter Device Beeps On Steady Detect Off (PKE%20Meter%20Device_Beeps_On%20Steady%20Detect%20Off.wav) (14.5 Mb)
• Sound Effect: Proton Pack Beam, 3 Versions (Proton%20Pack%20Beam_3%20versions.wav) (7.1 Mb)
• Sound Effect: Proton Pack Cocking (Proton%20Pack%20Cocking.wav) (826 Kb)
• Sound Effect: Proton Pack Power Up Quick Version (Proton%20Pack%20Power%20Up%20Quick%20Version.wav) (826 Kb)
• Alpha Channel: Stay Puft Balloon (.tif, zipped) (Stay%20Puft%20Alpha%20Channel%201_2.zip) (87.6 Mb)
• Alpha Channel: Stay Puft Balloon (.mov, zipped) (Stay%20Puft%20Alpha%20Channel%201.zip) (87.3 Mb)
• Alpha Channel: Slimer Fly-By (.tif, zipped) (Slimer%20Alpha%20Channel%204%20Fly-by_2.zip) (116 Mb)
• Alpha Channel: Slimer Fly-By (.mov, zipped) (Slimer%20Alpha%20Channel%204%20Fly-by.zip) (111 Mb)
• Alpha Channel: Slimer Driving (.tif, zipped) (Slimer%20Alpha%20Channel%205%20Fly-by_2.zip) (10.2 Mb)
• Alpha Channel: Slimer Driving (.mov, zipped) (Slimer%20Alpha%20Channel%205%20Fly-by.zip) (LINK NEVER WORKED)
• Alpha Channel: Slimer Hovering (.tif, zipped) (Slimer%20Alpha%20Channel%208%20Hovering_2.zip) (84.2 Mb)
• Alpha Channel: Slimer Hovering (.mov, zipped) (Slimer%20Alpha%20Channel%208%20Hovering.zip) (127 Mb)
• Alpha Channel: Blue Ghost Flying (.tif, zipped) (Blue%20Ghosts%20Flying%20Alpha%20Channel_2.zip) (17.1 Mb)
• Alpha Channel: Blue Ghost Flying (.mov, zipped) (Blue%20Ghosts%20Flying%20Alpha%20Channel.zip) (97 Mb)

Last year, Sony released 10 volumes of The Real Ghostbusters on DVD, which were completely different from The Real Ghostbusters: Complete Collection 25-disc DVD box set TimeLife released back in 2008. I already reviewed Sony's Volumes 1 through 5, and today I will review Volumes 6 through 10. Before I begin, it is important to note that, unlike the first five volumes, these volumes are currently NOT available in a box set. You can ONLY buy them individually, though I will be reviewing them as a whole.

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First and foremost, I would like to explain about the lack of new content. You may have noticed that there hasn't been many new blog posts here on Spook Central or on The Corner Penthouse. It's not for lack of having new stuff to post, that I assure you. I actually have several reviews planned for both sites: Real Ghostbusters Volumes 6-10 DVDs and Lego Dimensions Ghostbusters 2016 Story Pack for Spook Central; other Lego Dimensions stuff and Return of the Living Dead 3 & CHUD 2 Blu-rays for The Corner Penthouse; plus a few other things. I was hoping to post all of this stuff over the past few months, but things have been a nightmare in my real-life, and it recently got far worse. I want to have it all posted throughout February, but it would be foolish of me to commit to any specific dates at this time. I also have to do a computer upgrade, and Raffaele and I want to upgrade the blog and video software used on Spook Central. That will not just require time to do, but also time and effort to deal with any problems that result from these upgrades/changes. Now with that bit of business out of the way...

Last year, Sony released an official parody remake of Ghostbusters that was, confusingly, titled Ghostbusters. Ghostbusters 2016: Answer The Call - The Official Ghostbusters Parody would be a more appropriate name, if Sony wants to keep tacking on subtitles to make the name stupider and stupider. Some people love the movie, a lot of people hate it, and some people dislike but tolerate it (like me). Right now, the people in the first camp will be pissed at me for calling it a parody, but that's what it is. One thing that lampoons another thing is called a parody. It's like how Jim Abrahams and David & Jerry Zucker made an official parody remake of the film Zero Hour!, which they titled Airplane!. Not that Paul Feig's work can even hold a candle to that of Abrahams and the Zuckers, but in terms of being a parody and a remake, they're comparable.

I was granted access to Sony's EPK.tv press site so that I could download and share all of the assets with my readers. I have already done that at the Ghostbusters Wiki, where I am also an admin, and now it's time that I share them here on Spook Central, as well. All of the high-resolution images have already been uploaded and preserved at the Wiki, where you can find them on the Advertising and Promotional Events pages.

As for the videos, I have reluctantly uploaded them to my ScrewYouTube account so that they can also be added to the Wiki. I tend to avoid using ScrewYouTube because of all of the BS video takedowns. They closed my old account 10 years ago due to three bogus copyright claims by parties who claimed they owned videos that they didn't (unless I missed the memo where Viacom bought Ghostbusters from Sony). As of right now, one video below has an appeal pending on it because ScrewYouTube automatically flagged and blocked it worldwide due to copyrights. The first appeal was apparently denied (I was never notified) by "Sony Pictures Movies & Shows", even though as a member of the press with an official account on Sony's EPK.tv press site, Sony gave me permission to download the video expressly for the purpose of redistributing it elsewhere for my readers to view. Currently, the "viewing restrictions associated with the appealed claim(s) are suspended until your appeal is resolved. The copyright owner can respond to your appeal (they have until Feb. 20, 2017) by either releasing their claim, or filing a copyright takedown notification to remove your video. If they decide to remove your video, you'll receive a copyright strike."

I will not embed all of the videos because that will, likely, crash your browser. I know that it will crash mine. So, I'm just going to put up a nice, organized, list of links and call it a day. Videos were uploaded as Sony provided them, so audio volumes were not corrected.

As a reminder, the theatrical cut of the film will premiere TONIGHT at 9:00 pm on the Starz cable channel here in the U.S.

BEHIND THE SCENES/PRESS KIT PACKAGE SOUNDBYTES
• Chris Hemsworth
• Ivan Reitman
• Kate McKinnon
• Kristen Wiig
• Leslie Jones
• Melissa McCarthy
• Paul Feig (APPEAL PENDING)

PRESS JUNKET SOUNDBYTES
• Kate McKinnon & Leslie Jones
• Melissa McCarthy
• Paul Feig

TRAILER FAN EVENT (March 2, 2016)
• Sizzle Reel

SINGAPORE GUINNESS WORLD RECORD EVENT (June 12, 2016)
• Featurette
• Melissa McCarthy
• Paul Feig
• Rishi Nath
• B-Roll

SINGAPORE PRESS CONFERENCE (June 13, 2016)
• Press Conference Soundbyte #1
• Press Conference Soundbyte #2
• Clip #1 On First Collaboration
• Clip #2 On Collaborative Shorthand
• Clip #3 On Pride And Excitement For Project
• Clip #4 On Leslie Jones And Kate Mckinnon
• Clip #5 On Chris Hemsworth
• Clip #6 On Cameos And Easter Eggs
• Clip #7 On Big Action And Scope
• Clip #8 On Appreciation For Original

LOS ANGELES WORLD PREMIERE (July 9, 2016)
• Sizzle Reel
• Clip #00 Info Slate
• Clip #01 Main Cast
• Clip #02 Cecily Strong
• Clip #03 Andy Garcia
• Clip #04 Dan Aykroyd
• Clip #05 Annie Potts
• Clip #06 Ernie Hudson
• Clip #07 Zach Woods
• Clip #08 Ivan Reitman
• Clip #09 Kevin Smith
• Clip #10 Ray Parker Jr
• Clip #11 Ray Parker Jr and Ernie Hudson
• Clip #12 Pete Wentz and Andy Hurley of Fall Out Boy
• Clip #13 B-Roll

And that's all I have to say about that.