The realistic version of Ghostbusters: The Video Game contains art galleries which are unlocked as you progress through the game. Now on Spook Central you can view and/or download every single one of these 287 unlockable images. This also includes a few images that are NOT shown in the game, including the entire Thanksgiving Day Parade gallery from the deleted level.

For the first time anywhere, Spook Central is proud to present the lost (but not anymore) Thanksgiving Day Parade art gallery featuring that level's big boss: Blinkers, the Science Pup! You remember Blinkers, right? We saw him oh so briefly in the "Atari Live Trailer" from December 3, 2008 (stills below). Well, now you can see his concept art, as well as storyboards from his pre-fight cutscene (in the Miscellaneous gallery), and the rough cut video of that pre-fight cutscene! Also, it would seem that at one point in the parade level the player would have traversed through Ray's Occult Books, as there is concept art for it in that gallery, and a few concepts of jars that would have been on the shelves in the Miscellaneous section.


But that's not all! In addition to the parade gallery, there are a few hidden images in the other galleries, too. The images are there in the PC game's assets, but they're not shown in the galleries inside the game itself. One of these hidden images is the key to the Gozerian Alphabet in the Miscellaneous gallery. You can use it to decipher all of the hidden symbols seen here and there throughout the game (equip the PKE Meter in the Crypt Alley section of the cemetery to see some writing on the walls) and on some of the concept art. I tried it on some of the hidden Crypt Alley writing, but I couldn't get a clear enough shot to decipher more than a word and a few letters (which may be incorrect).


TECHNICAL GARGON NOW STARTS
Here's where I now go into detail as to how I got these art gallery images out of the PC game assets and put them into the form you see on the website. If you're not interested in this information, you can stop reading now and go check out the art galleries.

All of these images are stored in the file w32art02.pod in the art\ui\tiles\ directory, with the thumbnails stored in the art\ui\thumbs directory. You can safely ignore the thumbnails, though a few thumbnails are also found in the tiles directory (they can be deleted). In each are the subdirectories: cemetery, hotel, hotelreturn, library, lostisland, misc, museum, parade, and timessquare. The images are stored as .tex files, with each image broken up into several parts ("tiles"). The game stores all of its textures and other image assets as .tex files, so the first three steps listed below can be used for any of the .tex files in the game. The programs mentioned in Steps 1-3 can be found on the PC Gaming page here on Spook Central.

   1. Use Dragon Unpacker to get the .tex files out of the .pod file.

   2. Convert from .tex to .dds using the Ghostbusters TEX Converter.

   3. Convert from .dds to lossless .bmp or .png using DDS Converter.

At this point we would have done everything necessary for the majority of the game's .tex files. You could then edit them in any image editor and then convert them to .jpg, .gif, or .png for the final file to be uploaded. With the unlockable art gallery images we have to do one more step because they are not stored as singular images.

You see, the art images are stored as 512x512 pixel pieces ("tiles"), which will need to be reassembled into single images. The file names give you a clue as to which part of the image it is. Anything with an "a" near the end is in the 1st row of the image, a "b" is the 2nd row, and so on. The numbers at the end tell you what column that part is in. A file with "b03" at the end of the filename is in the 2nd row, 3rd column.

For example "char_gravegollem001" contains 16 parts, in 4 rows and 4 columns.
Row 1: char_gravegollem001_a01.tex through char_gravegollem001_a04.tex
Row 2: char_gravegollem001_b01.tex through char_gravegollem001_b04.tex
Row 3: char_gravegollem001_c01.tex through char_gravegollem001_c04.tex
Row 4: char_gravegollem001_d01.tex through char_gravegollem001_d04.tex

Piece them together that way and you'll get the full-size image. Follow this methodology for the rest of the images, though not all of them are prefect squares like this example.

   4. Piece together the parts of each individual image one at a time using GlueIt v1.06 (requires .NET Framework v2.0).

When you run GlueIt, you will see a clean interface with four clearly defined steps. You need to run these steps on each set of image parts ONE AT A TIME! With 287 total complete images, this means you'll be doing this 287 times. Step 1 is simple: just open the image parts you want to glue together. Make sure they're listed in order. The easiest way to do that is to select them from the last one to the first in the file open dialog box; using Shift+Arrow Keys to highlight them all. Under Step 2 you'll need to put in the number of columns, which varies per image set, but is always easily determined by looking at the highest number at the end of the filenames. In the above example of "char_gravegollem001", you'll notice the numbering goes up to "04", so that means that there are 4 columns in that image. After typing in "4" in the Number of Columns field, press the big "GlueIt" button. A preview window will pop up, but since there are no scrollbars in it, you probably won't be able to see the entire glued image, rendering the preview rather useless. Ignore "Step 3 - Preview" as it doesn't really show you the glued image all that well. Move on to Step 4, where you select the output format (.bmp, .png, or .jpg) for the reassembled image, and save it where every you want. Now press the "Clear" button under Step 1 and start all over again on the next set of image pieces.

   5. (OPTIONAL) In your favorite image editor, crop the excess blackness from each image (you'll have to do it one-by-one as the amount of blackness differs per image) and when you're satisfied with the final image, save it to .jpg or .png (or .gif for some of the images with lesser colors, if you want).

That's all there is to it. It may not seem like a lot of work - only five easy steps - but since Steps 4 and 5 have do be done on a per image basis, can't be automated, and there are almost 300 images, it gets to be quite the task. So with that in mind, if you want to use any of my converted and reassembled art gallery images on your site, you are free to use a few of them (no more than 20 across all galleries), but please give me credit and a link. The source material may be a PC video game that a lot of people own and could extract the images from themselves, but it took a helluva lot of work to get them looking as nice and neat as you see on this site, and I doubt that anyone else is going to bother to do all of that work themselves when I've already done it for everyone, so a little credit isn't too much to ask.

It all started innocently enough. Two and a half years ago I bought a vintage 1947 Tavern on the Green souvenir photo from a yard sale. I thought it was a nice, unique historical item with a connection to Ghostbusters. I didn't think I would ever have anything more to add to the "unique historical item with a connection to Ghostbusters" collection. Especially not something from another restaurant.

Two weeks ago I identified the Louis Wandering Past WienerWald location from Ghostbusters. The WienerWald Austrian Restaurant he passed was located at 1560 Broadway in New York City - the heart of Times Square. In doing research for that Shot on Site article I came across an eBay listing for a Vintage 1960s Wienerwald New York NY Restaurant Menu. For a mere $21.08 (with free shipping, no less) it could be mine. I figured, why not? So now it IS mine!

In spite of its name, WienerWald is primarily known for selling chicken, not sausage, as evident by their chicken silhouette logo. That said, if you wandered into either of their New York City locations (they only had two at the time this menu was made) and wanted to get some bratwurst, you could get it with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes for $1.95. Better than that, how about a whole sirloin steak with fried potatoes and a mixed salad for $4.95?!? Yes, a whole steak with sides for about the same price a combo meal will cost you at the McDonald's that now resides at WienerWald's old Times Square location. Speaking of hamburgers, you could get one for $1.25... and I'd bet you that it was a lot beefier than the paltry patties you get on McDonald's dollar menu today. You'll need something to wash down that food, so how about a cup of coffee for $0.20? You're lucky if you can get a cup of coffee-flavored coffee for a buck these days. There's also soda for $0.20 and, for the adults, liquors that range from $0.60 for beer or a goblet of wine to $7.00 for a bottle of Henkell Trocken sparkling wine. Finish your meal off with a nice slice of cheese cake for $0.75, or choose a Viennese pastry from their large selection for $0.65.

The most interesting thing about this menu, aside from how ridiculously cheap everything was 40+ years ago, is the list of WienerWald locations on the back cover. There were 215 in Germany, 2 in Belgium, 5 in Holland, 1 in Canada, 11 in Austria (Österreich), 3 in Switzerland (Schweiz), 2 in the United States (both in New York City [the numbers of the Broadway address are transposed as "1650" on the menu]), and 8 more under construction (im aufbau). By the time Wienerwald declared bankruptcy in 1982, they had 880 restaurants in the United States. That's quite a nationwide expansion. I wonder how many more they had in the other countries by that time. As of 2005 they only had 63 restaurants left, all in Germany and Austria.

Of course, you should know that I'm not going to just talk about this menu without letting you all get a copy for yourselves. I have taken the liberty of scanning it in, cleaning it up, and making a PDF out of it. Click on the cover image below to download it. The scans look infinitely better than the actual item. In fact, I dare say that the menu hasn't looked this good since it came off the printing press back in the 1960s!

Yes, I know, this article should have been written in June 2009 when the topic at hand was fresh and new. Unfortunately, I didn't get a PlayStation 3 until recently, so you'll have to make due with it being 2.5 years late. With that out of the way...

PlayStation Home is a virtual 3D social gaming platform for the PlayStation 3 on the PlayStation Network (PSN). Membership is free, and only requires a PSN account. Home allows users to create a custom avatar, and decorate their avatar's personal apartment with various items. In June 2009, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Ghostbusters and the release of Atari's video game, many Ghostbusters items were made available for purchase, including a firehouse personal space. Below is a list of all items available for purchase with the current prices as of this writing.

Read more »

My first post of the new year is going to be one of my long-overdue Shot On Site articles. I have several locations identified and waiting to be written up, and hopefully I'll get to more than one a year.

Read more »

For most of the 2000s, Chris Buchner ran two sites: the NYGB Tourguide and the NYGB ComicGuide. The former focused on the New York City filming locations from both movies, while the latter focused on all of the Ghostbusters comic books ever published. When I say "all" I mean ALL! All of NOW's books, all of 88MPH's books, all of Marvel books released in the UK (and their derivatives), and even all of First's Filmation books! Not only did the site cover all of the issues, it even went very in-depth with each one, giving you the credits, story synopses, trivia, bloopers, character photos, and more!

Unfortunately, on October 31, 2008, AOL shutdown their AOL Hometown web hosting service, and thus both sites left the internet, along with other AOL members' websites. Luckily for the Ghostbusters Online Community, I had saved copies of both sites. With Chris' permission, I've incorporated a lot of the Tourguide information into Spook Central's Filming Locations pages, though you can find some archived copies of the original site on the Internet Archive.

A few days before the shutdown, on October 28, 2008, I downloaded all of the ComicGuide files. Due to the way AOL handled their web hosting service, the site was actually split across a few different user accounts. I attempted to merge all of the download files into one computer folder... and let's just say that the results weren't pretty. Because there were a lot of files with the same names, they couldn't all be put into one folder "as is". I had to rename almost all of the files, which also meant that I would have to go in and edit every html file so that all of the new file names are referenced in links and the such. I didn't have the time to do the task, so the files sat untouched on my hard drive for a few years.

Around this time last year I saw a post by Fritz Baugh on the GB Fans forum where he mentioned the ComicGuide site by name and lamented over the loss of the invaluable information it contained. Seeing that he had an interest in the site, I contacted him to see if he'd also be interested in fixing up all of the files I saved a few years prior, with the intention of making it all available to the public again. I figured that he'd turn me down, as the files required a lot of work, and it would be a very tedious task. Surprisingly, and much to his credit, he accepted my offer.

So, now, three years and two months after AOL took it down, I am proud to present... The Resurrected NYGB ComicGuide (last updated September 10, 2008, archived October 28, 2008). FYI: Don't expect to find any of IDW's books on the site, as they all came out after the site went into hibernation.

MAJOR THANKS to Chris Buchner for creating the site and giving me permission to host the old copy here on Spook Central, and especially to Fritz Baugh for doing the time-consuming and labor-intensive task of fixing up all of the files and making the site whole again.

Back in 1987, pop songstress Shanna O'Callahan captivated audiences worldwide with her hit song "Love Makes Me Live". The song was heard on the radio several times a day, the music video played in constant rotation on MTV (back when the channel lived up to its "Music Television" moniker), and it was even used in a very successful campaign for New Coke. One little known place where the song was heard was in the children's cartoon series, The Real Ghostbusters. Here's a clip from the episode "Banshee Bake A Cherry Pie?" featuring an animated Shanna performing the song alongside the Ghostbusters characters Peter Venkman and Slimer.


Many people have always wondered why there was never any songwriter's credit on any of the "Love Makes Me Live" record, cassette, and CD singles released around the world. What the world did not know, until now, is that the song was not a Shanna original, as Ms. O'Callahan claimed when Barbara Walters asked her about the matter in her now infamous October 1987 interview. There have always been rumors that Shanna stole the song, but they have always been just that: rumors. That is, until now.

In 2006, BCI/Eclipse released The Best of She-Ra Princess of Power, a 2-DVD set featuring five episodes of the She-Ra: Princess of Power animated series and the preceding 1985 theatrical film The Secret of the Sword, along with a whole bunch of bonus features. Amongst the bonus features on Disc 1 are several versions of the "I Have The Power" music video from The Secret of the Sword film. One alternate version of the music video is included as an Easter egg, and THAT is where the truth about Shanna O'Callahan is revealed. To access the egg, go to the Special Features menu, highlight "Alternate Recording" and press Left. At first, there doesn't appear to be anything special about this version of the music video, but when the song is over and the end credits start, that's when everyone's eyes and ears will opened...


Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Shanna O'Callahan STOLE "Love Makes Me Live" from She-Ra!!!!! We now have irrefutable proof of the theft. Shanna released her song in 1987, while the song was used in the She-Ra music video in 1985 - a full two years earlier! To hide her thievery, Shanna renamed the song. The phrase "love makes me live" does not appear anywhere in the lyrics I transcribed above. In fact, I would bet that the original song's title is "Love On The Streets", judging by how many times that phrase is used.

What's interesting about the song's use in the She-Ra music video is that it doesn't even fit in the music video that it's in, both thematically and length-wise. There's 35 seconds of blackness after the video ends so that the song can play out a little bit. It seems like an afterthought; like something added in so there would be some kind of music to play under the music video's end credits. Heck, the song doesn't even appear in any other version of the music video on the DVD.

The Real Ghostbusters was produced by DiC, while She-Ra was produced by Filmation. The only thing the two shows have in common is that the music for both was done by Shuki Levy and Haim Saban. So I would bet that this song is part of their stock library. I did a search for some pieces of the lyrics online, but I couldn't find anything. I thought maybe some obscure band that Levy was a part of might have recorded the song before its cartoon uses, and the lyrics and information would be online - but not a sausage. The She-Ra movie came out in 1985, but the song could be older than that. I sent e-mails earlier this year to the webmaster of Shuki Levy's website, in the hopes that he/she could ask Shuki about the song, but I never heard back.

So I contacted my resident He-Man/She-Ra expert (he literally wrote the book), James Eatock. James has also worked on numerous animated series DVD sets, such as The Real Ghostbusters: Complete Collection (he also appeared on screen in the bonus features), and many sets for BCI/Eclipse, including The Best of She-Ra Princess of Power. Yes, he actually worked on the set on which the song appears, and didn't even realize its significance. Hey, I guess even the good ones slip up now and there.

The first thing I noticed about both versions of the song is that each one is sung by a different person, and each person sings slightly different lyrics. My first step was to identify the singer of The Real Ghostbusters version, as that is the one that everyone is most familiar with. During his time working on The Real Ghostbusters DVD box set, James managed to get a hold of the cast call sheets from voice director Marsha Goodman. These sheets lists the names of all voice actors for each episode and the characters they voiced - both the guest stars and the regulars, who would often do extra bit parts here and there. These sheets are quite valuable since the series either never named the guest cast per episode or just grouped all voice actors together in the end credits for an entire season. Naturally, I asked him to check the sheet for "Banshee Bake A Cherry Pie?" to see if it mentions who did Shanna's speaking and singing voices. He told me that "Jodi Carlisle was the voice of Shanna according to the recording sessions", but that he couldn't find any note about the use of the song. As great as that information is about the episode, that's pretty much a dead end about that particular version of the song.

James was able to provide a little bit of information on the She-Ra version of the song, but not as much as I would have liked. He told me that the song is performed by Noam Kaniel, who "was Shuki Levy's main vocal performer. Many of those Levy composed eighties cartoon theme songs have his vocal tones blessing them to some degree." I did a little searching online for Noam's past work, to see if the song appeared anywhere in it, but couldn't find anything.

So we're pretty much at a dead end with the She-Ra song, too. We know the singer, but nothing else. Being that it does not appear to have been written specifically for She-Ra - as evident by how it doesn't fit at all in the music video - I think we can safely say that Shuki Levy wrote the song prior to She-Ra, or for a different project at the time, and just reused the song for both She-Ra and The Real Ghostbusters. We know that The Real Ghostbusters version is not the original recording, though I can only assume that the She-Ra version is. I would think that if Shuki had Noam quickly record a piece of the song to play under the music video credits, he wouldn't have recorded so much of it that it actually plays longer than those credits.

I'm going to try e-mailing Shuki's webmaster again, this time pointing him to this page, and hope that I get a reply this time. No guarantees, of course. If anyone has any information they care to share on the matter, feel free to chime in with a comment below.

By the way, while we're on the subject of The Real Ghostbusters music... I know a lot of people would love to have the Shuki Levy-composed score music released on some sort of "score album". If the music is a part of the Saban Music Group catalog, and not owned outright by Sony, and assuming all of the original recordings still exists, Bug Music would be the people you should bug (no pun intended) in any efforts to get a Real Ghostbusters score album released. In October 2010, Bug Music acquired the worldwide rights to Saban Music Group's publishing catalog. According to the press release, the extensive purchased catalog includes material from leading children's franchises such as the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, Digimon, The Addams Family Reunion, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Next Generation, Princess Sissi and Walter Melon properties, and encompasses a slate of theme songs, cues and scores from more than 90 television series, 3,700 television episodes and 100 made-for-television films and specials. If the recorded music doesn't exist anymore, maybe the sheet music still exists, and it could all be re-recorded for the score album. That would be the best worse-case scenario.

[UPDATE]
BMG Rights Management purchased Bug Music in September/October 2011. Going to BugMusic.com now takes you to BMGChrysalis.com, with a message overlay that reads, "Dear Friends of bug music, We have moved to our new home under BMG Chrysalis." That means that BMG Chrysalis is now the company you should pester for a Real Ghostbusters score album release, assuming the music is still in the Saban music library they now own due to the Bug Music acquisition.

[UPDATE - 7/10/2012]
I posted a message (link req. login) on singer Noam Kaniel's Facebook wall (only visible if you friend him), and received the following replies from him which gives us some more information on the song.

[July 8, 2012] Yeah I wrote this song with Michael Piccirillo and Lisa Popeil. It was originally recorded as a demo for me as a singing artist, but since my obligations with Saban were so important I had no time to pursue a singing career again, so we placed it in this She-Ra music video. I'm singing on it with Erika Scheimer. Boy that's a long time ago!!!

[UPDATE - 9/30/2014]
Episode co-writer, Dennys McCoy posted several messages to the Ghostbusters Wiki Facebook page, which gives us a little more insight on the song, and his career - and how shrewd of a businessman Haim Saban is.

[September 25, 2014] Back in the time of GHOSTBUSTERS and DENNIS THE MENACE, Saban studios produced music for animated series. They were the exclusive suppliers for DIC, which produced both shows. I was Haim Saban's Creative Director at the time and they would happily mix-and-match music cues from different series. This is how Saban initially made his money in the U.S. -- by literally giving away the music to the studios, but retaining all the rights to the music. It wasn't unusual for Haim to make more money from the music than the studios made from their productions.

[September 25, 2014] I didn't get a credit on Dennis the Menace because I was working for SABAN and not DIC. We wrote for DIC, but I was an executive at Saban. Saban turned out music cues 24-7, and I mean that literally. They had 3 8-hour shifts with 3 producers who would record music cues and VARIATIONS on music cues. So whereas a cue may sound familiar but not exact -- it's one of the variations. This way Saban could sell the same music to several productions. There's a story about when Andy Heyward, who ran DIC, let Mattel have a cue from HE-MAN and the trouble that resulted from that. Mattel didn't own the theme, DIC didn't own the theme -- SABAN owned the theme. Way too long story for here -- but it was an amazing screw-up that lead to Saban becoming one of the wealthiest guys in Hollywood.

[September 26, 2014] This is really funny. First, I and my partner/wife, Pamela Hickey, wrote BANSHEE BAKE A CHERRY PIE. Second -- WE NAMED THE SONG! We wanted a title that just plain sounded stupid, so we called it "LOVE MAKES ME LIVE." By that time I had left Saban and Pam and I were working as full-time writers in animation. But we knew that Shuki and Noam had a ton of songs they'd written. By the way, all the music is listed as composed by Haim Saban and Shuki Levy because that is how they contracted all music. Love Makes Me Live could have been composed by any number of producers/writers who worked for Saban, including brilliant people like Steve Marsden or Glen Jordan. We had come up with a GHOSTBUSTERS idea for a banshee and wanted to make her a pop diva. Shuki and Noam were HUGE fans of the Eurovision song contest (and always entered a song every year) and if you're familiar with the Eurovision song contest you already know that with one exception (ABBA) the winners of that contest invariably go on to total obscurity. The songs always suck and they always sound like a cross between a Las Vegas lounge act and a music score from a Goddard movie. So we knew if we called the song LOVE MAKES ME LIVE, that Shuki and Noam would dig out all their old Eurovision entries and find something that fit the title. However, until you posted the story above, we had no idea that it had gone on to be a hit. We can now say that we have written (the title of) a hit song.

[September 26, 2014] I was the Creative director from '84-'87. Pam was at home with our daughter, Elizabeth Hickey-McCoy (who is also a writer... look for her name or her nom de plume Andrea Case). At that time I was supervising producer on KIDD VIDEO, the first animated series from Saban. It featured an animated (and live) rock group named Kidd Video... naturally so Haim could sell more music. During this time we did Kidd Video, a Japanese mash-up show called MACRON 1, five animated developments for Mattel, and a little show called BIO-MAN. Bio-Man is the show that eventually became (wait for it) POWER RANGERS!!! I quit when our writing started making us more money than working for Saban. By the way, I really liked Haim. He is really a good human being.

I've finally joined the 21st century and bought a PlayStation 3. My primary reason for the purchase wasn't the games, though I owned two before I even owned the console. I bought the PS3 primarily to replace a crappy Insignia Blu-ray player. (Insignia is Best Buy's brand, in case you don't know.) Every firmware update might fix one thing, or nothing perceivable at all, but break several other things. I won't go into details, but in short, DON'T BUY AN INSIGNIA BLU-RAY PLAYER FROM BEST BUY.

I knew that the Ghostbusters Blu-ray included a Ghostbusters PS3 menu theme, so that was the first disc I put in the system. That theme is now installed on my system and I have no plans to ever change it :-) If you've never seen what this theme looks like, I added some screen shots to the Ghostbusters Blu-ray page here on Spook Central. I also found out how to extract the wallpaper images from the PS3 theme file, so those 1920x1080 and 640x480 images are also available to download on that page. So if you've ever wanted to have that PS3 wallpaper on your computer, now you can have it.

The second disc I put into the console was Ghostbusters: The Video Game (GBVG), which was the first PS3 game I ever bought - six months before I bought the console. When you highlight the game on the PS3 menu it displays a nice group shot background image. I can't rip that image from the disc because my computer's Blu-ray drive can't read PS3 discs (only one model in the world reportedly can, and mine isn't it), but I did do an analog screen capture of it - which you'll find below, and also on the Ghostbusters: The Video Game page here on Spook Central.


The PS3 version of GBVG also includes 6 "exclusive" videos (as in "not on PC or [presumably] Xbox 360") that are already unlocked from the start. I added a list of them to the bottom of "Unlockables" tab here on Spook Central. One of these is the Ghostbusters' commercial seen on Dana's television in the film, only without the on-screen graphics and shown in it's complete form in full screen. This is an incredible bonus never seen elsewhere before, and it isn't even advertised on the back of the case! This is NOT on the Ghostbusters Blu-ray. Below is my 640x480 analog recording of this video. (I can only record video from my newly-purchased PS3 through the analog composite output captured at 640x480, so the quality isn't as great as if I did a direct digital rip from the disc, but I think it'll suffice. The only other copy known to exist online is missing the first second or two, so at least this one is complete.)

IT HAS BEGUN! No, not Mortal Kombat - though the awesome 1995 flick did come out on Blu-ray this year - but rather a project I've thought about for years has officially begun here on Spook Central.

Back in 2008 when I was working on The Real Ghostbusters: Complete Collection DVD box set, I scanned in a bunch of my The Real Ghostbusters and Slimer! scripts and assembled the scans into PDF "eBook" files for inclusion in the set and on this site. That gave me the idea of doing the same thing, not only with the other scripts that I own for both movies and Extreme Ghostbusters, but also with the other Ghostbusters books in my collection. Not only would this allow me to share the vintage materials that I own, most of which would cost big bucks to buy the few remaining copies that are still out there, but it would allow me to digitally preserve materials that are no longer being published so that future generations could enjoy them.

As with most everything that I start, the project laid dormant for many years, with The Real Ghostbusters and Slimer! scripts being the only progress made on it. That all changed a month ago when Matthew Jordan (from the Ghostbusters Wiki) used some of the Trioxin he has stored in steel drums in his basement to bring the project back to life. He e-mailed me to say that he was working on making a complete digital copy out of his physical copy of the "Ghostbusters" novel by Richard Mueller, and he was wondering if I'd like to host it on Spook Central. Since I also own that book, and thus it's one of the books I planned on including in my project, I jumped at the chance.

(SIDE NOTE: Matthew's physical copy of the book is in very poor condition. He did a tremendous amount of work to make it look as good as the PDF you'll find on the Ghostbusters Books page. To illustrate just how much work he did, look at this 1600x1400 image he put together that shows the clean-up process. As if that wasn't enough, he also gathered up all of the images strewn throughout the book and collected them into a photo gallery at the end of the PDF. He didn't have to, but he did it anyway because he's cool like that.)

I used this as a chance to lay the groundwork for the entire project by transforming the old "In Print" pages into new "Books" pages for Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters II, and The Real Ghostbusters. There are practically no full books available on any of those pages right now, other than the Richard Mueller novel (on the Ghostbusters page, of course), seeing as how I haven't done any scanning myself. I wanted to use the addition of the novel PDF to the site as the opportunity to get things started for future use. Eventually I'll fix up the Comic Books page like this as well, as I would also like to include complete PDF eBooks of every out-of-print Ghostbusters comic.

I downloaded a bunch of page scans for the majority of the Now comic books (I think I have scans of all of Vol. 1), as well as 88MPH's Legion, Now's Ghostbusters II, and one Slimer! and Marvel RGB issue as well. That'll save me the trouble of scanning in my copies, though I still have to fix some of them up, and I want to compare the scans with my physical comics to make sure that no pages are missing. Don't expect for any of that to show up this week. I certainly hope that I'm not biting off more than I can chew with the scope of this project, especially in terms of the amount of file space needed for it all. Maybe I could share the load, by letting another site host the comic PDFs... but that's not something I'll worry about right now.

I would love to get help from those of you who own Ghostbusters books/magazines and can scan them in well (the less image clean-up I have to do, the faster the content will get on the site). Here's what I already have page scans of: GB1 Starburst magazine, Now GB2 issues 1-3, Now RGB vol 1 issues 1-27, Now RGB vol 2 Annual 1992, Now Slimer issue 1, Marvel RGB UK Annual 1990, and 88MPH Legion issues 1-4.

Disclaimer: No copyright infringement is intended with this project. The presentation of full books and articles is done solely to digitally preserve materials that are no longer being published. For that reason, no IDW books will appear on the site until they no longer have the license and the books are out-of-print. The same is true of Cereal:Geek articles, unless James Eatock gives me permission. Nobody should be forced to pay hundreds of dollars to second-hand stores, such as eBay and Amazon Marketplace, just to be able to read one of these books. A lot of these books have been out-of-print for 20+ years. The original copyright owners aren't making one cent in profit off of the copies being sold by sellers at the aforementioned places. Heck, a lot of the copyright owners have long gone out of business. These books will be lost and gone forever if we all don't step forward to properly preserve them.

Also, thanks to Patrick O'Riley and Matthew Jordan, the 8/5/1983 draft of the Ghostbusters script is now available on the Ghostbusters Scripts page. Patrick scanned it in and submitted it, Matthew did clean-up of the images.

Josh Blake (a Kenner memorabilia collector) has provided to Ghostbusters Wiki a bunch of scans from the "Kenner 1991: Hot, Hot, Hot" retailer catalog. This book contains promotional images and descriptions of several items in The Real Ghostbusters toy line that were never released since the toy line was phased out around this time due to the waning popularity of the animated series, which ended during the 1991-1992 television season.

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It's hard to believe, but this month marks 15 years since I uploaded the first version of Spook Central to my tiny Geocities account. It's quite a milestone for a website to still remain online after 15 years. Interestingly, Geocities can't make that claim. I never really thought that the site would still be around 15 years later, much less that I'd still have the desire to work on it, but here we are. To see where we've been, check out my Spook Central history page here on Spook Central and over at Ghostbusters Fans.

To help celebrate the momentous occasion, I had a special little souvenir made: a limited edition Spook Central 15th Anniversary embroidered sew-on patch. The design of the patch is meant to invoke the look of the original "Spook Central" title logo from March 1997. (The site premiered in August 1996, but didn't get a logo image until 1997, thanks to Bill Emkow.) They are roughly 3x2 inches in size, and are limited to a quantity of 100 patches. Once they are all gone, that's it. No more will be made.

ADD THE PATCH TO YOUR CART (ONLY CHOOSE ONE) (PAYMENT VIA PAYPAL)

SOLD OUT - United States - $5.00 USD + $1.00 USD shipping
SOLD OUT - Worldwide - $5.00 USD + $2.00 USD shipping

Patches are sent First-Class Mail Letter (or First-Class Mail Int'l Letter) with no insurance or tracking. To keep the ordering system as simple as possible, the shipping rates quoted above will only cover the weight of 1 or 2 patches. If you want to purchase more, please e-mail me and we can discuss shipping options and costs. U.S. orders will incur a small 5% sales tax to cover processing costs.

Next year I might have an embroidered sew-on patch made of the Ghostbusters: The Video Game logo, so we can finally have a "patch" for the game :-)

[UPDATE]
Some fans have already sent in photos showing their Spook Central patches creatively filmed. I've created a Spook Central Patch Mania gallery to showcase all of these fan photos.