Ghost Hunters
A haunted-house adventure combining platform movement with independently aimed shooting, released during the Twins' early Codemasters years.
Image credits and source
Original cover / promotional artwork
Credit: Codemasters — artwork belongs to its respective rights holders
Source: The Oliver Twins archive
Game at a glance
- Status
- Classic
- Released
- 1987
- Platforms
- Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64
- Genres
- Action
- Developer
- The Oliver Twins (original development)
- Publisher
- Codemasters
Development and publication
Development: The Oliver Twins (original development). Publication: Codemasters.
The named development credit refers to the original or specifically identified version. Other ports and later re-releases may have different development teams.
Making the game
Having a really good deal with Codemasters for Super Robin Hood, developed in just a month we figured that we should do another game in a month using a lot of the same code, but with a new theme and graphics. Inspired by Ghost Busters and Scooby Doo, we decided to develop a platform game based in a haunted mansion.
When we delivered this back to Codemasters a few weeks late. During the visit, we expressed disappointment that the Spectrum version of Super Robin Hood was progressing very slowly. David Darling suggested we convert Ghost Hunters ourselves to Spectrum pointing out we’d make far more money from the more popular format. To help convince us, he gave us a free Spectrum.
We knew little about the computer but had a friend that was good with electronics. We asked him if it was possible to wire the two together so we could programme on the Amstrad, which had a disk drive and compiler and send the code to the Spectrum. Within a week he produced a hand-soldered circuit board with cables that achieved this!
We discovered quickly that the Spectrum was remarkably similar to the Amstrad, both being based on the Z80 CPU, and we were able to convert Ghost Hunters to the Spectrum in about a week, recoding only the input and output routines.
Future Spectrum game conversions used this code and were even quicker to produce, taking only a day or two each.