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The in the converted hearse are back! Just one and a half years after Ghostbusters 2 first haunted the micro circuits of the Z80 processor it has arrived on budget courtesy of Hit Squad.

As far as the movies go, I've always preferred Ghostbusters to Ghostbusters 2 on the grounds that it is more entertaining, but the opposite holds true as far as the computer games are concerned. It's useful to have seen the film so that you understand the plot (which is as confusing to the average punter as a vegetarian menu is to the Tasmanian Devil), but the script does make for a more humorous and less straight-forward game than the original.

The famous foursome, Peter, Ray, Egon and Winston start the adventure after a mysterious incident involving Dana's newly-born brat. This leads them to discover a new build-up of psychokinetic energy apparently emanating from the smelly old city sewer. Ray is lowered into the catacombs to investigate, and must reach the bottom before his rope is cut. There are lots of horrid, slimy, grabby things to try and sever his connections and ol' Ray must zap these in order to succeed.

Next comes the craziest bit - the Buster boys steal the Statue of Liberty by animating her with psychic slime! Liberty leads a crowd of united New Yorkers into battle against the ghosts, and you control her torch which zaps them out of the sky with fireballs. Dead ghosts drop slime which will power Liberty's locomotion - if the people of New York can collect it without being grabbed by spooks.

The idea is to reach a museum which is the centre of psychic convergence and ocne there the guys must swing down from the roof, rescue Dana's wee lad and hold on to him against all odds. The really heavy bad dude end-of-game adversary, Vigo The Carpathian, finally jumps out of a painting and engages our heroes in a complete mother of a battle.

The graphics are O.K., with black outlined characters on a coloured background and vertical or horizontal scrolling, depending on the game situation. In general the scrolling is smooth and fast but I sometimes found a time lag between action and reaction when controlling character movement. Sound, although a little shaky at times, remains faithful to the Ghostbusters theme music.

Label: The Hit Squad Memory: 48K/128K Price: £3.99 Tape, N/A Disk Reviewer: Alan Dykes

Bit of a zany idea, which is just as well 'cos the gameplay isn't magnificent. Nevertheless it has some humour and a few surprises and is worth a budget look.