Gaming History You Should Know: Is Ghostbusters: The Video Game Canon? November 23, 2025
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Happy Sunday everyone! Hope you’re all eager to enjoy your upcoming Thanksgiving holiday weekend! We’ve been laying low here on the site for the last week or so, trying to catch up on all the new games that seem to be getting released every day for the past two months, with many more still to play. Welcome back to Gaming History You Should Know where we discuss some of the best independently produced documentaries on the history of video games.
I cannot tell you how difficult it was to be a fan of Ghostbusters throughout the early 00s up to the 2010s. It was the earliest fandom I remember becoming a part of, shortly after I was first exposed to the franchise watching some of the early episodes of The Real Ghostbusters. I thought the show was fascinating. Here was a group of scientists capable of fighting the monsters of every kid’s nightmares with incredible high tech weaponry. I got the action figures and the toy firehouse to go with it as an early 90s Christmas present. Eventually, my parents let me rent the original Ghostbusters film on VHS and I enjoyed it so much, and while I never had the chance to watch Ghostbusters II when it was in theaters, my sister and I eventually caught it when it premiered on premium cable. Since then I’ve collected the various home video releases and will rewatch them regularly.
But after Ghostbusters II came out, the franchise just…went to sleep. The animated show would later get replaced with newer programming. There was an incredible follow up to the animated series that came out in 1996 called Extreme Ghostbusters, which saw an older Egon lead a new diverse team of Generation X college-aged students though the problems of a late-90s New York City. Sadly, it only lasted half a year and its broadcast times conflicted with my school bus schedule, so I was only able to catch the first half of each episode before I’d have to leave for school. Such a shame, as despite the fact it was one of the best animated series of all time, not many people remember that show even existed, and I can’t think of a single school lecture of any worthwhile life value taught to me during that time in my life.
I will admit I never believed I would see a follow up to Ghostbusters II. Even in the earliest days of the net, there was a heavy demand for it, but most Ghostbusters news out from Hollywood at that time was merely based on theories and rumors. Then in 2009, we die-hard fans got our third Ghostbusters movie in the form of Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Written by the original film writers and starring the original cast, the game took place after the second film and showed the Ghostbusters battling it out alongside a new character, The Rookie, controlled by YOU, the player. It was a fantastic swan song that satiated this long-term fan quite well and still ranks among many “best of” lists
In the late 2010s, Sony remembered they owned a property people loved, and set forth with producing a film with the characters people loved. Ghostbusters: Afterlife and its follow-up, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire brought the franchise back to the big screen with the surviving cast battling alongside a next generation of young people interested in the paranormal.
But after the events of the latest two Ghostbusters films, many have questioned the existence of Ghostbusters: The Video Game remaining in the main film’s canon. While the events of the later two films cannot exist alongside the events of a show such as Extreme Ghostbusters, is the video game struck from canon just as easily?
YouTube creator Channeling Spirits focuses on Ghostbusters content of all kinds, and produced this well-researched documentary on if the story of the Video Game can exist in the wider existing Ghostbusters universe. Give it a watch and find out for yourselves!
Ghostbusters: The Video Game is out for PC, Xbox 360, PS3. It was remastered for PS4 and Xbox One.
Gaming History You Should Know – Cyberpunk Architecture September 28, 2025
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Happy Sunday! Welcome back to Gaming History You Should Know, where we highlight some of the best independently produced gaming history videos from across the web. Today, we’re not going to be featuring a video that talked about game history, we’re going to highlight something that takes an analytical look at a vibe.
Cyberpunk is more than just a frame of mind, it’s an aesthetic, and its been with us since the 1980s when writers such as William Gibson tried to imagine what would be possible when technology is no longer beholden to limitations, and massive corporations could get away with whatever they wanted. The recent announcement (and runaway success) of the Cyberpunk Legends CCG Kickstarter has made it perfectly clear that there is a financial demand for more cyberpunk-inspired games, films and books. Now that it has returned to the mainstream, discussions can be made about what is the common traits for the cyberpunk look, why that aesthetic looks the way it does, and why it has endured for as long as it has. Essentially, I’m asking what makes Cyberpunk, Cyberpunk?
Audiences were first exposed to the art and vision of Cyberpunk by groundbreaking movies in the 1980s and 90s, including films like Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner. YouTube Channel DemiLee discusses famous sci-fi and fantasy environments and tries to determine if they are practical if real people actually tried to live in that fictional world. What kind of a world environment would exist to create the necessities for the elaborate buildings audiences could observe in those classic films? Would such elaborate buildings even be practical to serve the functions they are being used for in the future? Well, the video below took an analytical perspective on the various environments seen in some of the most popular cyberpunk media from the past few decades. Give it a watch!
Gaming History You Should Know – Mortal Kombat Lost Media August 10, 2025
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It’s Sunday, and that means it’s time for a new Gaming History You Should Know! If this is your first time here, this series is where we highlight some of the best independently produced gaming documentaries from across the web. Today, we’re going to be highlighting a documentary produced by FAIRWAYx who has a fantastic YouTube Channel about Mortal Kombat lore.
Mortal Kombat had the unique beginnings as one of the best Arcade fighting games of all time, and eventually became noteworthy (or notorious depending on who you ask) for presenting violence to a player as an outcome of their actions. It has since gone on over the past decades with many more arcade releases, home console games, spin offs, webseries, and multiple theatrically released films. A franchise that rich with content is going to also have some projects that never saw completion, and the video below is going to talk about what those were! Give it a watch!
I will admit that Mortal Kombat has been one of the last remaining arcade machines from my childhood that I have not added to my personal home arcade/VR space, and there’s a reason for that. At some point, I’m hopeful that Arcade1Up releases an all-new Mortal Kombat 4 home machine.
Gaming History You Should Know – History of The Legend of Zelda Animated Series July 13, 2025
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Welcome back to another Gaming History You Should Know, where we highlight some of the best independently produced documentaries on gaming history and culture! During Nintendo’s heyday in the late 80s, the Super Mario Bros Super Show was a weekday broadcast staple. Each episode would feature a live-action segment featuring Mario and Luigi responding to some comical hi-jinx while doing plumbing work in Brooklyn, NY. These live-action segments would bookend an animated episode of the Mario Bros adventures in the Mushroom Kingdom against the evil King Koopa! At least, that’s what it would be like on Mondays through Thursdays, Fridays were set aside for a special Legend of Zelda animated episode!
I remember The Legend of Zelda’s episodes were on a whole different level than the Super Mario Bros episodes. In fact, the show was of such good quality, I remember my parents bought me a VHS tape of one of the episodes for Christmas one year.
So what was the inspiration behind this show? Why did it get made and how did Nintendo approve it? The YouTube Channel Game Nerd Legacy did a fantastic documentary about the show, its history and legacy. If you were interested in the show, or watched it back in the day and were curious how it came about, give it a watch below!
To this day, this animated show remains the only officially licensed adaptation of The Legend of Zelda, but fear not, Sony has confirmed a film adaptation is currently in pre-production!
Gaming History You Should Know – The History of Nancy Drew Games June 22, 2025
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It’s Sunday, time for a new Gaming History you Should Know, where we highlight some of the best independently produced gaming documentaries from across the web. Today, we’re striking while the iron is hot and featuring a documentary that just got released. An enduring legacy of classic literature has always been the character of Nancy Drew. Published in the books by Simon and Schuster, Nancy the girl detective has solved countless mysteries and may have single handedly saved the world more than once. But Nancy Drew has not been relegated to the bookshelves, she’s headlined feature-films, television and yes, even video games.
I first learned about Nancy Drew games when I saw a let’s play of the game where Nancy went to Japan by the creator formally known as That Dude in the Suede which may now be considered lost media. Since then, I’ve seen Nancy Drew point-and-click PC adventure games on retail store shelves, in fact my wife even had a few of them when she was growing up.
To date over twenty Nancy Drew games were released for the personal computer. How have these games endured for so long? I had no idea just how it happened, and that its initial spark came from a company famous for laserdisc arcade games! Today, we’re going to highlight the work of YouTube channel Bumbles McFumbles which did an incredible documentary about the history of this gaming franchise. Give it a watch!
Gaming History You Should Know – What Happened to the World’s Biggest CRT TV May 26, 2025
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It’s Sunday and you know what that means? Time for a new Gaming History You Should Know, where we highlight some of the best independently-produced documentaries from across the web. Today, we’re going to be talking about an obsolete technology that was a major component of all gamer’s lives….up until the mid-to-late 2000s, the CRT television.
Growing up, a CRT was all we had to view any kind of video content, whether it was television, video games, or movies. I have to admit, with the exception of using them for PC monitors, I HATED them. They were HEAVY, and there was no way to minimize its weight if you had a larger model. In all likelihood once you had a CRT placed in your space, it would stay there for the entire lifespan of your home. Nobody wanted to move these things. However, there were a lot of good about CRTs. They had a nearly perfect response rate that would make even the lowest latency flat-panel monitor blush. Game developers of its time also took its interlacing functions into account, which is why many older games look better on them than they do on newer non-interlaced HDTVs.
When I was growing up, we didn’t have a BIG CRT because they just didn’t exist. Most televisions that advertised themselves as “BIG” were actually rear projection, which while they were indeed big, suffered from a poorer image quality than CRT and also posed the constant risk of image burn. However, for a very long time, there has been a mythical Holy Grail of CRTs, a BIG CRT capable of EDTV input over composite made by Sony. However, only one picture of the BIG TV existed in the wild, and nobody was totally sure if it was legit.
Was this CRT real, and if it was, does it still exist? Well, the guys over at the YouTube Channel Shank Mods did a fantastic documentary about this mythical CRT, and their attempt to recover it. Let’s find out how they did!
Gaming History You Should Know – The Greatest Speeches by Steve Jobs January 9, 2025
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Welcome back to Gaming History You Should Know. Normally, we’d host this kind of article on a Sunday and feature an independent video, but today is the anniversary of the reveal of the iPhone, and we wanted to celebrate it, and the life of the man who presented it. How did it get revealed? Take it away, Steve.
Over the past few years Apple has lead the world in innovation and has reaped the benefit of becoming one of the most powerful companies in the world. They are known for iconic products such as the Mac, iPhone, iPad and Vision Pro, and most tech journalists credit them for setting the gold standard on a tech product release due to the fact that every other company who released similar products after Apple did (such as Microsoft) simply copied Apple’s design interfaces for their own products. Following the death of Apple’s co-founder Steve Jobs, several researchers looked back at some of Steve’s greatest moments, and we wanted to share some of those great moments with all of you today!
The iPhone announcement wasn’t the only major iconic moment Steve has provided us over his lifetime, and Jobs worked at Apple for a very long time. Today, we’re going to look back at some of Steve’s greatest speeches and announcements, and to begin with we’re going to go back to the 1980s. I would argue most people were first exposed to Steve when he first revealed the Mac computer.
The Mac would go on to literally redefine what we could do with a personal computer, and its legacy lives on to this day as Apple still continues to release some of the best personal computers on the market.
In 2010, following the massive success of the iPhone, Steve was not going to rest on his success. The iPhone was small and simple which was perfect on the go, but what would you use if you wanted something bigger and weren’t on the go? There were desktops and laptops, but most people just needed them to be able to browse the web or check their email. The time was right to bring in a new electronic form factor, the Tablet. Here’s Steve Jobs’s reveal of the iPad.
It took a few revisions before the iPad would gain mass market appeal, but the appeal did come. To this day, the iPad is still credited as the beginning of the tablet revolution, and as extremely powerful iPads have been released, tablets have taken a huge piece out of the sales of laptops. Streaming services releasing native apps for iPad made media consumption easier than ever. In fact, a peer of mine who hates Apple even admitted to me that the iPad Pro is without a doubt the best tablet currently for sale.
In 2005, Steve was asked to attend the commencement for Stanford University. In that iconic speech, he spoke about his life, his business experience, and his battle with cancer.
I wanted to end this article with a video about Steve’s work in charity and philanthropy. Following his first battle with cancer, Steve was invited to advocate for organ donations in the state of California. To this day, I still can’t believe Steve shared the stage with Arnold Schwarzenegger, but he did, and this is the video of it!
That’s where we’d like to wrap this look back into the past of just some great moments from Steve Jobs. Thank you for taking this look with me through the years, and rest in peace, Steve.
Gaming History You Should Know – The History of Runaway Brain: Disney’s Forgotten Mickey Mouse Short December 22, 2024
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Welcome back to Gaming History You Should Know. Today, we’re not going to be talking about a video game event in the strictest sense of the word, but it is one of the first pieces of media I can remember that clearly WAS impacted by the influence of the video game craze of the early to mid 90s, a short film called Runaway Brain starring Mickey Mouse!
In 1995, my sister, father and myself went to the theater to go see a mostly forgotten movie called “A Kid in King Arthur’s Court”. I was interested in seeing it because I had seen a brief look behind the scenes at Disney’s Animation Studios on television (either Disney Channel or ABC) and they were hard at work on the aforementioned Runaway Brain. It would be a horror short where Mickey Mouse found himself in an experiment where he switches brains with a gigantic monster. What interested me was the incredible animation style clearly inspired by the 90s video game aesthetic. In fact, the behind-the-scenes video released back in the day mentioned guy in charge of animating Mickey Mouse for the short had been responsible for animating characters such as Jafar in Aladdin and Gaston in Beauty and the Beast.
Sadly due to massive delays me and my family only caught the latter half of the short, but I definitely remember catching the entire short when it broadcasted on the Disney Channel late one night with little fanfare. I greatly enjoyed it.
Since the late 90s, Disney has refused to acknowledge the existence of the short, and refused to release it attached to any recent home video collections of animated short films or Disney+! While you can’t find the short through legit means anymore, its legacy does live on to this day. Mortal Kombat games are still being made to this day, so the fighting game genre highlighted at the beginning of the short is still going strong. In fact, Warren Spector does credit the short as an inspiration for Disney’s Epic Mickey.
We like to highlight some of the best independently made documentaries on gaming history for this series and today is no different. YouTube channel CutScene did a fantastic look into the history of its short and its enduring legacy. He actually was able to get interviews with the short’s director and editor for this featurette! You can give it a full watch below:
Gaming History You Should Know – Sony’s Metreon December 8, 2024
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Welcome back to another Gaming History You Should Know, where we highlight the great work of independent channels that are dedicated to chronicling the history of gaming. Brick and mortar retailers, once the lifeblood of the gaming space, are fading fast in the era of online shopping and same day delivery. But when I was growing up, the act of going shopping was an event in and of itself, and nothing beats being able to tangibly hold something you’re interested in purchasing and taking it home with you.
Did you know Sony actually owned and operated retail spaces in the United States? No joke, I remember visiting a Sony store at JFK Airport in the mid-90s to pick up a badly needed pack of batteries! However, that was not their only retail establishment! This was more than just a store, this was a high-tech retail establishment on the cutting edge, it was called Sony’s Metreon!
Today, we want to highlight the work of the YouTube Channel Wrestling with Gaming. They did a fantastic look at this venue! Let’s take a look inside!
Incredible venues like this closing or me not being fortunate enough to live anywhere remotely near me is one of the biggest reasons I’ve become so grateful for Virtual Reality’s advancements over the last year.
Gaming History You Should Know – History of Splatterhouse December 1, 2024
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It’s Sunday, and that means it’s time for a new Gaming History You Should Know! Ready for a blast from the past? We’re taking once again about Splatterhouse!
That’s right, the controversial arcade classic that went on to become a controversial console remake is back in the spotlight this week. YouTuber Trent Achy produced an incredible retrospective on the Splatterhouse franchise this week and was nice enough to grant us permission to feature his video here today. It includes new behind the scenes information on the making of the game, and a pretty in-depth look at each of the 2010 game’s levels. In short, a great retrospective. Check it out below:
Personally I liked the 2010 game and would be happy to see it (and any of the other games from the franchise) ported to current platforms. Special thanks to Trent for letting me feature his video on the site, I hope you all enjoyed it!
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