Jun. 19, 2009 at 5:41 AM , Categories: Games

Unlike my PC Video List, this one for the PlayStation 2 version of Ghostbusters: The Video Game (and presumably the Wii version too) will be short and sweet. Not because I've lost interest, but because there aren't many video files to talk about.

There are 11 video files located on the disc in the \VIDEO\EN\ directory. They are encoded using Bink Video at 640x480 at 29.97 frames per second. Four are cutscenes, the other seven are company logos. Here's the list:

INTRO.BIK - Cutscene: Game Intro (1:44) (NO VOICES, MUSIC & SOUND EFFECTS ONLY: 32000 hz, 16-bit, stereo)
TSINTRO.BIK - Cutscene: Times Square Intro/Stay Puft's Entrance (2:20) (NO AUDIO)
HT2END.BIK - Cutscene: Second Hotel Visit Ending (0:34) (NO AUDIO)
LIINTRO.BIK - Cutscene: Lost Island Intro (3:55) (NO AUDIO)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ATARI.BIK - Atari logo
COLUM.BIK - Columbia Pictures logo
GL33K.BIK - Gl33k logo
INFERNA.BIK - Infernal Engine logo
RFS.BIK - Red Fly Studio logo
SONYCP.BIK - Sony Pictures Consumer Products logo
WARDRUM.BIK - War Drum Studios logo

As you can see from my notes, only one of the cutscene videos has audio, and it's only the music and sound effects. I guess the voices are layered over the video as it plays in the game. As these are the only four cutscenes to have video files, I can only take that to mean that all of the other cutscenes are done using the in-game engine. Since the player can choose the model of the Rookie character, this was probably the only way to do it. You'll notice that the Rookie doesn't appear in any of these four cutscenes.

If you'd like to play these files on your computer, you can play them right from the game disc (it's in DVD-ROM format) using The RAD Video Tools/Bink Video Player, which is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux for free from the company that develops and licenses the Bink format. You can even use this tool to play/convert/encode .bik video files.

Finally, if you'd like to see the difference between the opening cinematics for the realistic version (PC/PS3/X360) and the stylized version (PS2/Wii), go to these YouTube pages: Realistic Version and Stylized Version.