[14] The game features a choice of three playable Ghostbuster characters from the films: Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz and Egon Spengler.

[13] The Ghostbusters each have their own traits relating to speed and shooting strength, and they are each animated with oversized heads meant to resemble their respective actor's likeness.

[13] The player earns money by eliminating ghosts, and can use the funds to buy upgraded weapons through shops that appear in between levels.

[10][4][14] The objective of the Ghostbusters is to retrieve pieces of a stone tablet from each of the four initial levels by ridding the areas of ghosts.

[15] The Games Machine praised the playable character sprites for resembling their film counterparts, but criticized the simple and repetitive backgrounds.

[7] Robert Swan of Computer and Video Games praised the graphics, including the playable character sprites.

[5] In 2008, Levi Buchanan of IGN said that the game was "pretty cool" upon its release, especially for Ghostbusters fans, but wrote that it was now something of a mediocre side-scroller, stating that the graphics were still adequate but that the gameplay was "fairly tame compared to what would come later" on the Genesis.