While it still very much holds up today, one of the more glaring omissions from Saber Interactive’s remaster of Ghostbusters: The Video Game is the multiplayer component. Who wouldn’t want to bust ghosts with a friend, after all? Saber Interactive had shipped the game with the idea that the multiplayer could be added later. Unfortunately, that hope is now gone.

Backing up a bit. According to Matt McKnight, VP of business development at Saber, the team was faced with a dilemma with the multiplayer code. The original code had been worked on by a studio separate from original developer Terminal Reality, and it was based on an incomplete version of the game. As such, Saber found six different versions of the multiplayer code, and wasn’t sure which one was shipped. The decision was made to shelve the component at the time, in hopes that it could be added later.

But in a recent interview with MP1st, Saber Interactive’s CCO Tim Willits stated that the hope to add the multiplayer back is dead in the ground. Willits stated that the team tried to get the code to work, but “the state of the original multiplayer code unfortunately just didn’t cooperate”. As a result, a chunk of the game that was a lot of fun for fans of the original version will remain missing.

Hope now turns to Illfonic, who are rumoured to be working on a new Ghostbusters video game. Of course, the fan community could try to take matters into their own hands and try to cobble together some form of the code from the 2009 original, but that seems unlikely.

Meanwhile, the latest entry in the film franchise, Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife (read Meg’s review here), came in second at the box office over the weekend with $24.5M. The film has now grossed $87 million domestically against a $75 million budget.