Casper (Game Boy)

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Casper, is a Game Boy video game, created by Natsume and Bonzai Entertainment, that loosely follows the plot line of the 1995 film. The player controls Casper through multiple levels of four mini games while collecting ooze to run the Lazarus machine. It starts with the menu allowing you to choose your difficulty setting and then a cut scene shows Kat and Casper going in to Whipstaff Manor and then parting, (most likely to split up in order to find more ooze faster). After each level a short cut scene shows Casper going to a different part of the mansion.

Games

Each of the levels consist of four main mini games ,which you can do in any order, and two final mini games that only appear near the end of the game. However three of the main mini games are the same every level with their only difference being a slightly increased difficulty level.

The games are:

Protect the Ooze: Casper's three uncles Stretch (ghost), Fatso and Stinkie will fall from the sky aiming for containers of Ooze, and when the collide with the containers, they disintegrate a little bit. If they hit the containers too many times, you lose and have to restart. Your only way of stopping them is to suck them into your vacuum (represented on-screen only by a cross hair moved by the directional pad activated by the a button)

Ooze Runner: Casper must climb ladders and avoid his three uncles to collect small buckets of ooze on four platforms all fitting on the screen at once all while under a time limit. Once Casper collects enough Ooze, he must return to the top platform and touch an exit sign. If just one of his uncles touches him just once, you lose and must try again.

Return the Books: You must control Casper while transforming from Casper, to a floating trampoline in order to bounce library books to their return slots as Fatso drops them while trying to collect vials of Ooze before Carrigan steals them. Oddly, Carrigan only appears on screen once in the game at the very end but the instruction manual explains the vials disappear if you do not collect them fast enough, because Carrigan is stealing them. Casper can move across the screen faster and collect vials of ooze, however books pass right through him. Once three books fall, you lose and must retry. As a floating trampoline, you move slower and can't collect ooze, but you can bounce the books safely to their return slots.

Varying Puzzles: This is the only of the four main mini game that varies from level to level. In this game, you must place certain items in certain areas in the correct order in order to achieve the objective. All of the levels of this game work basically the same way, but each time you must place different items in a different order to achieve different objectives. An example would be, in the first level, to make Kat's breakfast you must attach a rope to a duck which causes the duck to lay an egg which runs down the track and lowers itself to the second platform via a curved track you placed and the egg then sits before an egg cracker you placed and the egg slides down into a pan to be cooked.

The next two mini games only appear at the end of the game.

The Up and At 'em Machine: You must push around the chair and safely guide Kat to the laboratory where you will save Dr. Harvey. You must dodge swinging chains and the ghostly trio. Getting hit by a chain will cost you a life, while getting hit by a member of the trio will cost you some of the ooze that you've been collecting the entire game.

Casper Says: This mini game resembles Simon. You must push up, left, down and right in the pattern shown to you by Casper and his uncles. How much you have to remember depends on the difficulty level you chose at the start of the game. Upon completion, the Lazarus machine is activated and Dr. Harvey comes back to life.

Ending

After you save Dr. Harvey, you participate in one final Ooze Runner to collect ooze for Casper. Upon completion, Casper and Kat dance together. (Strangely, Casper is still in ghost form even though you just collected ooze for him)

Ending confusion

A point of confusion at the end, is in the ending screen, four men and one woman are dancing to the music on a floor above Casper and Kat. Who is the woman dancing? Three of the men we can only assume are the ghostly trio in the outfits they were wearing at the end of the film and the fourth one MUST be Dr. Harvey, but who is the woman? Kat is dancing with Casper and the only other major female character in the film is Carrigan. The possibility of this woman being Carrigan is even greatened by the fact this woman has the same hairstyle and has very light hair, most likely supposed to be blond, but why on earth would she be dancing and celebrating that Casper and Kat won their quest?