Ghostbusters pokies are IGT’s licensed slot based on the 1984 film, online since 2012 in a 30-line version. Slimer is the wild and can add one of four mystery features on any spin, from a cash award to three fully wild reels, alongside the Ballroom Busters bonus and eight Stay Puft free spins with sticky wilds. The free demo below is a similar ghost-themed pokie, with no download.
The online Ghostbusters pokie runs on five reels and three rows with 30 fixed paylines that pay left to right, and the free spins switch to a five by four grid with 40 lines. Published bet ranges start at 30 to 50 cents a spin depending on the casino’s currency and top out at about $30. IGT publishes no RTP sheet, so the figures come from review sites and they disagree: most quote 94.5%, others list 93.5%, and both may be real operator settings. Volatility is rated low by some trackers and medium by others. Neither hit frequency nor maximum win is published: figures in circulation range from 250x to 2,500x the stake, and the largest documented single awards are the 250x line-bet top symbol and a Slimer cash prize of up to 1,000x the line bet.
Ghostbusters Pokies Characteristics
Wins need three or more matching symbols on a line from reel 1. Slimer is the wild: he lands on any reel and stands in for every standard symbol. A second wild, the purple Librarian ghost, appears only when the Extra Wilds mystery feature summons it. The bonus symbols have fixed homes: the Ghostbusters logo lands only on reels 2 and 3, while the Slimer bonus symbol and the Stay Puft bonus symbol land only on reel 4, and what sits there beside the two logos decides which bonus you get.
There is no gamble button, no bonus buy and no jackpot in the online 30-line game; the progressives belong to the 2011 cabinet, covered below.
The figures below are multiples of the line bet for three, four and five of a kind; no source lists a two-of-a-kind pay.
No scatter pay is listed for the logo or the reel 4 bonus symbols. Five Egons or Rays pay 250 times the line bet, a little over 8 times the total spin with 30 lines in play. One source also lists five Slimer or Librarian wilds at 500x the line bet; the main paytable we worked from has no wild pay.
The Ghostbusters logo on reels 2 and 3 with the Slimer bonus symbol on reel 4 opens the Ballroom Busters Bonus. Six ghosts hide behind the objects in the Sedgewick Hotel ballroom and you get five proton blasts to fire at them. Each ghost you flush out pays an instant credit prize, and some carry a multiplier applied as the ghost goes into the trap; one source gives the range as 2x to 5x, two others say 2x or 5x. You rarely find all six, and the multipliers decide whether the bonus stays modest or turns into something.
The same two logos with the Stay Puft bonus symbol on reel 4 award eight free spins on a five by four grid with 40 lines. On any free spin, marshmallow wilds can fall from the sky onto the reels, and every one that lands sticks for the rest of the round, so the later spins are where the round is won. No source we read documents a retrigger, so treat eight as the full allocation. One reviewer says the marshmallows also double wins, but nobody else backs that.
On base game spins that do not start a bonus, Slimer can appear at random with one of four mystery features. Cash Award is an instant win of 50x to 1,000x the line bet. Multiplier applies 2x to 5x to that spin’s wins. Wild Reels turns one, two or three whole reels wild. Extra Wilds adds up to four Librarian wilds, and symbols sharing an edge with a Librarian can turn wild too. On a 30-line stake the 1,000x Cash Award is about 33 times the total bet, the most valuable documented single-spin event in the online game.
At 94.5% the game keeps about 5.5 cents of every dollar bet over the long run, and at 93.5% it keeps 6.5 cents, both below the 96% most modern online pokies aim for, so check the information screen for the one your casino runs. The low-to-medium volatility means small line wins and Slimer interruptions arrive regularly and the swings are modest, so a bankroll drifts rather than crashes.
At 30 cents a spin, $30 buys 100 spins; how often the bonuses land is not published. At $3 a spin, which is 10 cents per line, five Egons pay $25 and the biggest Slimer Cash Award pays $100, and the same $30 lasts ten spins.
The 2011 cabinet is a different animal: 30 lines at 50 credits a spin, with Stay Puft free games, an Are You Psychic? card-guess bonus and a Paranormal Pick leading to five progressive jackpot levels. A player identified only as Michael H. won more than US$2.5 million on one of those progressives at Desert Diamond Casino in Arizona. Ghostbusters 4D followed in 2018.
Online, Ghostbusters Triple Slime (2017) swaps paylines for a 720-way layout of 3-4-5-4-3 that pays both ways, with Stay Puft as the wild, Slimers that become prize wheels and a Triple Slime Bonus where a red wheel can apply a 2x to 10x multiplier. It has no free spins, an RTP quoted at 95%, and published bonus maximums from 2,919x to 5,000x the stake. Ghostbusters Plus (2019) is a 20-line game built on IGT’s Level Up Plus persistence: zapping ghosts banks Ghost Wilds and moves you through ten levels that unlock equipment and bigger multiplier wilds, Zuul Free Spins run from five spins to a cap of 25, and the RTP rises with your level from 93.99% to 98.00%. Plus does not use the film’s theme song.
The setting is the haunted Sedgewick Hotel, and the symbols are photo stills of Venkman, Stantz, Spengler, Zeddemore and Louis Tully alongside Slimer, the Librarian, Stay Puft, Ecto-1 and the ghost-hunting kit, on a mostly white grid that reviewers call slightly dated but fitting for a 1984 licence. Ray Parker Jr.’s theme plays and clips from the film run after some wins. The catch is that the original was built in Flash, a poor fit for phones, whereas Triple Slime and Plus are HTML5 and run in iOS and Android browsers.
IGT has a long-standing Australian operation, but we found no record of the Ghostbusters cabinet or the 4D version on Australian club, pub or casino floors. Online, IGT distributes mainly to regulated markets, and none of the Australian-facing offshore casinos we checked could be confirmed to carry any version, so availability varies and the lobby search is the only reliable test. We found no official IGT public free demo of the original, and the free versions you will come across are mostly Triple Slime and Plus.
Ghostbusters is a fan-service pokie first and a maths proposition second. It delivers the film: the faces, the song, the ballroom, the marshmallow wilds. It does not deliver a high return or a big ceiling: the RTP sits between 93.5% and 94.5%, the top line pay is about 8 times the stake and the biggest documented single award is about 33 times the stake. It suits players who like frequent small action and a licence done properly, not those hunting a 1,000x spin. The one thing to check is the RTP in the information screen, and on a phone, that the casino’s copy is not the old Flash build.
IGT does not publish it; review sites quote 94.5% or 93.5%. Triple Slime is quoted at 95% and Ghostbusters Plus rises from 93.99% to 98.00% with your level.
Land the Ghostbusters logo on reels 2 and 3 with the Stay Puft bonus symbol on reel 4. You get eight free spins on a 40-line grid, and every marshmallow wild that falls sticks for the rest of the round.
IGT publishes no maximum for the online game, and review sites range from 250x to 2,500x the stake. The largest documented awards are the 250x top symbol and the 1,000x Slimer Cash Award, both per line bet.
He is the wild, and on spins that do not start a bonus he can randomly trigger a 50x to 1,000x line-bet cash award, a 2x to 5x multiplier, one to three wild reels, or up to four extra Librarian wilds.
We found no record of the machine on Australian floors and could not confirm any version at offshore casinos that take Australians, so search the lobby before you deposit. The original is a Flash game, so online you are most likely to find Triple Slime or Plus.
Only on the land-based machine: the 2011 cabinet has five progressive levels won through the Paranormal Pick. The online 30-line game, Triple Slime and Plus have none.
