Ghostbusters is a modified version of an unreleased game called Car Wars. According to the game's developer David Crane in a 2010 interview, Car Wars was "a game about buying cars, tricking them out, and dueling them against other cars around a fictional city." After one month of development, Activision co-founder Gary Kitchen called and met with him to discuss making a game based on the then-upcoming Ghostbusters film to release on the same day as the film, and Crane immediately devised a way to change Car Wars into a Ghostbusters game with only minor changes and additions.