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lmao, i was an 80s kid. i only knew the "real" one and had never heard of the other.
lmao.
but as a kid whose parents paid zero attention to what i was into and shopped for toys for me at flea markets and garage sales, i know the feeling of friends coming over and saying, "what/who is this?" and being unable to explain anything.
I feel like this is a trap for all of the olds to self identify.
Also: Apparently Bill Murray really didn't like Lorenzo Music being the voice of Venkman in the cartoon. That's kind of funny if you think about another role that Murray took on later.
I remember. I also remember it not being a thing at all that they both used the name Ghostbusters. These days one would sue the other. Back then they just coexisted and made a killing on toys and we didn’t question it.
That's at least how it would come across to a kid in the 1980s, but it sure seems like Filmation and Columbia's lawyers were at each other's throats, drawing lines in the sand over the name "behind the scenes".
The developers of the Wii Ghostbusters game (the best version because of the motion aiming controls, it's great fun) knew that the console couldn't do the semi-realistic look of the game on the other platforms it was also released on. So they made the legitimately-brilliant decision to take inspiration for the Wii version's graphics from the Real Ghostbusters cartoon. It's not a straight copy of the cartoon's look, it's it's own thing, but there's obvious similarities. I'd argue it's aged the best graphics-wise out of all console versions because it's obviously leaning in to the stylized look instead of attempting realism.
the best version because of the motion aiming controls, it's great fun
Tragic that Nintendo have steadily abandoned every console they had that was actually a unique concept (Wii, Wii U, DS series) which enabled unique mechanics and replaced them with more generic consoles like their competitors. The Switch and Switch 2 at least still have the detachable joy-cons, but all their other features that aren't on PCs or other consoles (accelerometer, touch screen) are on phones.
Yup
And my parents got me the toys for both when I was little
Always figured that the gorilla was from an episode of The Real Ghostbusters I never saw
Damn that was weird. I remember seeing the one with the goth chick and slimer. Which one was that one?
Extreme Ghostbusters
Thanks! It was good, or at least the kid me thought so lol
I only saw one episode when I was super young and it was very spooky
wouldn't no copyright make that specific case worse? there'd be 50 ghostbusters knockoffs instead of two
Media is profitable because of the artificial scarcity created by the enforcement of intellectual property rights. Getting rid of IPR would accordingly make media unprofitable, which would in turn get rid of the only incentive to give things confusingly similar names.
There's still an incentive in that a concept might be popular enough to warrant a number of projects. Capialists monetize this already in the real world with IP-free concepts like Sherlock Holmes, Jane Austen novels, and Robin Hood. You might argue that these don't often attempt to confuse the buyer but the Disney knockoff trend of the VHS/DVD eras did just that, with hastily made cartoons of Beauty and the Beast or Tarzan
half of asylum's business model was making adaptations of the same public domain works as movies you might actually want to see
Disney still has a copyright on their versions of public domain stories, though. Whether a particular copyrighted work is entirely original or adapting public domain material, the fact remains that the copyrighted work is an artificially scarce product, and that that's where the profit comes from.
And if they didn't, knockoff companies would gladly give Beast and Tarzan the exact designs seen in the Disney versions to exploit the confusion even better
If Disney movies didn't have copyright, I'd think that "knockoff companies" would sooner just sell the Disney versions outright than go through all the effort of making knockoffs.
Okay, that makes sense actually
See, I'm not crazy! I've thought this through!
one of the things copyright law purports to do is prevent products in the same sector being called similar things, ostensibly reducing consumer confusion. i don't think pointing to a case where it failed to do that extrapolates into your proposal. we can look at fanfiction instead and i think that deluge is a better reflection of what people would do unless you want to try to extrapolate a culture that is generations removed from our IP laws.
There is no "instead": I absolutely think fanfiction is what people should look at to get an idea of what a world without copyright would be like. I'm not necessarily an avid reader of fanfiction but I don't exactly get the impression that fanfics are known for being named confusingly similarly to each other, nor for trying to pass themselves off as "canon" — again because there's no real reason to.
You should also look at piracy: "no copyright" means that anyone is completely free to distribute anything under any title, which means that there's also less risk for the consumer to begin with (prices massively decrease if they don't disappear entirely), and that things will presumably be called whatever name catches on for them, instead of being stuck with whatever trademark the rightsholder insists upon.
The final point is in any case that just like any other law "for the consumer", intellectual property exists ultimately only for the sake of profit for capitalists. Capitalists are generally incentivized not to have confusing names, but the moment a capitalist sees their chance, the whole "no confusion" thing goes out the window: rights for me but not for thee. So the "no confusion" line is, as we see, a farce.
"Who the heck are these people?! WHY'S THERE A GORILLA?!"
1986 was about 20 years ago.