The DS version of Ghostbusters: The Video Game is made up of three main parts: Management (upgrading character skills, researching technology, making weapons, etc.), Driving the Ecto-1 around town and – duh – Busting, which is basically questing. There's the main quest which is modeled after the plot of the console versions of Ghostbusters (minus the Rookie character), and a series of side quests that help the Ghostbusters earn cash to afford weapon and technology upgrades. Questing also builds up the Reputation score – if this score drops to zero, it's game over.

It's still early days for the DS title yet, so what I saw of the game wasn't exactly smooth sailing. The game looks like any top-down shooter (ugh – bad Alien Syndrome flashbacks…), but the character and level designs were distinct enough at this early stage to recognize the Ecto-1 parked in the driveway of the abandoned fire station that is Ghostbuster's HQ. Gameplay involves switching back and forth between all four Ghostbusters on the team, making use of their unique character traits and specific abilities to accomplish level goals.

For my all-too-brief hands-on, I got to navigate the team from HQ to the Library. First I climbed in the Ecto-1 and tried to navigate my way through town with the D-pad and face buttons. This brought back bad memories of Crazy Taxi, what with road blocks not being mapped on the HUD and no real idea of how to get where I wanted to go. Once I got to my destination, a button tap had all four Ghostbusters out and ready to take commands from the stylus. I could cycle between characters with the shoulder buttons.

And then everything kind of went to crap when Winston got stuck outside the Library while the rest of the team went in. I'm not sure if there will be any rubber-banding with the four characters to keep this kind of thing from happening; like I said, it's early days yet. The dev took the DS back from me to trying and unstuck Winston; but by then I was out of time and had to move on to the next game at the Atari showcase.

In theory, Ghostbusters: The Video Game on DS will be out in June with the console releases – but there's no official word on this yet. And no screens, either – so use your imagination if you want to know what Bill Murray looks like in DS sprite form.

This article retracts the whole thing about Bill Murray – quite right, I had him mixed up with Rick Moranis and will suffer the wrath of the internet for months to come."

Can you blame me? Empirically, the Wii suffers from “bastard stepchild port” syndrome, which leaves Wii owners like yours truly high and dry when it comes to triple-A titles.

Luckily, Ghostbusters: The Video Game on Wii isn’t a port of the PS3/360 version, so much as a reimagining of the same game from the ground up. The voice work is similar and the script is almost entirely the same – but the level designs, control scheme, and cartoony style of animation are all made with the Wii in mind.

The biggest difference is the visual style. Developer Red Fly knows what kind of people tend to own Wiis; they made it visually appealing to this younger, er, less-hardcore crowd with vivid colors and cartoony character designs. You won’t see as many creepy details like children’s handprints all over walls or hideous-looking ghosts with their hair falling out – but the script is identical to the PS3/360 game, so the humor and story stay the same.

The second big change is the level layout. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: the Wii just can’t do what 360 and PS3 can do in terms of memory space. This means the levels can’t be huge sprawling multi-hour investments with half a hundred checkpoints. Instead, the levels are more straightforward and simplistic in design, although it looks like the enemy types and timing of encounters sync up between the Library level on the Wii and the Library level on the PS3/360.

The last big thing the Wii version has going for it is the control scheme. I wasn’t actually allowed to have hands-on with the Wii mote for more than a few minutes (just long enough to write my name on the wall with the proton pack) on the count of the developer still hammering out the details on the controls. But the motion of ghost-capturing looked a little more intuitive with flicks and shakes and waggles at well-timed intervals instead of button mashing or wild flailing. According to Red Fly, the controls won’t be making use of Wii MotionPlus – but with games like The Conduit pioneering fine-tuned movement, hopefully the third person run-and-gun action in Ghostbusters will work out well.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game is out for PS3 and 360 this June. Atari hasn't given us any reason to think the Wii won't make this same launch window, but after all this game has gone through, I won't believe it's out until the box is in my hand.

Apparently it was Aykroyd who got all of the other cast members on board to do the voice-overs, and he was so enthusiastic about the game that he helped name and create specs for many of the game's weapons, to make sure they sounded and played like something that would have really been part of the franchise. In fact, Aykroyd is co-writing the entire script with fellow Ghostbusters writer Harold Ramis, so it's a game adaptation with what look to be strong ties to the original material.

The city of New York plays a major role here, too, and from what I saw and was told, the developers are aiming for a true-to-life NYC that echoes the environment in the films, from indoors to out - the city as a "character," as the reps said.

They told me they're aiming for a "seamless" transition between the game's indoor and outdoor environments. I also learned why you won't get to play as any of the four Ghostbusters.

In the game, you play a new recruit to the team whose primary role is to act as "guinea pig" for all of Egon's new weapons. You play as part of a team with the other Ghostbusters, and the reps told me they really want to capture the "comedic timing" of the interaction among the characters - with the player controlling one, it might interfere, as you can probably imagine.

Ghostbusters: The Video Game is set in 1991, three years after the second film. The mayor has just been re-elected on a pro-Ghostbusters platform, and he's now funding the team's latest activities. However, it looks like the team will end up racking up more in city damages during the poltergeist fights than it earns in fees for eliminating the beasties.

In the scene I saw, the player and two teammates fought a ghost inside New York Public Library. That scene alone, the reps told me, had about 4,000 destructible objects inside it, and as items were destroyed, they got sucked into the ghost's body. Characters can be created out of physics objects in realtime, the reps explained.

And for every shelf, chair, book and lamp the team bashed up, a little running cash tally in the corner of the screen showed how much dollar damage the player had racked up. There's no penalty for this, the reps explained - it's intended as a fun sort of points system.

New weapons become available from Egon and they can be upgraded and customized using your earnings from successful ghost hunts. The way the weapons system works, you can see what's going on on the back of your equipment pack - for example, instead of an ammo system, you watch your heat cylinders and have to take a pause when you overheat. Keep an eye on it, though, and you can vent it manually.

In another scene, I watched the team battle the iconic Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from inside a city building, escaping out onto the roof to trap little bits of him that had separated off and begun attacking. When you use your beam to lasso a ghost, the reps said, the teammate AI knows what you're up to and will provide a trap for you.

I also learned a little bit about how the multiplayer will work on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network - it's cooperative for up to four players who compete against each other for the leaderboards.

The team also said the PlayStation 3 was the game's "anchor platform," and built in Sixaxis controls for the beam weapons on that version. For the less-powered system, developer Red Fly is preparing a more stylized, cartoon version that's more mission-based for Wii and PS2, while the DS version is more focused on being a "throwback to the 90s." (We also hear the DS can connect up to the Wii and act as a PKE meter). Each version, I was told, is totally different, but they're all "by fans, for fans," as the reps said.