Rescue of Pops Ghostly (The)

Description

The Rescue of Pops Ghostly is one of the few games ever released for the Action Max, a light gun console that used VHS tapes instead of cartridges. The light gun reads flashes from on-screen circles and then tallies your score on a small box. The Action Max was created by Worlds of Wonder, a defunct toy company that was responsible for Laser Tag and Teddy Ruxpin, two major nostalgia kickers from the eighties.

In Pops Ghostly, you must actually help a family of friendly ghosts banish some nasty specters from their house. These mean ghosts are terrorizing some kids, too, so you your good deed of the day affects both the worlds of the dead and of the living. The ghosts are just puppets that were filmed and then super-imposed over a tracking shot through the mansion, with the exception of this strange trip through a spectral gate that will remind most viewers of dropping into TRON or the stargate toward the end of 2001. The effects are cheap but completely charming.