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The Stalk Market is Animal Crossing: New Horizon’s produce-based equivalent to Wall Street. Every week turnip-selling boar Daisy Mae will visit your island and can sell you turnips which will either appreciate or depreciate in value as the week goes on.

In the online-era, Animal Crossing players have discovered ways to bend the system in their favor. A network of Stalk Market tracking has made it so that anybody with an internet connection can usually find a good deal on turnips that can yield millions in Bells.

But if you want the best deals, you would do well to remember your manners.

What is the Stalk Market?

The Stalk Market is supposed to emulate the real-life Stock Market and all its fluctuations. The goal is to buy your Turnips at a low price then sell them at the highest possible price for a nice profit. But because both the Stalk and Stock Market are governed by arcane rules, it’s hard to predict how the market will grow or fall over the course of a week.

Normally, this would mean that there’s a good chance you buy turnips only to have a lousy week and are forced to sell your stalk for a loss.

How to Get Turnips

If you’re interested in getting into the turnip trade, you’ve got to make sure you’re available on Sunday mornings. The turnip seller, Daisy Mae, will be somewhere on your island every Sunday from 5 AM to 12 PM so long as you’ve unlocked Nook’s Cranny. Then, you can buy as many turnips as you can afford. If you don’t see her, she may be hiding behind some trees. She’s small and can be easy to miss!

Daisy Mae only sells turnips in bundles of 10. This means Bells go fast when you’re shopping with her, so be sure to save plenty before she comes around on Sunday morning. And remember, you cannot plant turnips and you definitely shouldn’t eat them.

For more information on the Animal Crossing turnip trade, like suggestions on how to store all your new turnips, be sure to visit IGN’s turnip guide.

How to Track Your Turnip Prices

Thanks to some datamining efforts from the Animal Crossing community, the code that governs turnip prices in Animal Crossing: New Horizons was released online. Coders then used this data to create calculators that predict Turnip prices fairly accurately.

The two most popular turnip tracking apps online are turnipprophet.io and Turnip Calculator. They basically use the same information, so it really depends on which UI you prefer. But in both cases, players can plug in the price in they bought their turnips on Sunday, then plug in the selling price on their islands twice each day for a price prediction.

The algorithm calculates what kind of trend your Stalk Market is on and gives you a range of potential sale prices for the week. With these tools, you can tell as early as Monday whether your turnip prices are headed for the high hundreds or set to drop below market value.

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You Can Make It So You Never Sell Your Turnips for a Loss

Knowing your turnip prices for the week is just half the battle. It doesn’t matter if you know what your sell prices are looking for the week if you’re already on a descending pattern, destined to sell at a huge loss.

Luckily, players can sell their turnips on other people’s islands making it so that anyone can find a good selling price for their turnips, even if their own island is tracking low. Just remember to sell them before the next Sunday rolls in. If you wait until the week is over, all your turnips will rot.

How to Find a Good Turnip Price

Finding a good turnip price is probably easier now than ever. The Animal Crossing subreddit is usually filled with players advertising their high turnip prices, and there are many homegrown Discord servers and Slack channels where players share their turnip prices with friends. Even a quick search for turnips on Twitter can yield results of a generous player who’s open to letting strangers on their islands.

But letting other players onto your island can be a troublesome process because of wait times and a max island occupancy of nine, including the host. That’s why it’s not very convenient to try and get a hundred strangers lined-up to go to your island.

One service called Turnip Exchange does a good job of streamlining the process and is probably the best way to handle strangers trying to get onto your island to sell their turnips. The way it works is that a host can create a queue for their island that will automatically share their Dodo Code with players organized into a virtual line.

The Dodo Code will only be shared with a limited number of players at a time, so there will never be more than the desired number of players on an island at any given time. This gives players time to sell their turnips and leave while preventing too many players from attempting to fly to the island at one time.

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Remember Your Manners

Players don’t get any benefits for opening up their islands for turnip sales. So anytime someone offers their Dodo Codes to strangers, it’s at some personal cost. They have to keep their Switch on so players can keep coming to the island, and they’ll need to check in periodically to make sure that their system doesn’t fall asleep. Plus, it’s stressful having potentially hundreds of strangers converge on your island.

As such, there’s some informal etiquette that’s developed among the community. For example, it’s polite to leave a tip whether it’s Bells or materials. Hosts will sometimes specify if they appreciate tips or not, but it’s not a bad idea to leave behind some of your new earnings, especially if you’re potentially making millions from a lucrative turnip selling price. A 10% tip or materials like iron ore are customary.

You may want to consider building a fenced path that goes between your airport to Nook’s Cranny if you’re opening your island to strangers. This will prevent them from exploring your island and will likely help you turnip queue go a bit faster.

How to Make Millions on Turnips… With Some Cheating

If you’re not averse to a bit of time travel in Animal Crossing, you can use a friend’s high turnip prices to make an absurd amount of money quickly.

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Turnip prices will always change if you time travel to a day that had high prices in your own game, but an individual’s time manipulation can’t affect games outside their own. That being said, you can set your system clock to early morning Sunday, invest in a ton of turnips, and travel to a island with high turnip prices and sell.

You can keep going back to your Sunday, buying more, and selling, but be sure to get the approval of your friend to make multiple trips or consider visiting different islands. You can see the exact steps to accomplishing this in the video above.

As mentioned in the previous section, it’s highly recommended you leave a tip or some significant compensation if you’re making bank on turnips, especially with this method.

Haven’t time traveled before? Learn more about it and the consequences of messing with time in our time travel guide.

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There are plenty of other great user tools available for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, some of which can help you plan your island’s design and others connect you with players for specific items. For even more on Animal Crossing, be sure to visit IGN’s comprehensive Animal Crossing: New Horizons guide.

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Matt Kim is a reporter for IGN. Miranda Sanchez is an executive editor at IGN.

Call of Duty: Warzone’s crossplay feature, which allows users to play Battle Royale and Plunder together using all platforms, may be more of a curse than a blessing for some console gamers.

As reported by Eurogamer, console players are running up against PC cheaters in Battle Royale because of Warzone’s crossplay feature, and as a temporary fix, the console gamers are turning off the feature completely (which his no easy task itself).

You can check out some of the Warzone faithful’s more frustrating experiences here, here, and here.

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At the beginning of last week, Infinity Ward tweeted out that they’d banned, so far, 70,000 accounts worldwide as part of their “zero tolerance” policy for cheaters.

We’ve now issued over 70,000 bans worldwide to protect #Warzone from cheaters. We’re continuing to deploy dedicated security updates and work continues on improving in-game reporting. We’ll share more details soon. We are watching. We have zero tolerance for cheaters.

— Infinity Ward (@InfinityWard) April 13, 2020

The issues persist however, as console gamers, generically unfamiliar with the problems PC gamers face from cheaters, are now exposed to the madness of PC chicanery.

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This is it: the final chapter of Final Fantasy 7 Remake is also the toughest, pitting you and your team against some of their greatest challenges. Below is everything you need to know to make your way through Destiny’s Crossroads, survive the battles, and finish FF7 Remake.

Check out the rest of our Final Fantasy 7 Remake guides so you don’t miss a single secret or collectible. You can also read our FF7 Remake review.

Chapter 18 Walkthrough: Destiny’s Crossroads

You’ve got another motorcycle mini-game to contend with, this time with more enemies and more variety. The battles themselves are relatively straightforward, though: be sure to utilize Cloud’s guard ability to minimize incoming damage, and break to avoid bombs from helicopters. You’ll eventually take on a M.O.T.H. Unit, which will fling blades at you before getting electrically charged and coming in for closer fights, and some 3-C SOLDIERS, who have swords of their own. Just be sure to guard against their attacks to make it through.

Boss Fight: Motor Ball

The chase culminates in the battle with another robot boss. This one is pretty easy, since the high mobility of your motorcycle allows you to avoid all its attacks without much difficulty. Pull in alongside the boss and swing away, smashing its wheels. When Motor Ball lifts up on three wheels, hit the brakes and peel away so it can’t smash down on you, and guard when it readies its guns to avoid getting blasted.

Slash at the wheels until you destroy all six of them, staggering the boss. When that happens, attack it as much as you can; drive up its stagger percentage and use your Spinning Attack for big damage. The boss will eventually recover, adding new attacks to use against you. Repeat the process and keep going after the wheels, but keep an eye on them–eventually, some will be shielded, forcing you to pick other targets.

Generally, Motor Ball doesn’t throw anything at you that you can’t see coming. When it readies its flame spin move after being staggered, brake and stay clear until it’s all over. If the boss pulls ahead, reduce your speed a bit to avoid the electric bombs it drops on the highway ahead of you. As soon as you can, close the distance and attack its wheels again. Watch out for it to charge a big laser as well, which it’ll shoot at one side or the other; again, hit the brakes and head to the opposite side. When the boss pulls ahead and shoots the laser back at you, cut to one of the sides of the road to avoid it.

Keep hammering the boss and avoiding its attacks until you finally destroy it. It takes a while, but it never gets especially tough.

After winning, you’ll have a quick chance to heal up. Take it and stock up on any items you need. You’re going to need them.

Make sure all four members of your party are outfitted with Healing Materia and their best weapons that are as upgraded as you can get them. You’ll also want some big spells spread around your team–although keep one of each elemental spell Materia with Aerith, as you’ll want her fully outfitted later. Equip a strong Barrier Materia as well.

Boss Fight: Whisper Harbinger, Whisper Croceo, Whisper Rubrum, And Whisper Viridi

Once you’ve progressed through the destroyed highway a bit, you’ll face the giant arbiter of fate, the Whisper Harbinger. You don’t have to deal with the huge colossus directly, luckily–instead, you’ll fight three smaller Whisper bosses, called Croceo, Rubrum, and Viridi. Each has a different weapon, mirroring Barret, Cloud, and Tifa.

Contending with all three of the creatures is tough, but you only need to take down one of them right now. It’s your choice, but we had the easiest time focusing on Rubrum. Cloud can counter its Flurry attack with Punisher mode to do some damage–Guard your way through its other attacks, like Crimson Arc. Hammer away at the Rubrum with Punisher mode and ATB attacks to give it as much damage as you can; the more you pour on, the quicker you’ll pressure the Whisper and drive up its stagger meter. Guard as much as you can to avoid taking too much damage, while keeping yourself topped up with items and healing spells.

Hurt one of the Whispers enough and you’ll advance to the next section of the fight, where you’ll face the three Whispers again. In addition to their other moves, they sometimes like to use powerful spells like Firaga from Rubrum, Blizzaga from Viridi and Thundaga from Croceo. Follow up with the same approach, allowing your AI teammates to keep the other enemies busy while you focus on Rubrum. It’ll add a new attack, Sweep, to its moves, but you’ll still mostly want to guard as much as you can to avoid taking a lot of hits. Keep countering Rubrum and hitting it with your big ATB attacks to rack up damage, and you’ll eventually knock it out of the fight. The Harbinger will intercede again, opening up the path forward.

When you get to the end of the next pathway, you’ll take on Whisper Rubrum by itself. It’ll use the Temper attack to power itself up and become more aggressive, adding more swings to Flurry and Crimson Arc. Guard through them to land counterattacks with Punisher mode, then do as much damage as you can with ATB attacks. Your best bet with Rubrum is to duel your way through, but don’t be afraid to overwhelm the Whisper with attacks from your teammates. Just don’t use Fire magic, as the creature can absorb it. Stagger the boss and you can damage Rubrum can do some damage to the Harbinger.

With Rubrum down, you’ll fight Croceo and Viridi together. Pick one and go after it; Viridi is best attacked from behind while its attention is elsewhere, especially because the boss will protect itself with a shield. Watch out for Viridi’s Azure Plume attack, which will stun anybody caught in it. Like Rubrum, hit the Whisper to do as much damage as you can to stun it, then finish it off to do more damage to the Harbinger.

Croceo is next, but it’s probably the least of your problems. Watch out for its Amber Judgment attack, an orb that will track you, and Amber Whirl, a laser beam that cuts straight toward you and then out to the sides. Dodge the lasers as best you can, guard against Croceo’s shotgun Scatter attack, and use ATB attacks to knock the Whisper out and stagger it.

You’ll fight the three Whispers again in a moment. Repeat the process to do some damage to one and you’ll trigger the real next phase of the fight.

Boss Fight: Whisper Bahamut

When combined, Rubrum, Croceo, and Viridi become a lot more dangerous as Whisper Bahamut. The dragon is fast and carries a bunch of powerful moves, most of which are really difficult to dodge. Expect Bahamut to come after you right away with melee swipes, as well as a spinning attack where it barrels its whole body through you. Dodging those moves is pretty tough; flip to Punisher mode and guard to minimize your damage so you can at least strike back against Bahamut when it comes after you.

Quickly try to get Manaward barriers on your team to deal with Bahamut’s powerful attacks. Watch out for Bahamut’s Umbral Strikes attacks, where it throws two big explosive blasts at you. The first arcs in from the left, and the second from the right–if you dodge right and then left, you can often avoid them. Its Umbral Inferno hits you with a bunch of painful lasers, but running or dodging sideways can usually get you out of the line of fire of most of them. Flare Breath will knock you down, but if you can get around to the side or behind Bahamut, or dodge backward, you should be able to avoid it.

You’re going to take a lot of damage here, though. Keep Aerith on-hand to restore health with Tifa backing her up to keep your team going. Meanwhile, keep hitting Bahamut with ATB attacks from Cloud and Tifa whenever you charge them. Try to get your Manawards up before Bahamut uses Mega Flare, its ultimate attack. Do your best to keep your team topped up on health from items and spells so that the attack doesn’t wipe you out.

If you can keep up the damage, you should be able to knock Bahamut to the ground and pressure it. Use that opportunity to hit it with Focused Strike and Focused Thrust to push up its stagger meter as fast as you can.

Kill off Bahamut and the Whispers will separate again, but they’ll be a lot weaker. Focus on one and start pounding away to kill it, giving Barret an opportunity to attack the Whisper Harbinger. Repeat the process twice more to finish the giant creature.

Boss Fight: Sephiroth

The Whispers aren’t giving up–they’re now creating a version of Sephiroth to challenge Cloud. Like past one-on-one battles, this is more of a sword duel and you’ll need to rely on guarding and using Punisher counterattacks to beat Sephiroth, especially in the first part of the fight.

Some of Sephiroth’s attacks you should guard against for counterattacks to damage Sephiroth and increase his stagger, while you’ll need to dodge others. Stand your ground against standard melee strikes and Telluric Fury, although be sure to keep your guard up through the entire attack, because Sephiroth will hit you with multiple blows most of the time. When you see Sephiroth ready Aeolian Onslaught, dodge sideways, because the attack will juggle you into the air and Sephiroth’s movements make it ineffective for you to counter it. After countering, hit Sephiroth with some Punisher mode strikes to pressure him. He’ll sometimes ready powerful spells like Blizaga and Firaga–if you can hit him hard enough, you might be able to interrupt them, but it’s usually better to guard against them so you don’t take the full brunt of the magic.

Keep countering Sephiroth until you stagger him. Aerith will then join the battle, which shouldn’t really change your approach, but will give you more opportunities to do damage to Sephiroth. Get some Manaward barriers up if you can to cut the damage you take from Sephiroth’s spells and keep hitting him. You can also hit Sephiroth with some spells, especially when he’s charging magic of his own or preparing attacks, but try to conserve MP for later in the fight. Make sure to keep Cloud topped up on health as much as possible, because Sephiroth is going to hit you hard all the way through.

Keep landing counterattacks on Sephiroth to stagger him again. Tifa will join the fight next, but Sephiroth will become more powerful, using elemental magic for Infusions to amp up his moves and make them more effective. Pay attention to which element he uses, then hit him with the opposite spell–this is why you set up Aerith with all those spell Materia at the start of the chapter. When Sephiroth fires up Wind Infusion, blast him with Lightning magic; when he uses Lightning Infusion, he’ll be weak to Wind magic. You’ll do a lot of damage and push up his stagger meter if you can hit him with opposite spells.

Meanwhile, keep dueling Sephiroth with Cloud as much as you can, while using Tifa to alternately top off your health and hit Sephiroth with ATB attacks to push up his stagger meter. Countering Sephiroth and hitting him with opposite spells will put him down on one knee so you can deal some serious damage, but make sure to guard for the long haul with his wind-based sword strikes, and be careful of the lightning strikes with his Lightning Infusion, which will rain down around the battlefield.

As you damage Sephiroth more, he’ll pull out new attacks, like Shadow Flare, creating gravity wells around the battlefield that then explode. Try to stay out of them as much as you can; the same goes for his Heartless Angel attack, which will light up the floor red and decimate your team if they’re caught in it. When Sephiroth readies it, run for it.

By that point, however, Sephiroth should be close to finished. Keep up the pressure with everything you have left and take him down. When he’s done, you’ll have plenty of downtime as you watch Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s lengthy ending.

Congratulations! Finishing the game unlocks an additional challenge in Hard Mode, which also includes a Chapter Select menu that will let you jump around in the game. Defeating bosses and completing side-quests in Hard Mode will also earn you more Manuscripts, which will give you more SP to upgrade weapons for each character. Your experience point gain is doubled in Hard Mode, and AP is tripled, which should allow you to wrap up things like finishing Chadley’s Battle Intel objectives and earning his final summon, or clearing the optional Combat Simulator fights that now open up in Chapter 17.

We’ve also got more guides to help you find every single thing in FF7 Remake, a rundown of what’s going on with that ending, and a spoilery discussion from the GameSpot team covering everything about the game.

This review contains spoilers for the Season 2 premiere of Kaguya-sama: Love is War, now streaming on Funimation in the US. Episode 1 premiered on April 11, with new episodes rolling out weekly.

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What might be anime’s best romantic comedy, Kaguya-sama: Love is War (now stylised with a question mark at the end of the title) at last makes its more-than-welcome return. Directed by Shinichi Omata and written by Yasuhiro Nakanishi, the show is adapted from the immensely popular weekly seinen manga from Aka Akasaka (with the translated title: “Kaguya Wants to be Confessed to: The Geniuses’ War of Hearts and Minds”). The show is focused on a battle of wits between the wealthy heiress Kaguya Shinomiya and the workaholic star student and council president Miyuki Shirogane, both trying to make the other confess their love for each other, as they’re both too proud to admit it. In the hands of anyone else it’d be a boring and routine “battle of the sexes,” but Love is War has continually shown itself to be above such clichés.

With its James Bond-esque opening titles (scored with an infectiously catchy number from “Japan’s King Of Love Songs” Masayuki Suzuki) and penchant for ludicrous escalation, the first season made hysterical overreaction its whole modus operandi. The ridiculously elaborate schemes by Shinomiya and Shirogane to make the other confess their love constantly defy predictability, as any one might find itself undone by their meddlesome friends, pure coincidence, or one of the two panicking at the prospect of intimacy with the other. The show is kept at a ridiculous and intentionally infuriating stalemate, as the stubborn leads refuse to be honest with each other or themselves.

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What keeps this back-and-forth interesting is how the comedy stays informed by character; Shirogane’s obsessive work ethic stems from his family’s financial insecurity, while Shinomiya’s emotional insecurity stems from her lavish and extremely sheltered upbringing. The incredible voice performances from Makoto Furukawa as Shirogane and Aoi Koga as Shinomiya both keep the intentionally frustrating dynamic fresh and funny even without interruptions from fan favourite agent of chaos Chika Fujiwara (Konomi Kohara, excelling in conveying a bubbly hyperactivity) and the human punchline Yū Ishigami (Ryōta Suzuki, keeping a precise monotone).

The first season was more from the perspective of Shinomiya, examining the lifelong insecurities that drive her obsessive psychological battle with Shirogane, and her inability to be emotionally honest. That surprisingly genuine sincerity of the first season’s latter half revealed Love Is War’s surprising depth and capability for a lot more than simple laughs at the character’s expense. The second season looks to expand this sympathy to the supporting characters, first and foremost Ai Hayasaka, Shinomiya’s long-suffering but nonetheless loyal attendant. As with the previous season each episode is split into three or four vignettes, with the first of this new episode opening on a characteristically ridiculous scenario with Hayasaka at the center, detailing the absurd lengths she goes to meet Shinomiya’s impossible demands, and preserve the happiness of her mistress.

It also appears that animation studio A-1 Pictures has a little more weight to throw around – scenery and characters are drawn and animated with loving exactness – with a particular adoration of absurd facial expressions in almost every cut to a close-up. Even the most mundane scenarios of the episode make use of wild, exuberant movements and great detail. It’s almost reminiscent of shows like Nichijou, as Love is War makes use of anachronistic homages to other genres such as action thrillers even in the most mundane of stories. Case-in-point, the episode’s first part has Hayasaka fully decked out in tactical spy gear as she infiltrates the Student Council room to swap out Shirogane’s coffee for decaf (he almost immediately passes out upon drinking it, reacting as though it were poison – a relatable action).

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The new episode is crammed with jokes from beginning to end, full of subtle but extremely funny callbacks to the previous season alongside its farcical set-pieces, sharp one-liners and clever visual humour. There will no doubt be some jokes lost in translation (the opening credits jokingly crosses out the extremely long subtitle of the original Japanese), with various plays on words and blink-and-miss-it accompaniments to graphics, but the script moves at such a pace that it doesn’t really matter – it only makes it more rewatchable. The timing of each scene is impeccable, and perfectly balanced with the ongoing commentary of an omniscient narrator that recalls the pithy reality checks of Ron Howard in Arrested Development, only with a more intense delivery in this case.

The following chapter, “The Student Council Has Not Achieved Nirvana”, revisits the continuing story of a student couple given (mostly bad) romantic advice by Shirogane and Shinomiya, the boy having returned from summer holiday to gloat about his happiness. The newfound confidence leads Shirogane and Ishigami to suspect that the couple have “experienced nirvana”, and Love is War continues to walk the line between a refreshing frankness about sex while having the characters act hilariously coy when talking about it (in this scene, the act is only ever referred to as “nirvana” or “the divine dance”). It continues into a breakdown of the student council’s lacking understanding of the dynamics of romance, getting plenty of mileage at their bewilderment at each other’s expectations (“holding hands on the first date?!” Shinomiya gasps).

All-in-all, it’s an excellent and well-rounded reintroduction to the show, showcasing and perfecting its most common kinds of scenarios. Take “Kaguya-sama Wants To Get Married,” a fairly typical set-up for a number of the last season that once again has Fujiwara create a game that Shinomiya and Shirogane take far too seriously, and only suffer for doing so. In this instance it’s a bastardized version of The Game of Life, which inevitably leads to overreactions about fictional marriage and the road it leads down. For Shinomiya, it becomes a darkly comic reflection on the life that could await her, should she follow the pre-ordained path that her closed-off father has decided for her. She ends Fujiwara’s game as an immensely wealthy but miserable business magnate (for Shirogane, it’s mostly just debilitating debt).

“Kaguya Wants to Celebrate” ends the episode on a light note, with a tense back-and-forth between Shirogane and Shinomiya as the latter tries to persuade the former to celebrate his birthday, attempting to coax the date (which she already knows) out of him by having him join in on a horoscope reading with Fujiwara and Ishigami. Shirogane refuses, claiming it’s foolish but secretly being an obsessive fan of horoscopes (“Yes! Virgos is in first place!”), and being quietly devastated at having read in a previous one that he and Shinomiya are incompatible. Scored with overly-dramatic music, the stubborn back-and-forth leads to some wonderful facial expressions (like Kaguya’s rage leading her head to expand like a balloon) and quick one-liners. It’s a fairly familiar conclusion to an episode firing on all cylinders, but if the first season of Love is War proved anything, it’s just how much this show is truly capable of.

Here at IGN we occasionally like to showcase something from geekdom’s rich history — a pop-culture Time Capsule, if you will, that gives us a peek in to the past, perhaps providing a new appreciation for previous projects. If you’d like, please check out the past few Time Capsules:

• George Lucas’ first day writing Star Wars: The Phantom Menace
• The Rock kicking Seven of Nine’s Borg butt on Star Trek: Voyager
• The Tom Waits interview that may have inspired Heath Ledger’s Joker
• Christian Bale auditioning in Val Kilmer’s batsuit from Batman Forever
• Kevin Feige’s 2006 tease for the Avengers and the MCU

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If one thing still holds true after 30 years, if one universal constant still remains, it’s that bustin’ makes us feel good.

Once upon a time, a quartet of unlikely heroes stopped – nay! – busted a battalion of ghouls and ghosts, preventing them from turning New York City into, well, to be honest, a much nicer and friendlier place.

Their first challenge was to defeat a shapeshifting, apocalyptic entity named Gozer. They got covered in goo. Then, a few years later, they vanquished a seemingly-immortal 16th century tyrant using a river of pink slime that had formed in the sewers. They got covered in goo again. Then… these champions vanished. When the gooing got tough, the tough got gooing.

But did you know that phantom menacers Peter Venkman, Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler, and Winston Zeddemore were close to having one last ride about 20 years ago? Yes, Ghostbusters creator and star Dan Aykroyd wrote a full Ghostbusters III script, subtitled Hellbent, back in 1999. And the story put the Ghostbusters in the crosshairs of… Satan himself!

Usually, with these Time Capsules, there’s a fun little video component. Nothing like that exists for this particular slice of retrovertigo, but here’s a look at the screenplay in all its “dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria” glory…

So then what was Hellbent all about? IGN actually made grabby hands at the screenplay back in 2002 with an exclusive script review. At the time, we didn’t give out too many spoilers, since the movie was only in the sixth concentric circle of Development Hell, but now, with Ghostbusters: Afterlife serving as a direct franchise sequel, we can dig into the Hellbent plot a bit more.

The place? New York City. The people? Still WALKIN HERE!

Hell, which is a darkened mirror version of NYC called “ManHELLton,” has become overstuffed and congested. So much so that, like actual heartless Big Apple landlords, it’s evicting people. Those cursed souls then make their way back into the world of the living. The Ghostbusters, now a few years removed from their museum showdown with Vigo the Carpathian, slip-slide into Hell and confront the Devil – who is presented as a smarmy business mogul named Mr. Sifler. Luke Sifler. Lu-cifer. I think you get it. Don’t get it? It’s Lucifer. Got it now? Good.

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Ghostbusters III isn’t wholly about the main squad however. The original characters only have supporting roles as the story, smartly, set out to set up a new generation of wrath wranglers. In the script we read, Ray and Egon cope with Venkman retiring from the team and leaving with Sigourney Weaver’s Dana Barrett. In the film’s big twist, Venkman then appears as a ghost in the final scenes, having died off-screen (somehow), now existing in a form he once so eagerly busted. The reason Venkman was more marginalized in the Hellbent script was because Bill Murray repeatedly refused to participate in the project and the thought was he might come back if he only had to shoot for a day or two.

The new characters, according to our report, weren’t that impressive. The lead, Franky, is described as “a body-pierced, tough New Jersey punker.” In fact, given the era, the rest of the squad seems suited for background work in Crazy Town’s “Butterfly” video.

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Alas, this movie never came to pass. Instead, Ghostbusters was rebooted in 2016 by Paul Feig and now, though delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, from Jason Reitman, will serve as a decades-later follow-up to Ghostbusters II. The original surviving cast, except for Rick Moranis, will all appear in some capacity as the new cast — Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, and Paul Rudd — discover a crucial connection to the ’80s Ghostbusters team in a small Midwest town.

And if you’re clamoring for moving images and synced sound, here’s a trip back to 2009 for IGN’s review of the Ghostbusters video game. Why this project? Well, at the time — with Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis, and Ernie Hudson all onboard — this was Ghostbusters III. It’s a direct sequel to the two movies. And while the story isn’t Hellbent, some of the alternate dimension ideas that are featured in the game were based on concepts from that script…

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Matt Fowler is a writer for IGN and a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow him on Twitter at @TheMattFowler and Facebook at Facebook.com/MattBFowler.