Voice cast
The episode's regular voice actors were Dave Coulier, Frank Welker, Maurice LaMarche, Buster Jones, and Kath Soucie. Roger Bumpass appeared as a guest voice.2
Plot
The street outside the Firehouse is packed with people and confetti for the First Annual Ghostbusters Grand Prix, a race whose prize money goes to the winner's charity. As the crowd is greeted, no one notices a demon among them. Each Ghostbuster is matched with a car suited to his style: Peter Venkman takes the turbine-powered Venkmobile, Ray Stantz the solar-powered Ray Runner, Egon Spengler the fully computerized, hydrogen-propelled Spengler Speedster, Slimer the Slime Buggy, and Winston Zeddemore a souped-up Ecto-1.
When the race starts, the demon walks through a wall and reappears on a rooftop, glowing with power. The sky darkens and part of the track is turned into a tunnel. Police try to wave the drivers down, but the team mistakes them for well-wishers and keeps driving through the new tunnel entrance, which seals shut behind them. Janine Melnitz and Louis Tully, watching from the Firehouse rec room, realize something is wrong.
Inside, the scenery has changed and Egon's onboard computers short out. A police escort takes Janine and Louis to the scene with a load of Egon's inventions piled in the back seat of Janine's car. The drivers reach a crossroads with signs reading Ghost Town, Cove of a Thousand Horrors, and Nightmaresville. A diner materializes by the road, but everyone inside the Do or Diner is a hostile supernatural entity, and the team flees. Egon concludes they are in the Netherworld and has no directional data to work with. Peter speeds ahead and crashes, wrecking the Venkmobile; Ray and Egon determine the group is enclosed in a parabolic realm of high-density ectoplasm, like a fish bowl.
The landscape becomes a checkerboard. Egon uses that detail to identify their adversary, the Phantom, a Class 7 demon known for board games with very high stakes who has never lost. Giant dice fall and smash the Ray Runner; Ray climbs into Ecto-1 just in time. A sign reading "Back 10 Spaces" forces several of the cars to retreat across the board. The Phantom reveals he chose the Ghostbusters for their reputation, glad to finally have worthy competitors. Peter's proton stream bounces off him and nearly hits Peter. Egon decides the goal is to accumulate points.
The Phantom sends a Motor Home Creature to chase the team. Janine fires the last of Egon's devices at the sealed tunnel entrance. The creature destroys the Slime Buggy and grows to the size of a house. Winston leads it into a canyon, where it becomes wedged in the ridge, and the team scores 300 points after driving beneath it. Egon's Directional Finder locates a crack in the portal home, to the south-southeast. The team reaches Level 3, which the Phantom says no one has done before, and he begins wrecking his own game. Ecto-1 drives into the ectoplasmic tunnel; the Phantom extends an arm to grab it, but once Ecto-1 returns to the physical plane Janine shuts off the device, pulling the Phantom back into his collapsing game. The team pushes Ecto-1 across the finish line, Louis confirms they salvaged the uniform deposit, and the Mayor hands the trophy to Slimer while declaring everyone a winner. The group poses for a photo that makes the front page of the Herald News.
Production notes
One of the devices Janine brings is the B.U.F.O. Receptacle, the same container Walter Peck used to transport Slimer in "Big Trouble With Little Slimer."
The episode has a continuity gap: Egon's Spengler Speedster disappears after the dice-dropping scene with no on-screen explanation. Storyboards reproduced in The Real Ghostbusters Box Set Volume 4 show a deleted sequence in which the Speedster is snared by gas-pump hoses and then eaten by a gas station's service bay.3
Several small background gags appear near the end. The Herald News front page mentions a "T-10 four speed" under Louis and "Van Nuys, California" under Slimer, and the van that pursues Slimer has "Dead Sam Club" written on its back.
