VGC Top Ten: Most Ridiculous Ideas For Licensed Games
by Stephen Kelley on 21 January 2010, 46439 views
Licensed video games are seemingly a great idea for anyone trying to maximize the profits of a movie, sports, or Television show. Some licensed games are critically acclaimed like Batman Arkham Asylum and many sports games, but these sucesses usually break the mold of a typical movie tie-in. Others (see: most of them) are often ridiculed due to the poor state of the game upon release; many of which look as if they were rushed to meet a deadline. Examples of this brand are Catwoman, Enter the Matrix, and the infamous E.T. game for the Atari 2600. Despite the nature of the game, most licensed games make sense. Then there are others that sit on the sidelines of sanity that ask the question: “WTF were you thinking to license that brand?” This is a top ten list of those games in no particular order.
Yo! Noid (NES)
I might be showing my age here a bit but, does anyone else remember the Noid? the Noid, for those unfamiliar, is the 1980’s mascot for Domino’s Pizza which basically looked like a demented guy in a bunny costume. The Noid was the villain of the commercials as he was always trying to ruin Domino’s pizza with Wile E. Coyote styled hijinx. Here is an example of the character in action:
Now I know what most of you thought when seeing that: “MAN! That would make a badass video game!” Wait? .... none of you said that? That’s because the game license is pretty ridiculous if you ask me, but it spawned not one, but two games at various points in the 1980’s. The one we are speaking of confusingly made the Noid into a super hero of sorts, battling the evil Mr. Green for a reward of Domino’s pizza. So not only do we have a terrible license, but a poor adaptation of the license as well.
Shaq Fu (Multi)
I know that many think of a multitude of things when you say the word Shaq: wooden house, basketball player, Kazaam, or even Yao Ming’s chump. But I bet none of you at all thought “mythical martial arts hero”. All except EA, who usually set the bar for confusing or generally bad licensed games. In the game Shaq wanders into a Kung Fu dojo on his way to a charity basketball game. He somehow stumbles into another dimension where he has to fight things like a tiger man. Pretty much everyone agrees that Shaq Fu was terrible, it had bad hit detection and uninspired gameplay to boot. EA did not learn by the poor reception good ol’ Shaq got because almost exactly one year later they released:
Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City (Multi)
The plot for Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City takes any sort of plausibility found in Shaq Fu and craps on it. The plot follows Michael Jordan who also seems to be on his way to a charity basketball game (these guys must like charity basketball games) when he finds that his friends have been kidnapped. After he is given a ransom note to meet someone at the local museum, he ventures into an underground prison to find his buddies. Michael is armed only with his trusty basketball and a lot of courage. What ensues is an odd hybrid of a brawler and a platformer with basketball thrown in.
Smarties Meltdown (PS2)
That’s right Smarties, as in those little overly sweet chalky sugar candies you get at parades or on Halloween from cheap people. While I don’t blame the company behind Smarties for trying to make a face for their company ala the anthropomorphized M&M characters that have graced out TV sets for the better part of two decades. You discover in this game that Smarties come from an alien planet (maybe that’s why they taste like crap) that holds the largest Smarties factory. A guy named Dr. Soursweet decides that he hates the earth and to punish it, he will cut off the worlds Smarties supply. While the gameplay in Smarties meltdown surprised some reviewers as a first person shooter for kids, no one can forget the stupid license.
Sneak King (XBX)
I’ll admit it, I played Sneak King, a game released by the fine purveyor of all things flame broiled – Burger King. I mostly got it because one of my buddies hates the Burger King character, and likens him to the level of terror usually only reserved for killer clowns or Satan himself. While fun for a few minutes, it finally sinks in to you that you are simply playing a Burger Kind Commercial. This game had a lot going for it due to its cheapness and campiness, but could never shake the goofy license. The game involved you playing as the Burger Kind himself hiding in various locations trying to both scare the living crap out of people and deliver food to them as if saying “sorry you have to change your pants, but here is a large cup of breakfast coffee”.
McKids (Multi)
On the same boat as Sneak King we have a game made by McDonalds, but this one has a darker side. McKids was released targeted directly to kids making them the unwitting test subjects of a McDonald’s ad campaign. Don’t get me wrong as that’s how everything worked back then and now for the most part. Wasn’t GI Joe just a weekly 30 minute toy commercial? Luckily this wasn’t released today as the uber PC child obesity pitchfork crowd would have destroyed the “Micky D’s” front office. The game isn’t unplayable, but had no support from McDonald’s itself and was looked at to be just a McDonald’s commercial despite it being innovative for the time. In McKids you could not only run and jump but you could pick things up, throw them, and catch them as well as a few other nice touches.
Home Improvement (Multi)
The only way I could see a Home Improvement game work is to make it into a minigame collection tailored around building things, but alas this game came out long before that craze hit. Home Improvement takes the cardinal sin of a nonsensical platformer based on a popular license (See Blues Brothers and Home Alone) and makes the terribleness an art form. The events depicted in the game have literally no bearing on the TV show plot at all and could have easily been used by any other 90’s American TV sitcom like Roseanne or Seinfeld. Then again I guess that could have worked for Seinfeld, it was a show about nothing after all.
V.I.P. (PS2)
In the world of bad syndicated TV, VIP holds the crown for the show that was only popular for one reason, and that reason was boobs. Granted other shows of the ilk such as Xena warrior Princess had strong lesbian overtones and scantily clad women to entice men to watch, but VIP was basically one step from Skinimax porn. These shows get fairly popular despite a general lack of support from a network, but really only make money by being sold to a network, so these aren’t really A-List material most of the time. What confuses me is that it was seen as a franchise large enough to warrant a videogame despite the relatively small fan base. Did we ever see games for other shows like Small Wonder and Webster? I believe the answer is thankfully no.
Napoleon Dynamite (DS)
What better movie to make a game from than one where the entire premise is the awkward adolescence of a nerdy guy in rural Idaho. If this premise wasn't dumb enough, what about the fact that this game was released some years after the movie was released, and after the fad that was its continued popularity. I mean don’t get me wrong, I liked Napoleon Dynamite, but I never once had the thought “this would make a great videogame!” and I doubt anyone else did either. This was sheer capitalism in its purest form, as this game can be seen as a cash in. Also, fads are never a good idea to cash in on in this way, as the moment you try to make some money the fad is over. I wish other fad stuff became videogames, imagine the fun that would have come from: Crocs: the videogame, or Chuck Norris Facts: the Adventure, or even Lazy Sunday 2: the Reckoning.
Street Fighter: the Movie: the Game (Multi)
Why was this even brought up in a video game execs office? It’s bad enough that they decided to make a movie out of Street Fighter 2, but a game based on that movie? There already is a game and it’s called Street Fighter 2 for crap’s sake! Any semblance of how fun the original source material was is lost in Street Fighter: the Movie: the Game, as it plays much like any other 1990’s bad Mortal Kombat clone. And don’t even get me started on the inane title “Street Fighter: the Movie: the Game” having not one, but two colons does not make the game better. With dumb decisions like this game you never know, they could have tried to make a movie or bad cartoon out of Street Fighter: the Movie: the Game, but then again that would have imploded the universe at its core.
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