Licensed Games, Part 1: The Good, the Bad, and the Crazy

[vovat]

I've mentioned this before, but when I think of licensed video games that were actually good, the first one that comes to mind is DuckTales for the NES. It was a well-constructed side-scroller with good graphics and a variety of settings. What's more, it had a plot that made sense, and a lot of appearances by characters from the show. Granted, Huey, Dewey, and Louie got pretty annoying, but still. Capcom did a lot of other Disney games around the same time, and most of the ones that I remember seeing were successful. My brother had Darkwing Duck and rented through Rescue Rangers, and they looked pretty good. There were also some based on animated movies, which tended to be on the short side (I think my brother won The Little Mermaid on his first try), but still not bad. It was obvious that Capcom had game developers who could work these properties into viable game scenarios.

One property that I think wasn't used so well, at least in the early days, was my favorite TV show, The Simpsons. The Angry Video Game Nerd did a review explaining how bad Bart vs. the Space Mutants and Bart vs. the World were. I've never played or seen anyone play any of the later Simpsons games, although I remember seeing Nintendo Power reviews of Bart's Nightmare, Escape From Camp Deadly (which basically had the same plot as "Kamp Krusty, but before that episode aired) and Krusty's Fun House (a Lemmings rip-off). I remember a screen shot for the latter had an advertisement for "Duff Cola." Uh...what? Okay, they probably didn't want to mention beer in a game intended for children, but doesn't Springfield have its own brand of cola? Or had Buzz Cola not been introduced on the show at that point? Oh, well. I think that actually might have been the first Simpsons Nintendo game that didn't put Bart in the main role, which pretty well reflects the time when they were released. The arcade game was actually fun, but still a little weird as far as plot was concerned. I mean, everyone in town is trying to kill the Simpsons, so they retaliate by hitting them with vacuum cleaners and throwing cars at them? And I think that kind of gets to the heart of the problem, which is that The Simpsons is not a show that translates well into action-adventure plots. I couldn't tell you whether any of the zillions of more recent Simpsons-based games (Hit and Run, Road Rage, Wrestling, Virtual Springfield, etc.) are any good, but I kind of think the early games are a good example of how the fact that a successful TV show isn't necessarily going to make for a successful video game. I understand there's a Family Guy game that was either released recently or will be soon, and I have no clue what that's like. I've heard mixed reviews on the Futurama game, but the sci-fi nature of the show seems like it would be better suited to video games than either of those other two prime-time cartoons.

And since I'm sure everyone knows about my Oz obsession, I'm going to end with a few comments on Yellow Brick Road, a weird PC game that I won at an Oz Convention (either for writing or getting the highest score on the quiz; I forget which). It seems like the creators must have read an Oz book or two, because the Nomes appear as villains. On the other hand, the Cowardly Lion doesn't talk and Glinda is the ruler of Oz, so maybe they just pulled some Oz names at random from a list or something. The battle system was some turn-based thing where you had to drive advancing enemies backwards. I got as far as rescuing the Scarecrow, and then died in a battle soon after that. I don't think there's much left after that, though, if this walkthrough is any indication.

That's all for tonight, but I'm not done with this topic by any means. In Part 2 (whenever I get to that) I'll mention some crappy licensed games that I've played (or seen played, anyway).

Comments

[revme.livejournal.com]

I've heard the Family Guy game's been out for a while and is also terrible. (IIRC, the game play is lousy, and won't let you skip cut-scenes, though those are the best parts of the game, just because they're taken from the show and don't require fighting with the awful controls. HOWEVER, I have not played it or even really seen it played outside of commercials -- which did make it look terrible -- so I don't know for certain.)

I seem to remember playing at least a demo or something of Virtual Springfield, and finding it frustratingly boring. But perhaps I'm thinking of a different Simpsons Tie-In Game. It was a PC game that featured wandering around Springfield while As Far As I Can Tell, Nothing Happened. Perhaps you had to solve a puzzle or something like the Sierra games. I don't know. Just that it wasn't really breaking the trend set by BvtSM. I never even SAW the other Nintendo games.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I understand that the best parts of the Futurama game are also the cut scenes. Still, not being able to skip them after playing through the game would be pretty annoying. I'm reminded of times when there's a big, long bit of dialogue before a difficult battle that I have to try multiple times, and I have to keep seeing the dialogue over and over again, because there's no way to skip past it or save immediately before the battle.

I've never seen Virtual Springfield at all, but from what I've heard, it's basically just an exploration game, and not much actually happens in it. There was also a game called Virtual Bart for the SNES, which I would imagine was very different from Virtual Springfield, but I know even less about that one. I just remember seeing it at the video store.

[vilajunkie.livejournal.com]

I had (have?) a Simpsons game for Sega Genesis. (My Genesis isn't at home but is at my grandmother's summer house.) The point of the game was that you play as Homer or Bart (depending on the level, or a switcheroo like the early Mario games) and fight strategically against these mice swarming Krusty's factory. You basically had to keep the mice from escaping and send them into cages while trying not to get killed by...something. Aliens? Robots? Something really odd. The levels were much like the Super Mario Bros. levels, where each level had about 5-10 minilevels before you could move to the next floor. I have no idea what happened at the end, because I got so tired of the game I never finished it. Much like most, if not all, the Sega games I had.

At least now it's satisfying to get to the end of a video game, especially since you can save. I hated having to remember passwords to get back to the level you were at. So I always started from the beginning each time I played. Ugh.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I think that Genesis game was probably Krusty's Fun House. I've never played that game, but your description sounds similar to what I know about it.

The password system was pretty annoying, especially when you had two characters that were difficult to tell apart (like, say, O and 0). But at least it was SOMETHING to let you continue back when saving technology for console systems was primitive. It's weird to remember how some fairly long games, like Super Mario Bros. 3, wouldn't let you save at all. If you got up to World 8 and the power went out or something, you were screwed. Of course, the Game Boy Advance reissue of that game does let you save.