Properties that inexplicably got video game adaptations (or: "Who was buying Blues Brothers video games in the 90's?")

[Seraphis Cain]

Why are there so many of these? Who was buying these games in the 90's? Why did Titus stick with this license for a decade (aside from the obvious "they were a bad shovelware publisher")? It just seems completely inexplicable to me that The Blues Brothers, a franchise that stopped being relevant long before the first game was released, got multiple video game releases throughout the 90's. I don't get it.

Anyway, feel free to post other examples of properties that by all rights should not have gotten video game adaptations.

 

[Murlin]

Well, the first Game Boy game there is a port of the NES game, and the second one is a port of the SNES game, so there were really only three games overall.

 

[henhowc]

There were a lot of movie and media tie ins that were straight junk.

 

[Truno]

This exists

 

[CielTynave]

lmao, I literally posted the N64 game in the thread about games no one talks about. IIRC it needed a memory pack, which I didn't have, so I eventually got to the point of being able to beat the game in one sitting. Same thing with Toy Story 2, although I'm sure that game is actually good unlike BB2000.

 

[Zan]

I miss this era. I want it to come back so dearly. Like it was almost always a genre mismatch that rarely worked. It made for great comedy.

Like imagine if we got a Blonde and Dagwood Soulsbourne.

 

[mopinks]

it's fun to remember that this game actually came out a few years before the Addams Family movie, somehow

 

[Goldenroad]

At least the original Blues Brothers had some element of action to it. But yeah Lorne Michaels knew how to get paid. I'm 90% sure there is at least one Waynes World game too. I remember seeing it in magazines, but never actually in a store. Was there ever a Coneheads game? It seems like there would be.

 

[norealmx]

I don't really know how popular was this mascot in the 80s/90s, but, yeah:

 

[TubaZef]

In the 90s everything was adapted to video games, I mean:

I kinda miss that wackyness, sometimes it would result in some good games or at least some interesting ones.

I recently found out about this SNES Jetsons game which has no right being this good or inventive:

 

[starfoxxxy]

it's fun to remember that this game actually came out a few years before the Addams Family movie, somehow

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Weird flashback memories of this creepy cover.

 

[Willin]

Still have no idea how this happened but I'm glad it did.

 

[starfoxxxy]

 

[Hella]

Licensed games were a thing, once upon a time.

Yo! Noid is prolly the most prominent one I can think of. It's an NES platformer starring the Noid, a Domino's Pizza mascot. (I only learned this yeaaaars after playing it, so it's stuck in my head.)

 

[Barely Able]

I get the 1990 NES game (somewhat), but why does this game exist in 2006 when the franchise was long dead? And EU only?!?! (Un)Fortunately, most games made today for other media properties are generally relegated to mobile.

 

[TeenageFBI]

it's fun to remember that this game actually came out a few years before the Addams Family movie, somehow

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This game is rough. Feels almost impossible without a turbo function.

 

[blueredandgold]

Many of these examples will end up being where many contemporary developers/studios either made their start or had some involvement in.

Goof Troop for one. I mean, really.

 

[Seraphis Cain]

Oh right, and there was this too:

I could see this working in today's post-Spec Ops: The Line world, but back in 1987, when video games were still thought of as (and largely, were) for children? I don't know what kid would wake up on Christmas morning excited to get a game based on a movie about the horrors of the Vietnam War.

(I know there were plenty of adults playing video games back then, but the adult audience was nowhere near as big as it is today, and surely not big enough to justify making a game based on Platoon.)

 

[litebrite]

 

[Deleted member 34949]

Y'all remember when Bebe's kids got a SNES game?

Goof Troop for one. I mean, really.

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This game partially being the basis for Resident Evil 1's engine code will never not amaze me.

 

[TAJ]

The Blues Brothers is the best movie ever made, but I've long known to be cautious with licensed games.

 

[Many]

In the 90s everything was adapted to video games, I mean:

I kinda miss that wackyness, sometimes it would result in some good games or at least some interesting ones.

I recently found out about this SNES Jetsons game which has no right being this good or inventive:

Click to shrink...

That Jetsons game was really good, I can hear the sound of something getting hit by a block

 

[mclem]

 

[Seraphis Cain]

I get the 1990 NES game (somewhat), but why does this game exist in 2006 when the franchise was long dead? And EU only?!?! (Un)Fortunately, most games made today for other media properties are generally relegated to mobile.

Click to shrink...

There were a bunch of these in Europe around that time period, for some reason.

And as you can see, they were all published by Blast! Entertainment, who I can only assume got the licenses for incredibly cheap. I've actually been really curious about Blast! and how these games came about for years now.

 

[Love Machine]

Had a soft spot for Michael Jackson's Moonwalker back in the day.

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Was this the 7 Up mascot at the time? I thought it was a pretty good game on Megadrive as a kid.

 

[hikarutilmitt]

This exists

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The truest of garbage.

it's fun to remember that this game actually came out a few years before the Addams Family movie, somehow

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The dodged bullet is that while difficult it's also great.

Oh right, and there was this too:

I could see this working in today's post-Spec Ops: The Line world, but back in 1987, when video games were still thought of as (and largely, were) for children? I don't know what kid would wake up on Christmas morning excited to get a game based on a movie about the horrors of the Vietnam War.

(I know there were plenty of adults playing video games back then, but the adult audience was nowhere near as big as it is today, and surely not big enough to justify making a game based on Platoon.)

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There were so many r rated movies made into NES games. They were a genre unto themselves. At least this wasn't LJN crap.

 

[Barely Able]

There were a bunch of these in Europe around that time period, for some reason.

And as you can see, they were all published by Blast! Entertainment, who I can only assume got the licenses for incredibly cheap. I've actually been really curious about Blast! and how these games came about for years now.

Click to shrink...

My word this is something else. It's like a European LJN from the mid-2000s.

 

[Chopchop]

Pepsimaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan

 

[Funky_Monkey]

Oh right, and there was this too:

I could see this working in today's post-Spec Ops: The Line world, but back in 1987, when video games were still thought of as (and largely, were) for children? I don't know what kid would wake up on Christmas morning excited to get a game based on a movie about the horrors of the Vietnam War.

(I know there were plenty of adults playing video games back then, but the adult audience was nowhere near as big as it is today, and surely not big enough to justify making a game based on Platoon.)

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Lol. I remember being 9 and playing Death Wish on my Amstrad CPC6128K. You could shoot people with a bazooka and they would turn into a bloody pulp. And they had hooker characters walking across the screen who would hitch up their skirts.

 

[Seraphis Cain]

My word this is something else. It's like a European LJN from the mid-2000s.

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And that's not even all of them. They also did Casper, Thunderbirds, Paddington Bear, Wacky Races, Charlotte's Web, Mr. Bean...

Oh, and this:

Yeah, so you can clearly see what kind of publisher we're dealing with here.

 

[norealmx]

Y remember another one:

Mexican soap opera that, at the time the game came out, it had long ended.... Released on the Wii in 2011.

 

[kamineko]

i think it was actually well received at the time, but my friends and i found the c64 version of The Rocky Horror Picture Show impenetrable. I guess it didn't help that we didn't have a manual

*looks up* lol I remember that journey game

 

[Rygar 8Bit]

I always bring up Pesterminator in these topics. Just odd to me that an extermination company has a NES game.

I don't really know how popular was this mascot in the 80s/90s, but, yeah:

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Noid was extremely popular. They only got rid of the mascot because a crazy person that had a last name of Noid thought Domino's was doing a personal attack on him and he went into a Domino's with a gun and held people up and demanded money from Domino's HQ.

Had a soft spot for Michael Jackson's Moonwalker back in the day.

Was this the 7 Up mascot at the time? I thought it was a pretty good game on Megadrive as a kid.

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Both of those are great games. Arcade version of Moonwalker is also great. Same with the other big Cool Spot game Spot goes to Hollywood.

it's fun to remember that this game actually came out a few years before the Addams Family movie, somehow

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Reruns of the 60's TV show used to air all the time in the 80's. It was fairly popular at the time.

 

[starfoxxxy]

Had a soft spot for Michael Jackson's Moonwalker back in the day.

Was this the 7 Up mascot at the time? I thought it was a pretty good game on Megadrive as a kid.

Click to shrink...

Yeah the game was actaully pretty good. I mean, almost every game was a carbon copy of each other back then lol

 

[ToddBonzalez]

Groundhog Day: Like Father Like Son. A VR game released in 2019 which acts as a sequel to the 1993 Bill Murray movie. Apparently it's an alright game, but why does this exist? I'd love to know who got the ball rolling on this 26 years after the movie's release.

 

[blueredandgold]

This game partially being the basis for Resident Evil 1's engine code will never not amaze me.

Click to shrink...

Goof Troop on TV was a silly Horror show, couldn't Survival against being compared the other Disney stuff at the time.

 

[MinerArcaniner]

This game partially being the basis for Resident Evil 1's engine code will never not amaze me.

Click to shrink...

 

[SirKai]

An adaptation of a sci-fi TV show I've never heard of, releasing on the Xbox 360, in 2014. It feels so dated and behind the times as a game based on a licensed property. The rules of this kind of thing were rewritten at least 5 or 6 years before this came out, and just a glance at the boxart makes it look like an absolute relic.

 

[Deleted member 34949]

Click to shrink...

I don't remember the specifics, but I want to say I remember it mentioned in... I think it might have been a Tim Rogers article?

 

[Rosebud]

 

[Hella]

An adaptation of a sci-fi TV show I've never heard of, releasing on the Xbox 360, in 2014. It feels so dated and behind the times as a game based on a licensed property. The rules of this kind of thing were rewritten at least 5 or 6 years before this came out, and just a glance at the boxart makes it look like an absolute relic.

Click to shrink...

Best part about this?

It was an XCOM clone.

Absolutely baffling but I respect the devs for making it happen.

 

[UraMallas]

McKids! And I loved that game.

 

[Noisepurge]

I get the 1990 NES game (somewhat), but why does this game exist in 2006 when the franchise was long dead? And EU only?!?! (Un)Fortunately, most games made today for other media properties are generally relegated to mobile.

Click to shrink...

And they couldn't even get Eddie Murphy's likeness so Axel is just deleted from the cover with nothing in his place :D just an empty car from the first movie on top of the palm tree background of the second one.

 

[JustinH]

Had a soft spot for Michael Jackson's Moonwalker back in the day.

Click to shrink...

I played the hell out of this arcade version of this game when my family would go camping on Kuma Beach in Okinawa. I played it a lot because the machine was broken and whenever you put a quarter in, it would just spit it out so I could just continually play it, lol.

Thread is making me think of Scarface for the PS2. I guess Scarface has gotten like... popular again and again over the years but it did kinda feel weird that was getting a video game after like... 20 years since the movie. I guess it's not that weird though, since GTA showed everyone those kinds of games could be done?

 

[Lowblood]

Honestly I remember having a good time with the SNES Blues Brothers game. A bit worried to go back and try it now though.

I also remember a Game Boy Bill and Ted game being legitimately great.

Many of these examples will end up being where many contemporary developers/studios either made their start or had some involvement in.

Goof Troop for one. I mean, really.

Click to shrink...

Atlus got started with the NES Friday the 13th game, plus a few other oddities I think. Not sure if that was before or after Megami Tensei 1 but obviously we didn't see that in the West.

 

[bbq of doom]

In the 90s everything was adapted to video games, I mean:

I kinda miss that wackyness, sometimes it would result in some good games or at least some interesting ones.

I recently found out about this SNES Jetsons game which has no right being this good or inventive:

Click to shrink...

God I miss this era so much.

 

[Cure Save Exit]

Vincent Lagaf' used to be a corny french comedian.

 

[Wishbone Ash]

I don't remember the full story on this, but Yo Noid a similar situation to other games of the time where a Japanese title was sprite-swapped for licensing purposes. Capcom made the original, and got paid to make it a Dominoe's tie-in (maybe without their cash, the game never would have been translated?)

I haven't played it, but I think I read it was a decent game

 

[Hella]

I don't remember the full story on this, but Yo Noid a similar situation to other games of the time where a Japanese title was sprite-swapped for licensing purposes. Capcom made the original, and I haven't played it, but I think it was a decent game

Click to shrink...

Yeah.

Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru

Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru (仮面の忍者 花丸, literally-translated as "Masked Ninja Hanamaru"), is a Japan-only side-scrolling platformer developed by Capcom for the Famicom Disk System. The game's mechanics were later used (with an almost complete visual overhaul), for the game Yo! Noid.

capcom.fandom.com

 

[nekkid]

An adaptation of a sci-fi TV show I've never heard of, releasing on the Xbox 360, in 2014. It feels so dated and behind the times as a game based on a licensed property. The rules of this kind of thing were rewritten at least 5 or 6 years before this came out, and just a glance at the boxart makes it look like an absolute relic.

Click to shrink...

Falling Skies was a pretty good show. iirc this game had development issues which is why it came out so late on an old gen.