The Problem with Licensed Games: Difference between revisions
→Seventh Generation (2006-Present): Replaced redirects
Derivative (talk | contribs) |
(→Seventh Generation (2006-Present): Replaced redirects) |
||
| (46 intermediate revisions by 10 users not shown) | |||
Line 1:
{{
[[File:etzx2.gif|link=E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (video game)|frame|[[The Great Video Game Crash of 1983|The problem that was so bad, it threatened to destroy an entire medium.]]]]
{{quote|''"Movies have always been a questionable source for video game adaptations, partly because they have plots and stories, and partly because people in movies don't jump around a lot or pick up power-ups very often."''
|'''Josh "Livestock" Boruff''', ''[[Something Awful]]''}}
'''The
There are two ways to sell video games: Quality of game, and reputation of name. Most video games that sell fall into at least one of the two categories. Game developers could take some time to develop an original property made with care for the end product and the idea of developing a brand new franchise.
Line 16 ⟶ 17:
Of course, [[Video Game Movies Suck|movies based off video games]] don't tend to go over well either, for much of the same reasons...and yes, this Trope carries over into [[Trading Card Lame|other game mediums]].
[[No Problem With Licensed Games (Sugar Wiki)|There are exceptions]], of course. A pretty good chunk of these were either released years after the source material or were based off of a franchise that had been running for years, thus relieving the time pressure often inherent in licensed games. Not to mention; [[Pinball]] games tend to be the biggest wide-spread aversion, as it's ''very'' hard to screw up pinball.
This Trope is so widespread, it's probably easier to list only [[Egregious]] examples. [[No Problem With Licensed Games (Sugar Wiki)|Exceptions should be listed here.]] See [[Spiritual Licensee]] for a way some games go around this, intentionally or not. Quite often, this Trope is a result of a product being [[Christmas Rushed]].
Line 31 ⟶ 32:
== Third Generation (1985-89) ==
* [[Ray Bradbury]] helped write a text-adventure, semi-canonical sequel to ''[[Fahrenheit 451]]''. Even by text adventure standards, it was pretty frustrating. [[The Many Deaths of You|You could be killed for something as simple as crossing the street at the wrong times of day]], there were several times you had to [[Luck-Based Mission|fight off a Hound or Fireman...and the result was based on if the computer felt charitable]], and you advanced the plot by contacting members of the [[La Résistance|Underground]] using literary quotations as pass-phrases. However, the parser system was pretty craptastic, and if you so much as left out a punctuation mark, then you lost your chance to use the phrase, and had to leave the building and come back to try again. Worse, it had plenty of [[Guess the Verb]] moments as "Talk to man" worked sometimes, while others you had to use "Ask Man" with no indication as to what. Top it all off with a [[Downer Ending]], plus a side order of [[Fridge Logic]], if you managed to put up with the game's quirks long enough to reach a conclusion.
* The [https://web.archive.org/web/20110817091226/http://www.retrogameoftheday.com/2010/05/retro-game-of-day-ghostbusters-nes.html NES version] of ''[[Ghostbusters]]'', which was simultaneously released for the '''Atari 2600''' without any change in gameplay.
** The HAL-developed (of ''[[Kirby]]'' fame) ''New Ghostbusters II'' game for the NES is surprisingly better, though it [[No Export for You|only came out in Europe and Japan]].
* An early-1980s game based on the [[British Series]] ''[[Grange Hill]]''. The target demographic quickly discovered that [[Real Life]] offered the same gameplay options with vastly better graphics.
Line 37 ⟶ 38:
** [[YouTube]] reviewer [[Stuart Ashen]] featured ''Grange Hill'' in his list of the quickest game overs, and said that the fastest way to die is to walk back home and prepare to get scolded by your mother.
{{quote|'''Ashen''': Gonch's mother really does look like she's going to kill him. Look at her! [[Nightmare Fuel|She looks like a cross between an alien and a praying mantis!]]}}
* ''Heroes of the Lance'' is an excellent contender for "worst ''[[Dungeons
* Do you know the reason why there's a lack of [[Studio Ghibli]] video games despite their massive success and popularity? Well, way back in [[The Eighties]] when ''[[Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind]]'' was released, Technopolis Soft made a video game version of it. It was a generic [[Shoot'Em Up]] ([http://www.anime-games.co.uk/nausicaamsx.php a mediocre one, based on the experience of those who played it])...for a film that has a [[Green Aesop]] and an anti-war message. Rumor has it that [[Hayao Miyazaki]] was absolutely horrified, to the point where he has never allowed his films to be turned into video games from then on.
* Kemco's ''[[Superman]]'' game for the NES, a side-scrolling [[Action Adventure]] game which provides a fun experience in neither action (Superman has pathetic attacks, moves slowly and can be harmed by bullets) nor adventure (Superman's "flight" power works like a broken [[Warp Whistle]], and there are places which he can only reach by riding the subway). Its [[Guide Dang It|bizarre abstract nature]] is legendary.
Line 62 ⟶ 63:
* A variety of games based on ''[[Bram Stoker's Dracula|Bram Stokers Dracula]]'' were released for various platforms. None of these were particularly good, but the SNES/Genesis version stands out as a disappointment: it's an action platformer with annoying combat mechanics, boring level design, a laughable attempt at presenting a story, and the inexplicable requirement in some levels of contacting an old guy who imagines weapons in thought bubbles. The developer of this version, Traveller's Tales, was not too old and certainly needed the money; later [[Licensed Game]]s of theirs would set a higher standard.
* ''Chester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool'' and ''Chester Cheetah: Wild Wild Quest'' are two of the sorriest 16-bit [[Mascot with Attitude]] platformers. The snack food mascot may be [[Totally Radical]], but he doesn't seem like the fastest animal on land in either game.
* ''[[
* ''Highlander: The Last of the MacLeods'', based on the ''[[Highlander the Animated Series]]'', was a 3D [[Action Adventure]] game vaguely resembling ''[[Alone in
* The ''[[Home Alone]]'' video game series that [[THQ]] made in 1991 and 1992. The first one on the NES is completely awful, thanks to unresponsive controls, and your reward for beating the game in the twenty minutes? [[A Winner Is You|The same bad ending you get for losing]]. Even worse is its sequel, ''Lost in New York'', which ranges from unredeemably terrible (Game Boy and NES) to [[So Bad It's Good]] (Super NES). The NES and Game Boy versions feature terrible play control, below average graphics, [[Fake Difficulty]], and also its weird assortment of enemies, including a vacuum out to kill Kevin.
* The SNES version of ''[[The Lord of the Rings|The Fellowship Of The Ring]]'' is really bad, even by the standards of that console's generation. Good luck trying to get anywhere in ''that'' game. If you [[Guide Dang It|lose your instruction booklet]], you're pretty screwed, as it has the layouts of all of the (very large) cave maps.
Line 70 ⟶ 71:
* ''[[The Lawnmower Man]]'' had two different licensed games, one for the SNES, Genesis (not Sega CD), and Game Boy, the other for DOS and Sega CD. The latter one was a [[Full Motion Video]] game with extreme cases of both [[Gameplay Roulette]] and [[Fake Difficulty]]. Also, for no good reason, the limitations of the Genesis color palette (which degraded the quality of the pre-rendered 3D graphics) were present in the DOS version, despite the fact that it used the MCGA video mode (2^24 colors total, 2^8 on screen at once).
* There was a ''[[Nickelodeon Guts]]'' game for the [[SNES]]. However, it suffered from repetitive gameplay (Basic Training and Tornado Run were one and the same, but obviously given different names), annoying music, and the fact that the Aggro Crag, the final event, was just a glorified Basic Training level. Also, you had to get a certain amount of points in the firstplayer mode, there were more girls (6) than boys (2) when you chose your player, and ''there was no Mike O'Malley!'' Moira "Mo" Quirk (Mike's co-host), on the other hand, was there.
* ''[[The Simpsons]]'' has had quite a few great games; in fact, ''[[The Simpsons Arcade]]'' game is often regarded as a contender for "Best Licensed Game of All Time". Unfortunately, the franchise has also had quite a few stinkers:
** ''
** ''The Simpsons Wrestling'', for [[Playstation]]; "Worst [[Fighting Game]] game ''ever''!" is what the Comic Book Guy would likely say if he played it. This is practically a documentary on how ''not'' to design a licensed game, it plays poorly, has little actual content, and an [[Excuse Plot]] that [[All There in the Manual| is only mentioned in the instruction book]] and has almost ''nothing'' to do with the source material. Basically, you just pick a character, and then fumble with ''really'' bad controls to fight another character, that's it. The controls are so bad that you have a better chance to win a match via [[Button Mashing]] than any actual strategy; there's not even a block option! (This game was made in 2001, long after game developers figured out blocking was an essential part of Fighting Games). It has the ''worst'' 3D animated models, ''and'' the worst flat 2D images! The one thing it had going for it was a few funny quotes made by the series' actual VAs, plus characters interacting differently depending on who the opponent is (a feature ahead of its time) but that wasn't nearly enough save this train wreck.
** ''[[Bart Simpson's Escape from Camp Deadly]]'' for [[Game Boy]]. The title of this game might suggest the show's season 4 episode "Kamp Krusty", but the only real similarity is, both take place at summer camps run by villains (in fact, the game was released about a year before that episode). [[Excuse Plot| The "plot' of this game]] involves Bart and Lisa trapped at a camp run by Mr. Burns' sadistic nephew Ironfist Burns (and no, this guy is not in the actual show; exactly why they couldn't actually use Mr. Burns as the villain is anyone's guess) who [[For the Evulz| wants to kill them for… reasons]]. The game suffers from bad controls with input delay, and there's a lot of [[Artificial Difficulty]] and [[Trial and Error Gameplay]] involved; some enemies can OTK Bart, and there's no way of even knowing that until they actually hit him. The graphics are poor, even compared to other Game Boy titles released in 1991, and the scenery is very bland, without much to differentiate one level from the next. Sound effects are weak, and the only music is the cartoon's theme, playing over and over. Worst of all, if you actually make it to the ending, [[A Winner Is You| all you get is a picture of the family and the closed camp, that's it.]]
* The NES game based off ''[[Terminator|The Terminator]]'' deserves a more detailed description, awful sound, stiff controls, and ugly graphics. The first level is the ONLY level you have a gun and grenades (Unlike, well, EVERY other version.), as soon as you get to the past you have nothing but your fists (you can kick too, but whats the point?).
** The SNES ''Terminator'' game could use some mention too, the levels are brutally long (the 2nd level is INSANE) Sound Effects tend to drown out all two of the music tracks in the game, and it was just [[Nintendo Hard|cruelly difficult]].
Line 77 ⟶ 81:
* ''Toys: Let The Toy Wars Begin'', made for the SNES and Genesis by Absolute Entertainment in 1993 as a tie-in to the [[Robin Williams]] film of the same name from the previous year. It's not like the makers of the game had to do much to improve the plot - the film was a goofy story about a toy designer fighting to get back his father's ailing company from the hands of a military general who plans to weaponize children's toys, and it flopped critically and commercially at the box office. The resulting game was a dismal top-down shooter with a whopping ''four'' stages, wherein [[The Computer Is a Cheating Bastard|the player commanded a limited amount of toys against an unlimited stream of AI enemies from the opposing general's side]]. The game was mercilessly panned - Gamepro and several other publications blasted the game for many missed opportunities, the lack of a two-player mode, terrible visuals (even by SNES standards) and one of the least-relevant adaptations of a film ever made.
* One game that many people don't realize was intended to be a licensed game was [[Acclaim]]'s ''[[Warlock (film)|Warlock]]'', created for the SNES and Genesis two years after the second movie of the same title was released. It included gems like bad collision detection, enemies that would spawn with no warning and had little to no pattern to them, [[Not the Fall That Kills You|a mechanic that kills you if you fall from a height that's anywhere higher than the height of the playable character]], wonky player movements (like the protagonist ''crouching automatically when firing forward''), and having only a single life to get through the game unless you die with a ''specific item in your inventory'' (although there ''was'' a password system, thankfully) meant the game was particularly putrid. Its only saving grace was an [[Good Bad Bugs|item use exploit]] that effectively made you invincible and harmful to the touch during the item's effect.
** One SNES magazine writer said that he was worried about his ability to give an objective review of the game, as star Julian Sands was his cousin. Then he started playing the game, and was relieved to find that it was ''so bad'' he could tear into it mercilessly.
* The 16-bit version of ''[[Wayne's World]]'' is possibly one of the most loathed, least playable 16-bit games ever. Bad collision detection, hideous sprites and atrociously digitized voices (especially in the Sega version) are just part of the problem with this. Mainly considered [[Snark Bait|only worthwhile to mock]]. [
* The NES ''[[Where's Waldo]]'' game (released by [[Acclaim]] in 1992), owing to the severe graphical limitations of the system, was barely playable (as all the people in the crowds are identical stick figures) and has none of the visual fun that made the books memorable.
* ''[[Fester's Quest]]'' was the first game to attempt to make an adaptation of ''[[The Addams Family]]'', but it failed miserably. It's even a mystery as to why this game was made; released in 1989, three years before [[The Addams Family (1991 film)|the movie]] came out, the franchise wasn't exactly popular at the time.<ref>In fact, that may have been the point. This was the first licensed game made by Sunsoft, they figured they'd need something recognizable, and while ''The Addams Family'' fit the bill, it wasn't popular, and thus the licensing rights would be easy to get.</ref> Notoriously [[Nintendo Hard]], ([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKDOwzfRBwk the commercial for the game] even warns you [[At Least I Admit It| that it's difficult]]) the gameplay and controls are pretty bad. Fester moves very slow, can't move diagonally; even the most basic enemies take a long time to kill, have a tendency to gang up and get in your way, and some of them use projectiles that make Fester even slower. The big problem is Fester's gun, which automatically upgrades (or downgrades) upon getting certain power-ups, but the erratic way it fires after upgrading makes it hard to hit anything with it, and there's no way to choose the setting. Worst of all, Fester has only one life and two units of health (you can get more later, but it takes a while). Adding to the frustration is [[Check Point Starvation|the complete lack of checkpoints]]; dying and using a continue sends you back to the starting point, although you do get to keep everything in your inventory. It's hard to even say, "if you're a diehard fan of ''The Addams Family'' it might be worth a look", because for the record, the plot (or [[Excuse Plot|what passes for it]], with Fester fighting [[Alien Invasion|invading aliens]]) seems out of place for the Family, and [[In Name Only|the game barely references the source material at all.]] It even seems likely that a lot of the game's material was recycled from ''[[Blaster Master]]'', an earlier Sunsoft game. Still, the game does have some fans; when IGM posted their list of the top 100 NES games of all time, this one got a respectable spot at number 45.
== Fifth Generation (1995-2000) ==
Line 86 ⟶ 90:
** This is not made any better by the fact that the game looks like a re-skinned ''[[Crash Bandicoot]]''. Even the animations look almost exactly like Crash's, and the Wumpa fruit has been changed to "A" coins.
** The PC game, while possibly not as offensive as the PlayStation game, was pretty subpar and had trouble being consistent with the books (such as assigning the wrong signature morphs to the wrong characters)
** The GBC game is pretty terrible, though the sound is certainly better than the others. The crowning achievement is the fully implemented final level is [[Dummied Out]], accessible with a password or hacking but not natural play, so the game ends abruptly.
* ''Bloodwings: Pumpkinhead's Revenge''. As if being based on the abysmal second ''[[Pumpkinhead]]'' movie wasn't bad enough, developer BAP Interactive thought it was a brilliant idea to set the game in a metaphysical netherworld completely unrelated to the movies, where you were forced to wander through repetitive corridors and view clips from the movie in order to obtain items, and endure pointless crystal collecting segments ''every time you killed an enemy''. Even something as mundane as replenishing health and ammo was needlessly convoluted. And worst of all, you could be punished for taking items you weren't supposed to take with you ''[[Bag of Spilling|by having your entire inventory cleared out]]'' without ever knowing which item it was you shouldn't have brought along. [[The Spoony Experiment|Spoony's]] grilling of this piece of shit was long overdue.
* It's not that the developers of ''[[Jurassic Park]]: Trespasser'' didn't [https://web.archive.org/web/20200328031450/http://fromearth.net/LetsPlay/Trespasser/ try]. In fact, the game had numerous innovative aspects going for itself (real-time physics, procedurally generated animations, an experimental no heads-up-display approach where players had to ''look down at a tattoo on the player character's breast to see their health'' and the play character ''counts the number of bullets in her weapon aloud'', artificially intelligent dinosaurs) and was a genuinely ambitious project [http://www.vimeo.com/789247 that was to leave its mark on the industry for years]... but [[Executive Meddling|the publishers wanted the game to come out on time]], and the game was [[Vaporware|already infamous for numerous delays]], so many of its supposedly defining features were either severely cut down or left completely unfinished. The game was heavily panned upon its release for its [[Obvious Beta|numerous glitches]] and its impossibly steep system requirements (owing to its huge outdoor environments, which was completely uncalled for at the time), and by the time the game was patched and most users' computers were finally good enough to run the game fluidly, the damage had already been done and the game was quickly forgotten after many a gamer's focus shifted to the fantastic ''[[Half Life]]'' and the phenomenally awful ''[[Daikatana]]'', and in the end the game's attempt at a groundbreaking physics engine was a tremendous inspiration during the development of ''Half-Life 2''.
** As an interesting note, it seems that the game received a spiritual successor about seven years later in the form of the below-mentioned ''[[Peter Jackson]]'s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie'', a HUD-less first-person shooter based on a major film by a big-name director where the player uses guns and other environmental objects to kill dinosaurs on a mysterious island. The only difference is that the latter game turned out to be genuinely good.
* ''KISS Pinball'' for the PC and [[PlayStation]] consisted of two pinball boards which were utterly undistinguished aside from the graphical styling and a few voice clips. The soundtrack was made of generic rock riffs and contained no [[KISS]] songs. The [[PlayStation]] version also suffered from nauseous camera panning.
* One notable crappy ''[[Power Rangers]]'' game is the [[Nintendo 64]] version of ''[[Power Rangers Lightspeed Rescue]]''. The cutscenes were done in a comic style, which might be good... if they weren't drawn really, really, crappily. The gameplay and graphics weren't anything special either.
* The ''[[Shannara]]'' video game adaptation. For RP elements it wasn't too awful, just badly cliched, but the gameplay mechanics—especially the combat engine—sucked horribly.
* In a rare example (see the others below) a ''[[Star Trek]]''-based licensed game was a real stinker. Well, ''sort of'' Star Trek. Some of the elder statesmen out there might remember a tactical fleet game called ''Star Fleet Battles''. Complex even to the point of [[Dungeons
* ''[[Star Trek]] New Worlds'', a dreadful clunker of a ground-based RTS featuring fuzzy graphics, ludicrously complicated resource management ([[You Require More Vespene Gas]]? How about ''five fucking flavours of it'' or you can't build anything?), and wonky AI. The only thing the game has going for it is the ''[[Awesome Music (Sugar Wiki)|fantastic]]'' [http://www.youtube.com/user/StalwartUK#grid/user/3394895A311A015D soundtrack].
* The Playstation and PC adaption of ''Star Wars: [[The Phantom Menace]]'' is below average. Excellent audio (which is the common strong point of [[Star Wars]] franchises anyway) and fairly looking full 3D graphics aside, the decent level design is doomed by unfitting puzzle/adventure levels tacked on breaking the pace, awkward controls, horrible camera placement, buggy coding, imbalanced weapons and seriously-flawed dueling mechanic can totally ruin your experience halfway through.
* The ''movie'' ''[[Street Fighter]]'' had a particularly bad [[Street Fighter the Movie|video game adaptation]], which doesn't seem all that out-of-the-ordinary until you realize that the movie was itself an adaptation of probably the most influential [[Fighting Game]] ever made, ''[[Street Fighter II]]''. The home version for the PS and Saturn were relatively decent by comparison, but the arcade version was really ''that'' bad.
** The guy primarily responsible for it later [https://web.archive.org/web/20111115143130/http://alan-noon.blogspot.com/2007/08/follow-up-street-fighter-movie.html came to the Internet, apologized, and left a post-mortem account that's well worth the read]. ...and yes, we forgive you. [https://web.archive.org/web/20120830095709/http://shoryuken.com/forum/index.php?threads
** The most egregious problem with this particular licensed game is that they had a cheap, easy method to make a decent game. Take ''Street Fighter II'', change the graphics, release. Instead the developers seemed [[Genre Blindness|Genre Blind]] and tried to develop a brand new fighting system, only to be foiled by the limited development time and budget they should have expected had they been more [[Genre Savvy]].
* The infamous ''[[Superman 64|Superman]]'' game for the N64, based on [[Superman: The Animated Series|the animated series]], is another licensed game that's a contender for Worst. Game. Ever. It featured clumsy controls, mediocre graphics, and a horrendously dull plot, where [[Lex Luthor]]'s diabolical scheme was to trap Superman in a virtual world... and literally make him [[Pass Through the Rings|jump (or fly, rather) through hoops]].
* There was a video game based on the movie ''White Men Can't Jump''. Not only did it come out four years after the movie, but it was based on the [[Atari Jaguar]] system. By this time, Atari was losing in the console war, and in less than a year, they discontinued the Jaguar. The game itself was a shameless attempt to cash in on the name of [[White Men Can't Jump|a popular movie]], and is just two-on-two basketball with [[In Name Only|nothing to do with the movie at all]]. The controls are bad, the graphics are bad, and the dialogue is nothing but one cliche after another. Even if you like video basketball, this was a game to avoid.
* The ''Starship Troopers'' MMO had space battles instead of marine-bug battles. This was because it was actually just a version of the Silent Death computer game (also developed by Mythic) with different graphics. In spite of the cost-cutting, it still came out a year after the movie.
* ''[[The Powerpuff Girls]] had a few bad games in this era:
** In 2000, [[BAM! Entertainment]] got the idea to put out three games for [[Game Boy Color]], one for each Girl. Kind of the same idea as [[Pokemon]]. The results, well….
*** The first game, (Blossom's game) was ''[[The Powerpuff Girls: Bad Mojo]]''. This game may have been doomed from the start, as someone had the bright idea to release it on the same day as ''[[Dexter's Laboratory: Robot Rampage]]'', meaning BAM! had in effect, put two of their own games in direct competition with each other. Both games were marketed for younger audiences, and such buyers are usually on a limited budget. It's doubtful this helped sales. But that was hardly all. The animation and controls were poor. Blossom moved like a robot, controls are clumsy, and floaty, and the game had abysmal framerate drops. The plot was pretty dumb even compared to other [[Excuse Plot]]s; Mojo takes over Professor Utonium's house and uses the lab to create monsters, so Blossom has to fight them, and with Bubbles and Buttercup nowhere to be found, has to do so alone. (Possibly, the events of the three games are happening simultaneously, and the Girls have split up for some reason.) In this game, you have to fight enemies, rescue citizens, and grab collectibles, all of which becomes tedious quickly, and the game actually becomes easier if you just fly past and ignore them. And speaking of which, the enemies really don't look like they're in the wrong game, as they have nothing to do with the cartoon. For example, flying jellyfish and a weird demon-thing. The boss battles are a little better, and you get to fight some villains from the show like Princess and Roach Coach, but mostly you just fight Mojo again and again, and this repetitive quickly. And of course, there are the glitches. For example, the Rowdyruff Boys disappear when you try to confront them in battle for absolutely no reason whatsoever. The music is [[Ear Worm]] hell, and even plays through the introduction and cutscenes, grating on the player's nerves and ruining any attempt to follow the dialogue.
*** The second game - (Buttercup's game) was ''[[The Powerpuff Girls: Paint the Town Green]]''. The biggest difference here was that the protagonist is Buttercup and the villains were the Gangrene Gang, but little else. The basic enemies were the same as the first game, the collectibles were the same and Buttercup was controlled the same as Blossom - badly. The boss battles showed more variety, as each member of the Gangrene Gang is different, but still got boring fast. There's also a glitchy boss battle with Fuzzy Lumpkins where your stun attack sometimes doesn't work on him for no reason. And the soundtrack was the same too, grating and annoying.
*** Very few reviews exist for the third game, ''[[The Powerpuff Girls: Battle HIM!]]'' (which as the title implies, has Bubbles go up against HIM) possibly because nobody wanted to play it after playing the first two. Any masochist who ''does'' will feel the urge to throw their Game Boy Color away. Bubbles is a lot stronger and faster than Blossom or Buttercup was in the previous games, but the controls are still bad. This game also has bad level design and [[Trial and Error Gameplay]]; you never know whether the pit you're flying over has an item below that you need to fly down and take or whether it's a bottomless pit that will kill you if you try. The Boss Battle with the Boogie Man is even glitchier than the one with Fuzzy in the previous game; sometimes Bubbles' punches simply don't harm him at all even when the stun attack works.
*** In the end, these three games were pretty much three versions of the same game, and all were bad. More than likely it was a shameless cash grab done to exploit a popular series.
** ''[[The Powerpuff Girls: Chemical X-Straction]]''. This game was released in 2001, and the reason it's not under Sixth Generation titles is because it was released for [[Nintendo 64]] and [[Playstation]], meaning they released it when the superior [[Sega Dreamcast]] and ''[[PlayStation 2]]'' were already out and both [[GameCube]] and [[Xbox]] were only a few weeks away. But then, this game was little more than a shameless reskin of ''[[Tom and Jerry: Fists of Fury]]'' (a video game adaptation of a movie adaptation of a cartoon, made by the same company as this game) so at least they have that as an excuse. Again, the [[Excuse Plot]] of this game is pretty dumb; the Girls are baking pies, and Bubbles decides that, since the pies are made with sugar, spice, and everything nice (the three base ingredients the Girls themselves were made of) why not add some Chemical X (the accidental fourth ingredient) to make the pies "super"? Unfortunately, Mojo Jojo steals the pies, he and the other Townsville villains eat them, they gain superpowers, and the Girls have to go and beat them all up. The gameplay here is, well, if you've ever played ''[[Power Stone]]'', start with that, but give it bad controls, bad animation, a lot of input delay, and difficulty that's all over the place, and you have a general idea. The fights range from too easy to drawn out and frustrating, and ''all'' of them are boring. The game is incredibly short (you can finish it in about an hour) and while each Girl can unlock something by beating Mojo, the [[Final Boss]] it's impossible to unlock everything, as once you beat him with one Girl, you can't unlock anything else. Each Girl has a story mode, but all three are pretty much the same, although the "true" ending can only be achieved with Blossom. For some reason.
*** Now, if you're playing it on Playstation, the problems end there, but the Nintendo 64 version is much, much worse. First of all, it's way too easy. Each Girl has an "explosion attack" which is practically a [[One-Hit Kill]] attack because it depletes the enemies' health quickly when used in succession. The limited memory of the N64 cartridge causes many of the better content in the Playstation version to be omitted. There's no voice acting, the cutscenes have no animation (just pictures with lines of dialogue) and only one piece of music (the cartoon's theme tune) plays throughout the whole game, [[Ear Worm| on a continuous loop!]] Even fans of the show are going to find that annoying sooner or later.
* As mentioned above, BAM! also released a ''[[Dexter's Laboratory]]'' adaptation on ''[[Game Boy Color]]'' on the same day it launched the first of three Powerpuff Girls titles, and this was also the first of three. Were they any better? Sadly, no. ''[[Dexter's Laboratory: Robot Rampage]]'', was, in fact, nothing but a reskin of ''[[Elevator Action EX]]'', another game from BAM! for the Game Boy Color. The objective was to move Dexter up and down floors in his mecha-suit, avoiding enemies, and opening as many doors as possible, something that may have reminded a lot of fans of ''[[Hotel Mario]]''. It had generic music, generic enemies (basically all were the same robot, but different colors) and Mandark as the main antagonist, which might have been cool if he didn't also act like nothing more than a generic bad guy.
* ''[[Addams Family Values (video game)|Addams Family Values]]'', released in 1995 for SNES. Slightly better than ''Fester's Quest'', but as this was a direct movie tie-in, and like most such games, was pretty bad. Moby Games described this as "an action-adventure game with slight RPG elements". By "slight', that basically meant Fester (the protagonist) gained hp as he leveled up, but not much else. Unlike Fester's Quest, the game had a lot of humor that was indeed loyal to the franchise, but the graphics were bad, the game mechanics were almost broken, and the gameplay was just dull, consisting mostly of Fester going from point A to point B, getting an item, and back to point A. The save points were the worst part, requiring players to write down a ridiculously long passcode before turning the game off in order to save progress.
== Sixth Generation (2001-05) ==
Line 107 ⟶ 121:
* The ''[[Catwoman (film)|Catwoman]]'' game (based on the movie) was so bad that a [[Warner Brothers]] executive threatened to impose punishments into all future property licenses such that if the videogame didn't get sufficiently positive reviews, the company would have to pay a fine for damaging WB's property. The irony of a WB executive complaining about ''another'' studio damaging their property is highlighted when you realize the game under discussion was the tie-in to the execrable ''Catwoman'' movie.
* On the surface, [[MTV]]'s ''[[Celebrity Deathmatch]]'' sounds like something tailor-made for an addictive brawler. Annoying celebrities beating the snot out of each other until one of them finally lays down and dies, with a slathering of [[Bloody Hilarious|gratuitous violence and bloodshed]] on top? It made for an awesome show, so why shouldn't it work? Unfortunately, it came with an incredibly small roster, a short story mode that could be beaten in two hours or less, a create-a-character mode more shallow than the celebrities that it was skewering, and crappy controls, condemning it to the bargain bin.
* ''[http://www.mobygames.com/game/gamecube/charlie-and-the-chocolate-factory/mobyrank Charlie] [http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=124799 and] [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/r_charlieandthechocolatefactory_ps2 the Chocolate Factory]''. To quote the last review, "It was at this point that we realised we were already drowning in a sea of warm, brown, sticky goo, and that it wasn't chocolate."
* ''[[Dirty Dancing]]'' had a licensed PC game which was released nearly 15 years after the film was made, containing almost no music from the movie, almost no connection to its plot, and gameplay consisting entirely of mostly unplayably buggy minigames, the most functional of which is ''[[Follow the Leader|just a ripoff of]] [[Bejeweled]]''.
** For those interested, [
* The ''[[Dungeons
* ''[[The Lord of the Rings|The Fellowship Of The Ring]]'' for the GBA (licensed from the book, not the movie) was a tedious [[RPG]] riddled with bugs, some of them [[Game Breaking Bug|game-breaking]].
* There was a particularly crappy video game adaptation of ''[[Fight Club (film)|Fight Club]]'', released in 2004. Perhaps worse is that there are people who actually believe [[Older Than They Think|the movie was based off of the video game]]. How's this for irony, the movie is ranked the 11th best film of all time on [[Internet Movie Database|IMBDB]], but [[Metacritic]] lists the game adaptation as the 17,332nd best (that means there are only about 200 games that are considered worse, and some of those are duplicates due to being the same game on different ports).
** The game has absolutely no merits of its own that would make it stand out if it ''weren't'' a film tie-in, [[In Name Only| which it barely even is]]. It is nothing but a generic [[Fighting Game]] with bad graphics, gameplay that is way too easy, no plot of its own to stand on, (even when compared to games like ''[[Street Fighter II]]'' that have little more than an [[Excuse Plot]]) with boring characters, boring dialogue and boring cutscenes (did we mention this game was boring?) There are only three fighting styles (which copy the fighting mechanics from ''[[Tekken]]'' and ''[[Street Fighter]]'' and every playable character can use all three, meaning the whole concept of different characters is pointless.
** The main difference is that you're meant to win in the game. And the game rewards you for it. The game based on a nihilistic view of the human race and the human success instinct REWARDS YOU FOR WINNING. So, that's [[Misaimed Fandom]], ''and'' the game is a blatant attempt at taking commercial advantage from a film that was deeply critical of the consumerist culture. It even manages to make a serious continuity error in one cutscene by making a scene showing {{spoiler|Tyler and the narrator as different characters}}, implying the developers didn't even watch the movie.
** Notably, it also includes [[Limp Bizkit|Fred Durst]] as a [[Guest Fighter|playable character]]. Whether the game is cursed further by his presence or somewhat [[Catharsis Factor|redeemed by the ability to break all his limbs]] is up to the player.
* In a twist on this trope, ''[[Frogger]]: The Great Quest'' got a license to make a game about a classic arcade game. While some earlier ''Frogger'' remakes were actually surprisingly good, this one attempted to make it into a 3D action platformer and failed miserably. You attacked enemies by spitting at them, and when close enough you used frog-fu (no, we're not making this up, this is the exact terminology the game used). The controls were horrible, the only difficult thing was figuring out what the heck you were supposed to do, there was no replay value unless you wanted to start the whole game over again, and the voice acting was somewhere between bad and the kind of voice that makes you want to take a hammer to your head.
Line 127 ⟶ 142:
** The one good thing it had going for it was that the entire voice cast of the actual show was onboard. But even that is [[Fridge Horror|kind of depressing]] if you stop to think about it too much.
* Not even foreign films are safe from bad video game adaptations. The PC game ''Torrente'' (based on the Spanish cop movie spoof ''Torrente: The Stupid Arm of the Law'') is a mediocre [[Third-Person Shooter]] whose only unique point is that the protagonist is a fat, bald, dimwitted sluggard.
* While most of [[THQ]]'s ''wrestling'' games based on [[World Wrestling Entertainment|WWE]] tend to be well regarded, two of their attempts to branch into different genres were not so lucky. First there was ''Betrayal'', a [[Game Boy Color]] [[Beat'Em Up|beat em' up]] panned for "[[Artificial Stupidity|idiot AI]]" among other things. Then there was ''Crush Hour'' for the [[PlayStation 2]] and [[Xbox]], which was essentially a poor man's ''[[Twisted Metal]]'' whose only redeeming feature was the [[Narm]]tastic commentary provided by [[Jim Ross]] ("TWISTY ROCKETS!"). Fortunately, THQ learned their lesson and stuck to ''wrestling'' games with the WWE license, which is what ''wrestling'' fans usually want when they hear about an upcoming game based on their favorite ''wrestling'' company anyway.
** Well at least they tried to for nine years. 2012 will see the debut of ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BssF6scsfSE WWE Brawl]'', which will be a pure beat em up game ''without'' a wrestling ring.
* ''[[Yu Yu Hakusho]]: Spirit Detective'' for the GBA was abysmally boring in addition to sporting graphics that made the characters only distinguishable by their hair and outfits.
* ''[[The Polar Express]]'', a multi-platform Adventure game based on the hit movie. The graphics are okay for the time, nothing phenomenal and they don't reach [[Uncanny Valley]] like the film. The gameplay features various [[Unexpected Genre Change]]s, though they're poorly played out. The voice acting for some of the characters isn't so great either. The worst part of the game has to be the timespan; it can be beaten within a few hours or less, one sitting and it makes you feel you're missing out.
* How in the world could someone have messed up a ''[[Samurai Jack]]'' video game? With a cartoon that has such an awesome hero with equally-awesome enemies and settings, a video game adaptation should have been easy, but ''[[Samurai Jack: The Shadow of Aku]]'' (released in 2004 for [[Playstation|Playstation 2]] and [[GameCube]]) was anything but. Mary Jane Irwin of [[IGN]] criticized the game for its annoying combat system, "uninteresting" story, and [[It's Easy, So It Sucks| lack of any real challenge]]. The visuals were the worst part; her review noting that "Everything is incredibly angular and the only way to describe it is awful. It's just sad that in no way was the show's incredible presentation translated into the videogame." [[GameSpot]]'s Alex Navarro called it "utterly forgettable" and said, "its lack of depth, style, or technical polish essentially ruins whatever chance it ever could have had to appeal to anyone outside of the most diehard of Samurai Jack fans". Possibly the only good part was the score, but all-in-all, Jack's video game debut was a failure.
* ''[[The Powerpuff Girls: Relish Rampage]]'' At least ''Chemical X-Straction'' was no worse than other stuff released for those systems in 2001, but this game - which was indeed released for ''[[PlayStation 2]]'' and ''[[GameCube]]'' - didn't have that excuse. First off, the plot actually seems interesting; narcissistic arch-villain Mojo Jojo wants to run for mayor, and plans to brainwash the citizens of Townsville into voting for him. His brainwashing device attracts the attention of the Pickloids, alien [[Plant Aliens| pickle-people]] who [[Alien Invasion| invade and start abducting citizens]]. With giant jars. So, the three heroines have to fly in to save the day. Now, on the plus side, this sort of plot seems right up the cartoon's alley, the dialogue in the cutscenes are kind of funny, and [[Parental Bonus| it even has some political satire thrown in]]. Sadly, however, there's only about seven minutes of cutscenes total, and the gameplay is a different story. Townsville looks pretty… dull, and the missions you have to go on are repetitive. You have the Girls fly around, beat up some mooks, then beat up the boss, then do the same thing again and again. The missions are short, as is the whole game. The fights have little to no strategy; you punch, kick, and use the Girls' laser-vision, and there are no other moves to gain or unlock. The targeting system is pretty bad, made worse by an equally bad camera that often makes it hard to see what you're aiming at. Finally, there are glitches that sometimes cause the Girls to get stuck on an object or between two or more objects, often enemies you're trying to fight. And while the dialogue of those cutscenes is funny, the visuals and animation are ugly and crude, with [[Sickly Green Glow| far too much emphasis on the color green]], and while the music is okay, the sound effects are poor.
* BAM! did no better with ''[[Dexter's Laboratory]]'' tie ins on the ''[[Game Boy Advance]]'':
** ''[[Dexter's Laboratory: Deesaster Strikes]]'', released for Game Boy Advance, was only slightly better than Robot Rampage (meaning it's at least playable). The Excuse Plot has DeeDee use Dexter's clone-o-matic, creating dozens of half-size clones of herself (124, exactly) and Dexter now has to catch them all and fix the machines they break. It seems an interesting idea that does catch the spirit of the source material until you realize it's a reskinned clone of ''[[Ape Escape]]''. Movement is done with the D-pad, which isn't an easy way to move on a 3D platformer like this. Catching the DeeDee clones isn't easy, because Dexter is much slower than they are and has to corner and trap them while fighting enemies that usually can't be killed, only stunned. The worst are glitches that make some items fail to work, or don't register as picked up, or disappear, causing you to lose your progress. And for that matter, there's a confusing save system; when you lose all of your lives, it reloads from your last save, so if you save the game when you have only one life left, you'll reload with only one life left, and the game becomes almost unwinnable. Should you manage to catch all the DeeDee clones and fix all 42 machines, the [[A Winner Is You| ending is bland at best.]]
** Finally, there was ''[[Dexter's Laboratory: Chess Challenge]]'', which was kind of a ''Dexter's Laboratory'' themed version of ''[[Battle Chess]]''. Why they would try to market a chess game to kids - with [[Nintendo Hard| very unfair AI]], even [[Fake Difficulty| on Easy mode]] - is a mystery. The animated cutscenes are slow, looking like they were made with Microsoft Paint, the music was just as bad, and the dialogue between the characters - who never shut up - got annoying quickly. Even if you do play chess, this gets boring fast, and it even seems like it was [[Obvious Beta| unfinished]] and [[Christmas Rushed| rushed.]]
== Seventh Generation (2006-Present) ==
* ''[[Alice in Wonderland (2010 video game)|Alice in Wonderland]]'', the video game adaptation of [[Tim Burton]]'s [[Alice in Wonderland (2010 film)|2010 film]], was a decided letdown to fans of the movie. Many of the battles are unintuitive, and the player doesn't even play ''as'' Alice—rather, as five residents of Underland (though they do fortunately consist of fan-favorites such as the Mad Hatter), who have to make their way through the entire map while preventing [[The Load|Alice]] from being captured. It's not horrible, but it's extremely disappointing.
* Two of the games from the ''[[American Girls Collection]]'' for the Nintendo DS, namely ''Julie Finds a Way'' and ''Kit Mystery Challenge'' were given scathing reviews, mainly due to piss-poor gameplay and controls. The ''American Girls Premiere'' game for the PC and Mac was [[So Bad It's Good/Video Games|a different story, though]].
* For the 2012 Battleship movie, they are of course releasing a tie-in game. Is it based on the classic turn based original? Maybe naval combat like the last game to
* For a short time, Burger King had three Xbox (360) games that starred their namesake [[The Burger King|King]] character. Gameplay was simplistic and boring, the graphics were totally underwhelming for the platform and reviews ranged from bad to awful. Their only redeeming quality was that they were $4 and the main character was [[Nightmare Fuel|Creepy Burger King Mask Guy]] which puts them dangerously close to [[So Bad It's Good]] territory. (The game ''Sneak King'' involved ''sneaking up on'' hungry people and ''forcing'' them to eat Burger King food.) With these in mind, they sold millions and became [[Cult Classic|cult classics]] for many gamers.
* ''[[Deal or No Deal]]''. If you don't want to follow [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nxysFE2_kDs this video] out of fear of the [[Cluster F-Bomb]], then just lots and lots of clicking on briefcases.
Line 141 ⟶ 161:
** The DS version somehow manages be a [[Porting Disaster]] of such a simple concept: [[Game Breaker|the numbers are not random, but based on predetermined patterns]].
** The Ticket Machine however is quite cruel, you actually have to spend another set of credits halfway and its payout can be a bit cruel. However it is one of the more popular ticket games in the arcade.
* ''[[Doctor Who]]: Return to Earth'' by Asylum Entertainment on the Wii. The gameplay consists, for 90% of the game, of shooting crystals at '''floating smiley faces''' with the Sonic Screwdriver (which, on top of being completely nonsensical for ''Doctor Who'', is even more bizarre than the [[Out of Character]] Amiga platformer ''Dalek Attack'') and shoddy stealth while dealing with an [[Camera Screw|uncooperative camera]] and severe framerate lag on some occasions, the graphics look like they came from an upscaled PlayStation One game with special effects that make the classic series look like modern Summer blockbusters and a decent dosing of [[Uncanny Valley]] animations, the plot's an incoherent excuse to have Cybermen ''and'' Daleks in the same story, [[Artificial Stupidity|reducing their in-game intelligences to herp-derping, walls-staring levels]] in the process, the level designs involve tedious backtracking to fill up on crystals and (in the endgame) messy masses of floating platforms with reckless disregard for in-universe sense and the mandatory ball maze minigames are frustating enough to make you want to toss your Wiimote. The only positives are the Murray Gold soundtrack and the Sonic Screwdriver Wiimote that was released alongside it. The kicker? Nintendo reportedly paid [[The BBC]] £10,000,000 for exclusive ''Doctor Who'' games, and yet the '''free''' <ref>(if you live in the UK, that is)</ref> ''Adventure Games'' have far better production values. As the Official Nintendo Magazine in the UK [https://web.archive.org/web/20141007234959/http://www.officialnintendomagazine.co.uk/21460/reviews/doctor-who-wii-game-review-review/ put it], Asylum are "people who hate games, sci-fi, and everything decent about humanity". Ouch.
** The [[Nintendo DS]] game ''Evacuation Earth'', released at the same time as ''Return to Earth'', wasn't nearly as badly received...although few considered it to be anything better than [[So Okay It's Average]].
* The [[Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1 (video game)|adaptation of ''
* The ''[[Eragon (video game)|Eragon]]'' video game was somewhat bad, though the [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FwOJZCSn5rk soundtrack] is ''[[Crowning Music of Awesome|amazing]]''. Not surprisingly, the music was also the only half-decent thing about the movie.
** [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=finUoxop0Pg The Harry Potter games have this as well.]
*** It should be remembered that the Eragon games for Both Game Boy Advanced and DS were both radically different from the console/pc version, and were actually pretty darn good games. The GBA being a classic RPG with turn-based combat and the DS being a 3-D adventure game, which was really rather good for a DS game.
* Speaking of ''[[Ghostbusters the Video Game
* ''[[Hell's Kitchen|Hells Kitchen]]'' received a PC game adaptation that was, while not horrible, decidedly sub-par. Spoony severely disliked it, noting that star Gordon Ramsay looked weird and pretty nearly the entire point of the show was lost — there's no competition factor whatsoever and it's almost impossible to make Ramsay angry unless you're a damn perfectionist who wants gold stars.
* Awesome as the ''[[Iron Man (film)|Iron Man]]'' films are, the next-gen adaptations of them are shockingly bad. The first game was riddled with poor controls, horrendous graphics, bugs that could force you to restart, bad hit detection, and placed you on maps where there was literally nowhere you ''weren't'' under constant fire from respawning enemies, even though [[Death Is a Slap on The Wrist]]. The second game cleaned things up somewhat and threw in War Machine as second player, but it wasn't much better than mediocre. ''How did they take a game where you fly through the air in an invincible power suit at the speed of sound while blasting terrorists with missiles from ten thousand feet and make it '''bad'''???''
Line 168 ⟶ 188:
* ''Transformers: The Video Game'' (the one of [[Transformers (film)|the 2007 live-action movie]]) wasn't merely bad (a 15-foot robot could get stuck on a broken tree branch), it was inexorably ''boring''. Most of the game involved driving to your next destination within a time limit with a car that handles like an ice-cream van in an Alaskan winter without snow-chains. Oh, and kicking things until they explode. And the graphics were pretty mediocre, too.
** The video game based on ''Dark of the Moon'' (which is more or less a [[All There in the Manual|prequel/sidestory]] of the movie) was developed by the same folks behind the well-received ''[[Transformers: War for Cybertron]]'', and yet it got hit with some less than average review scores. The main issue? It's a ''[[Transformers]]'' game where you '''don't transform.'''
*** Transformation does seem to be available in multiplayer.
* ''[[Looney Tunes]]: Acme Arsenal'' could've been a decent ''[[Ratchet and Clank]]'' clone if it wasn't marred by bland visuals, music that ranges from bad to nonexistant (save for the remix of the old Looney Tunes factory theme), bad enemies (the final boss is colossal before you fight it but shrinks down to less than half as large during the actual fight, and you can beat it in one or two minutes), and an abysmal plot with an equally-abysmal ending.
** ''[[Looney Tunes]]: Cartoon Conductor'' was a boring music game for the DS with little to no replayability or fun.
* ''[[Avatar (film)|Avatar]]'''s game (by [[Ubisoft]]) is visually amazing, but lacking in many of the final details of the film, likely due to being released before it. Some of these are minor things, while others are...not. It's by no means the very worst as licensed games go, but still has a storyline that both makes no sense and in places openly contradicts canon, suffers from some very bad voice acting and mistakes with the Na'vi language, as well as inexplicably low-quality models and textures for the Na'vi which really stand out against the rest.
* There was a cheap movie cash-in DS game based on ''[[Harry Potter and
* Mostly averted with the main ''[[FIFA Soccer]]'' games but the [[World Cup]] and [[European Championship]] games tend to suffer from this up until the ''Euro 2008'' game.
* The ''[[NCIS]]'' video game was very poor and described as "a point and click adventure without the venture".
* Usually, the ''[[Super Robot Wars]]'' franchise is a great crossover adapting many [[Humongous Mecha]] series. But the ball was dropped '''hard''' for ''[[Super Robot Wars K]]''. Between flaws like the [[Scrappy Mechanic|malfunctioning]] Partner Battle system, [[Plot Hole|poor story]][[Cosmic Deadline|writing]] and a main character that [[The Scrappy|fans hardly like]], it's no wonder that this game is considered the worst entry.
* ''[[Napoleon Dynamite|Napoleon Dynamite: The Game]]''. With most of the games on this page, you can at least understand ''why'' they were made, most of them being developed to cash in on some movie or TV show that was popular at the time. In this case, it’s hard to imagine such logic being behind this game’s creation. This is just a bunch of mini-games with characters from the famous [[Cult Classic]], and has very little of the humor of the source material. One review, from GameSpot, called it "irrelevant", "a poor effort", and not "even halfway amusing" giving it a score of 4.0/10.
== Specific Companies ==
* [[Acclaim]] and LJN Toys (which merged in 1990) were really, ''really'' bad for this during the 8- and 16-bit days. A similar [[Video Game]] company, [[THQ]], has gotten better with it over the years, but Acclaim didn't learn its lesson and continued to produce crap until its eventual bankruptcy (and limited [[Revival]] as a distributor of Korean [[Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game|MMORPG]]s). LJN and Acclaim were so bad at this that they received extreme scorn as [[The Angry Video Game Nerd]]'s most hated game companies.
* Brash Entertainment did ''nothing '''but''''' these games, with their ''[[Alvin and The Chipmunks]]'' and ''[[Jumper (novel)|Jumper]]'' tie-ins receiving some of the absolute lowest scores this generation. Naturally, the studio was quickly shut down 18 months after being formed.
** Incidentally, Brash were working on a ''[[Saw]]'' game just as they went under; Konami eventually snagged the publishing rights from their ruin and the final game ended up being somewhat decent. Well, except for the combat system.
Line 201 ⟶ 221:
[[Category:Videogame Culture]]
[[Category:The Problem with Licensed Games]]
{{DEFAULTSORT:Problem with Licensed Games, The}}
| |||