Favorite LICENSED GAMES: TV, Books & Movie HIDDEN GEMS?

[Metal Jesus]

Generally games based on movies, TV, etc. are poorly received, though some are hidden gems. What are your favorite games based on licensed properties and why?

 

 

GAMES SHOWN:

Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon (SFC)

NBA Hang Time (N64)

The Terminator (SCD)

MegaForce (Atari2600)

LOTR: War in the North (PS3)

LOTR: Conquest (X360)

Willow (Arcade)

King Kong 2 (Famicom)

South Park: Let's Go Tower Defense Play! (X360)

Wendy Every Witch Way (GBC)

Choukousoku GranDoll (PS1)

Ghostbusters (Wii)

Alice Madness Returns (X360)

James Bond 007: Blood Stone (X360)

Star Wars: Republic Commando (Xbox)

Obviously there are hundreds more we could choose. Which licensed games would you include?

[Tanooki]

You'll find this one out of completely nowhere, but Jin here convinced me if I ever saw it around in the wild (and oddly enough rapidly happened) to grab DragonHeart for Nintendo Game Boy.

 

I'll leave it to you to fire up youtube to get into all the lay of it, but needless to say this game is right out of the late 80s/earlier 90s PC playbook and using the movie license to do so. You start out in an open area, walk the '3D' map to find your town. Once inside it takes on a King's Quest 5 sorta look to it, a point and click. Pop into houses to get clues or other events. You'll get a possible sub-task or to two to move things along. Out back in the wild again some people roam to find, they can help you too. Eventually you enter this cave system for the dragon. To finish the stage it's a side scrolling 1on1 boss fight with 2 life bars. Hack with the sword, defend with the shield from bites and fire. It's actually very well made, never thought I'd see something like that on a Gameboy.

[+Cafeman]

I always liked the Batman Returns games for SCD and SNES, which are very different from one another.

 

And Spider man 2 on Xbox. And Hulk Ultimate Destruction on Xbox.

[cybercylon]

If one were to include a South Park game... Stick of Truth

[Inky]

South Park: Stick of Truth was probably the best SOuth Park game ever released.

[RARusk]

Where to begin.....

 

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay and Assault on Dark Athena are well done games if just a little easy. The fact that Vin Diesel and multiple name actors lend their voices to them make this even better. Although I haven't read the comic books I also liked The Darkness. BTW, all three of these games were made by the same studio, Starbreeze Studios, and I liked these games enough to write text guides on them for GameFAQs.

 

Turok 2: Seeds of Evil I felt was not only the single best looking game on the N64 I also thought it was one of the best. Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion was also pretty good. And let's not forget Star Wars: Rogue Squadron. A little surprised that Goldeneye didn't get a mention but maybe you wanted to focus on games other than that since GE is probably the most famous of the licensed titles.

 

Going further back there is also Red Storm Rising, based on the late Tom Clancy's book, for the Commodore 64. MicroProse kicked some serious ass back in the day and that is probably their best work. BTW, they held a contest called the Red Storm Rising Ultimate Challenge back in 1988 and I finished eighth overall. My copies of the battle disks are hosted here on AtariAge somewhere.

 

And this old blog post goes into detail into several licensed games I felt were good.

[Duke75]

That GranDoll game looks pretty cool. I'll have to look into that one...

 

The Warriors on Xbox/PS2/Gamecube. I think this was the best game to come out of that "let's make games out of classic movies" fad that industry went through during that generation.

 

This developer called The Collective created a really good beat-em-up engine for the Xbox-exclusive Buffy the Vampire Slayer game. You can throw holy water in a pool and then toss vampires in for instant kills, break chairs to create stakes, and generally do a lot of cool improvised stuff. The company went on to use the engine for Indiana Jones and the Emperor's Tomb, which is also pretty cool, but Buffy is the better game.

 

The C64 had a really interesting version of Alien. You would have to gather supplies to defend yourself and escape the ship but the identity of the crewmember who gives birth to the alien and the identity of the killer android are randomized every time you play, so Ripley could be dead at the start and Ash might be one of the good guys. And you would have to manage the mental states of your characters to try and keep them from going catatonic or something as things get more stressful. It's slow-paced but I like the idea of a game that takes the premise of a movie and goes in its own direction instead of rehashing the plot like so many do.

[StopDrop&Retro]

Alfa Romeo Racing Italiano - this is a caR-PG. You level up your driver and upgrade his equipment which affects RPG stats and helps you get an advantage over your opponents during the race. An amazing experience, it's only let down by iffy driving physics and substandard graphics.

 

Goldeneye Rogue Agent - everyone says this game was bad, mostly because the title is trying to cash in and doesn't deliver. But it's a decent game, not the best by far, but not as bad as people say it is. The alternate timeline and playing as the bad guy was an interesting angle too.

[+davidcalgary29]

Can anything possibly top Infocom's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Infocom will always be the most modern of games.

 

The A8/C64/Speccy game of The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Age 13 3/4 also worked surprisingly well.

[Metal Jesus]

Can anything possibly top Infocom's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? Infocom will always be the most modern of games.

 

 

Oh man, that's a great answer! Wish I would have thought of that!

[enoofu]

Here is some of my favorites

 

Shin Kidō Senki Gundam Wing: Endless Duel (新機動戦記ガンダムW Endless Duel) - Super Famicom (1995)

One of the best Fighting Games on the SNES Platform

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2 Arcade (1989) or NES (1990)

Insane beat em up and highly loved too

Batman Arkham

Batman and it is rocks, enough said

Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader Gamecube (2001)

one of the best space shooters of all time

Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn PC (2000)

Insanely in fun RPG

The Simpson Arcade (1991)

Actually good Simpson game for once

Planescape Torment PC (1999)

One of the most insanely in-depth RPGs to this day

Warhammer 40000 Dawn of War PC

One of the best RTS of all Time

 

Some other good games

The Witcher series

Star Wars Knight of the Republic

Emperor Battle For Dune

Aliens Vs Predator

Vampire: The Masquerade games

Marvel vs Capcom

Goldeneye 007

Edited August 10, 2017 by enoofu

[Metal Jesus]

Vampire: The Masquerade games

 

 

This! Really wish I would said Vampire Masquerade Bloodlines... Even flawed, that game was AMAZING!

[Shawn]

IF ERROR = "HIDDEN GEMS" GOTO :BAN

 

:BAN

 

NUKE USER ACCOUNT FROM SPACE

 

^z

[Metal Jesus]

IF ERROR = "HIDDEN GEMS" GOTO :BAN

 

:BAN

 

NUKE USER ACCOUNT FROM SPACE

 

^z

 

10 CLS

20 PRINT "Helloooooooooooooo, world!"

30 PRINT "I'm learning about commands in BASIC."

40 PRINT "This text is being printed via the PRINT command."

50 PRINT "On the next line, I'll use CLS."

60 CLS "Now the next word would be PRINT."

70 PRINT "Finally, on line 80, I'll use END."

80 END "And return to PRINT"

90 PRINT "Now my program is over."

[SlidellMan]

Ducktales (NES)

The Addams Family Values (Super NES)

Goldeneye (N64)

Sailor Moon: Another Story (Super NES)

Darkwing Duck (Game Boy)

Road Runner's Death Valley Rally (Super NES)

Ghostbusters (Commodore 64)

Sailor Moon S (Game Gear)

X-Men Mutant Apocalypse (Super NES)

Konami's X-Men, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Simpsons, and Bucky O'Hare* (Arcade)

*Fun fact = Just like the show--which also happens to be based off of a comic--has the voice actors from Beast Wars, Shadow Raiders, ReBoot, and the '90s Capcom cartoons. (Scott McNeill as Deadeye, Long John Baldry as the Air Marshall, Richard Newman as Toad Borg, Garry Chalk as Al Negator, and Campbell Lane as Cyborg Spider.)

[spacecadet]

Many of the more recent Batman games are great.

 

The old Star Wars X-Wing and TIE Fighter PC games were awesome. In the arcades, the original vector Star Wars game is a classic, and Sega's vector Star Trek game wasn't bad either. TRON was one of my favorites at the time too, though part of that was probably because the joystick lit up. That was kind of novel at the time. One of the first instances of gratuitous gamer lighting!

 

Back to modern games, I really like both Wangan Midnight and the Initial D series in Japan, though Wangan Midnight is basically Shutokou Battle/Tokyo Xtreme Racer with licensed characters (but then I liked those games too, maybe even more!).

 

If you're counting sports stuff (and I saw in the video that it seemed like you were), I really love the Jikkyō Powerful Pro Yakyū series in Japan also, though I can't fully appreciate it because it's so dense and has so many Japanese menus. But I can play all the quick games I like! And it's just a really fun, really goofy but oddly realistic baseball game.

 

In the States, my favorite licensed sports series of all time is probably MLB The Show. I can't remember which year it was, but there was one iteration of it that I played for more than 300 hours. I played an entire career, not every game but probably half the games each season, for about 25 seasons. At the end, I had the 9th best career of any player in the country. I shattered basically every record in the books except stolen bases. At something like age 45, the game forced me to retire, even though I'd hit 60 home runs the year before and batted .345 and still had 99 ratings for every attribute. I was pissed!

Edited August 14, 2017 by spacecadet

[Greg2600]

Good choices on the video. I still prefer Everything or Nothing as the BEST story-driven James Bond game.

[Metal Jesus]

Good choices on the video. I still prefer Everything or Nothing as the BEST story-driven James Bond game.

 

 

I would probably go for Everything or Nothing as well... that game is so much fun... I should play it again

[Shawn]

 

10 CLS

20 PRINT "Helloooooooooooooo, world!"

30 PRINT "I'm learning about commands in BASIC."

40 PRINT "This text is being printed via the PRINT command."

50 PRINT "On the next line, I'll use CLS."

60 CLS "Now the next word would be PRINT."

70 PRINT "Finally, on line 80, I'll use END."

80 END "And return to PRINT"

90 PRINT "Now my program is over."

 

You forgot the youtube link.

[Silverfleet]

Watched this last night. As always, great video!

 

Here's a few of my favorites:

 

Robocop vs. Terminator (Genesis): Good old fashioned side scrolling action where you shoot everything that's moving. This one was tons of fun, and I liked the Genesis version the best.

 

Predator 2 (Genesis): Some say this is a mediocre title, and they may be right, but there's something about this one that I like. It plays like a poor man's Zombies Ate My Neighbors, and when the Predator's laser sights converge on a victim, they explode in the weirdest, grossest way that you just have to see.

 

Popeye (Colecovision): I don't know what it is about this game, but it's been one of my favorites since I was a very young kid. I love the arcade and NES versions as well, but the Colecovision port was my first.

 

TMNT (Arcade): It was a rite of passage to beat this game with three buddies when I was a kid. For a while in the late 80's and early 90's, it seemed like all my friends had birthday parties at arcades, and the first task after pizza and the passing out of tokens was to find TMNT and dominate it! The Simpsons arcade game gets an honorable mention for the very same reasons.