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Licenced Games - A Celebration

JamesC

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Ivanho

Ivanho

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Being the total Star Wars nerd that I am, pretty much anything in that Universe was going to be bought.  Seeing GC Rogue Squadron in a shop window on demo made me buy a GC.  The SNES games, pretty much all of them up to Battlefront 2, which I still play.

 

The only one I didn’t buy was that Street Fighter knockoff on PS1, borrowed it from a mate and returned it the next day.  Just awful.

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Rex Grossman

Rex Grossman

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20 hours ago, JamesC said:

I suspect the 'licened games are crap' thing comes from the likes of ET on the 2600 and those notorious LJN games on the NES. But even back in those early days there were cool licenced games being made for other systems.


I think in this country the perceived wisdom that licensed games were bad stems from the likes of Ocean and to a lesser extent US Gold releasing rush-job games to tie in with almost every suitable property in the 8-bit and 16-bit home micro era.

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papalazarou

papalazarou

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Batman (spectrum) the first game I played when I got my specky for xmas- at the time I was amazed by the “open worldness” the grappling gun gave me being able to go up and down platforms (ah bless my innocence back then!)
 

Mickey Mouse - Castle of illusion (mega drive) will always hold a special place for me as it was the game that came with my mega drive and the first console game I ever completed (still love playing through it)

 

ghostbusters (Xbox 360) basically the ghostbuster 3 movie we never got (before afterlife came out) god story and set pieces and a decent action game (helped by having the original cast doing the voices ) the whole stay puff level is my fav.

 

The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay (Xbox 360) a great action game that I would give anything for a next gen remake off

 

Mad Max (Xbox 1) an open world action game that captures the feel of the mad max movies  perfectly yet still one that a lot of peeps haven’t played - one that can be picked usually very cheaply in the various Xbox sales hint hint!!!

 

Star Wars squadrons (via vr oculus quest 2)  - on flat screen this is just an average Star Wars flight sim esp after x-wing/tie fighter/ alliance…. But… in vr this is a Star Wars fans dream come true, the feeling if actually being in the various ships cockpits is second to none (I remember playing this and my wife tell me to shut up as apparently as I was doing was yelling “hold on r2 hold on” while playing the various missions as I was getting into it to much )

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Big_H

Big_H

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The speccy was a treasure trove of ace licensed stuff in the late 80s, a good mix of arcade conversions and movie adaptations. Usually it was Ocean who would put them out, and for the most part they all received the coveted Your Sinclair Megagame award. I'll not bore anyone with a list, but if pushed I could easily just rattle off at least fifteen brilliant games off the top of my head.

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JamesC

JamesC

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1 hour ago, Rex Grossman said:


I think in this country the perceived wisdom that licensed games were bad stems from the likes of Ocean and to a lesser extent US Gold releasing rush-job games to tie in with almost every suitable property in the 8-bit and 16-bit home micro era.

Even this seems a little bit unfair.

Looking at the Wikipedia page, it seems Ocean did about 40 licenced games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Software#Success_of_film-licensed_games

I haven't played them all but there are at least 8 on that list which I remember being pretty decent (some very good indeed), such as the aforementioned Cobra and Batman games. Of the remaining titles, while I'm sure there are some stinkers, I'd expect a few more to be fairly decent. Even if we get to just a 50/50 split on Ocean games being good/bad, that's a far cry from licensed games being terrible in general.

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Rex Grossman

Rex Grossman

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11 minutes ago, JamesC said:

Even this seems a little bit unfair.

Looking at the Wikipedia page, it seems Ocean did about 40 licenced games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Software#Success_of_film-licensed_games

I haven't played them all but there are at least 8 on that list which I remember being pretty decent (some very good indeed), such as the aforementioned Cobra and Batman games. Of the remaining titles, while I'm sure there are some stinkers, I'd expect a few more to be fairly decent. Even if we get to just a 50/50 split on Ocean games being good/bad, that's a far cry from licensed games being terrible in general.

I agree to a certain extent but there were still plenty of bad ones that had a huge marketing budget which led to many disappointed customers.

 

ET on the 2600 and LJN’s output in the NES didn’t really register over here like Ocean did.

 

I think that’s something we’re slowly absorbing over here because most retro channels on YouTube are so US-centric. Notorious LJN trash such as Friday the 13th didn’t even come out in the UK.

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JamesC

JamesC

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39 minutes ago, Rex Grossman said:

I agree to a certain extent but there were still plenty of bad ones that had a huge marketing budget which led to many disappointed customers.

 

ET on the 2600 and LJN’s output in the NES didn’t really register over here like Ocean did.

 

I think that’s something we’re slowly absorbing over here because most retro channels on YouTube are so US-centric. Notorious LJN trash such as Friday the 13th didn’t even come out in the UK.

Oh absolutely, that US-centric view has certainly become the defacto history even though much of it doesn't really reflect what was happening in the UK. They're always going on about the great video game crash which I was blissfully unaware of, playing on my Speccy and reading Crash magazine.

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phillv85

phillv85

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It does gall me somewhat how Europe gets completely dismissed when a lot of American YouTubers talk. My main two gripes are that what happened in America is assumed to be universal (such as the video game crash etc.) and when games that got released in Japan and Europe are spoken about as "never being released in the West" or being Japanese exclusive. This seems to happen constantly with Alien Soldier on the MD and I recently heard it about Under Defeat HD on the 360/PS3. Do your fucking homework!

 

Anyway, enough moaning some more licensed games I loved:

 

Rogue Squadron on the N64 was epic, the Battle of Hoth was incredible at the time, I'd never seen a movie scene recreated so accurately at that point. 

Aladdin on the MD must be one of the best games on the system, it looks and play wonderfully.

Castle and World of Illusion were both games I played as a kid and loved and they both hold up well today. I really enjoy World of Illusion 2 player.

The Turtles scrolling beat em ups on the SNES and MD (not so much Arcade) are both great fun. I had Hyperstone Heist as a kid and it felt like playing an episode of the cartoon.

Lord of the Rings: Two Towers was a little clunky, but it gave you a reasonable chance to play the Battle for Helms Deep in 3rd person, that was great fun.

 

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Fry Crayola

Fry Crayola

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4 hours ago, JamesC said:

Looking at the Wikipedia page, it seems Ocean did about 40 licenced games https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_Software#Success_of_film-licensed_games

 

Kim Justice did a recent video of all of them - there are 78, although for a few Ocean were merely publishers, while one or two others have tenuous licenses that are included for completion's sake.

 

 

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Fry Crayola

Fry Crayola

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I've read the "licensed games are terrible" line ever since the 8-bit mags, but I don't think they've really been statistically any worse than non-licensed stuff. It's likely they just get more visibility for having a licence, and ususally a slightly heftier marketing push, so the stinkers get noticed more than they might otherwise do. There are also plenty of games where the licence hasn't really been done justice, so there's disappointment that wouldn't exist otherwise.

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b00dles

b00dles

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1 hour ago, Fry Crayola said:

I've read the "licensed games are terrible" line ever since the 8-bit mags, but I don't think they've really been statistically any worse than non-licensed stuff. It's likely they just get more visibility for having a licence, and ususally a slightly heftier marketing push, so the stinkers get noticed more than they might otherwise do. There are also plenty of games where the licence hasn't really been done justice, so there's disappointment that wouldn't exist otherwise.

There was a lot of pretty mediocre platform games for films that weren't remotely linked to jumping about. 

 

I realise you couldn't do much else with the time for film release and blahblah but a lot of the good licensed games could arguably have been non-licensed and still good. 

 

That's why I've always thought of the 90s licensed games (ocean/ u.s. gold) not being all that great. 

 

But there was also a lot worse games around the time too of course. In hindsight they were probably better and more novelty to have than not.

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strider

strider

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Battleship on the Wii, which is based on the dire movie. Where the Xbox 360 and PS3 ones were generic shooters, the Wii and handheld versions are done in the style of Advance Wars. Sure the visuals aren't as nice, but the mechanics are solid.

 

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electricmastro

electricmastro

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14 hours ago, Fry Crayola said:

 

Kim Justice did a recent video of all of them - there are 78, although for a few Ocean were merely publishers, while one or two others have tenuous licenses that are included for completion's sake.

 

 

 

I'd say there were other devs who were consistently worse.

 

Bits Studios - Last Action Hero, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, No Escape, Spider-Man 3: Invasion of the Spider-Slayers, Terminator 2: Judgment Day

 

Gray Matter - Wayne's World, James Bond Jr., Dirty Harry, The Incredible Crash Dummies, The Ren & Stimpy Show: Veediots!

 

Imagineering Inc - Toys, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, Swamp Thing, Home Improvement

 

Probe Entertainment Limited - Bram Stoker's Dracula, Batman Forever, Back to the Future Part III, Judge Dredd, The Pagemaster

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gossi the dog

gossi the dog

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33 minutes ago, phillv85 said:

Capcom did some cracking licensed arcade games.

 

I also forgot about another of my favourite franchises... Initial D, some belting games in that series.

 

Yeah the Sega Initial D games were brilliant, apart from the PS3 version which had far too floaty handling.

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