Opinion: Worst vdeo game based on a movie?

[TheDarkOne]

I thought I should start this a companion to my other thread. We all know most of the LJN games are the top of the list for the worst, so what are some of the second-worst?

I'd have the say the so-called "Super" Star Wars games for the SNES. They only loosely followed the plot of the movie and for me just got boring after a while. That is worth noting--for me to get bored with anything Star Wars-themed is something big.

So, let's hear what you think!

[rock_nog]

Enter the Matrix. My God, why did I ever buy that game? There are worse games out there, but I don't think there's ever been a worse game that I actually owned. And yet, I played it ALL THE TIME. I couldn't get enough of it back in college. Got bored, distracted, played something else, came back to it after ignoring it a few months, and it wasn't then until I realized what a truly godawful buggy mess it truly was. At that point, I could barely force myself to play through the first level, despite the fact that I had beaten the game many times over. Fortunately, I later got Path of Neo for the PS2, which, while still not a perfect game, was worlds above Enter the Matrix. Then my no-good-lousy-stinking brother-in-law "borrowed" it and I haven't seen it since (sister's husband, just to be clear - they also swiped my copy of Clerks 2, and my VHS collection). Just kidding, he's actually an alright dude, just miss my game.

[mrz84]

I'm gonna be the first person to mention it. E.T. on Atari. That is all.

[DarkFlameWolf]

I'm gonna be the first person to mention it. E.T. on Atari. That is all.

/endthread

[TheDarkOne]

I'm gonna be the first person to mention it. E.T. on Atari. That is all.

I think you just found one of the worst of the worst. I think there is only one other that compares with that for sheer awfulness, and that would be their other movie-based game, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

[Brasel]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9BdV6WmGQc

I haven't played E.T. myself, but this video makes me think it may not be all that bad.

I'm going to go with Ghostbusters on the NES. I was such a huge fan of the movie, I was extremely excited to play the game. I was disappointed when I played it, to say the least.

[VEL]

I haven't played E.T. myself, but this video makes me think it may not be all that bad.



I used to play E.T. all the time when I was younger it was probably my favorite game back then.

[TheDarkOne]

I received the E.T. game for Christmas one year, and although I played and somewhat enjoyed it, even at that young age, I could see it had little or no similarity to the movie. What made the game fun was the same thing as with Raiders of the Lost Ark, it was the adventure factor, and not how closely it followed the movie. There was little to connect E.T. the game to the movie, and less still with Raiders, but they were still enjoyable in their own right.

Some have said that LEGO Star Wars and Indiana Jones games were bad, but I disagree. To an extent, they did follow the movies and are quite fun to play besides. Even the mysterious and fearsome Darth Maul looks cute in LEGO form.

[Brasel]

LEGO Star Wars was awesome. I played it on PSP when I was in Iraq. I was done with the LEGO series after that, though. Every game seemed to do the exact same thing.

I have no problem with a game not following a movie 100%. Sometimes that's incredibly hard to do. You'd end up with way too little content that way. I love the Super Star Wars games, even if they're incredibly freaking hard. If I get to play as my favorite movie or TV show characters, and the gameplay is good, I couldn't care less how well the game follows the movie story. Example: Willow for the NES doesn't follow the movie's story at all. I love both the movie and the game. Watch out for a review of that game soon. :)

[SUCCESSOR]

LEGO Star Wars was awesome. I played it on PSP when I was in Iraq. I was done with the LEGO series after that, though. Every game seemed to do the exact same thing.

I have no problem with a game not following a movie 100%. Sometimes that's incredibly hard to do. You'd end up with way too little content that way. I love the Super Star Wars games, even if they're incredibly freaking hard. If I get to play as my favorite movie or TV show characters, and the gameplay is good, I couldn't care less how well the game follows the movie story. Example: Willow for the NES doesn't follow the movie's story at all. I love both the movie and the game. Watch out for a review of that game soon. :)

Not a huge fan of the Lego games but I enjoyed the Lego Harry Potter games.

Ugh, Willow. I never really got the love for that movie. It isn't very good and even though i grew up with it I doesn't hold a special place in my heart.

I've never really played any terrible movie videogames.

[TheDarkOne]

I never played Willow, but since I wasn't a big fan of the movie, I wasn't too interested in the game, either. That being said, what this thread was meant to be about was games that are supposedly based on movies, but have very little or no relation to the actual move. Just like with the other thread, where movies made from games have little or no relation to the game.

Another bad one - Star Wars: Masters Of Teras Kasi. I know this doesn't actually reference any of the movies, and chronologically it doesn't fit anywhere in the Star Wars timeline. As a Star Wars game, it was bad, and as a fighting game, it was worse. The only thing cool about this game was the ability to unlock Mara Jade and Jodo Kast as playable characters. But I can create them as custom characters in LEGO Star Wars so who needs this?

[The Satellite]

I'd have the say the so-called "Super" Star Wars games for the SNES. They only loosely followed the plot of the movie and for me just got boring after a while. That is worth noting--for me to get bored with anything Star Wars-themed is something big.

You're going to talk about these games' inaccuracies to the movies and not mention the Famicom Star Wars game where you fight Darth Vader in the Sand Crawler and then he turns into a scorpion?

On that note, I'm siding with Brasel here, the Super Star Wars games were awesome, with super accurate sound effects, music, and voice clips. It was very immersive and actually felt like Star Wars. Were liberties taken? Yes, but they were taken for the sake of gameplay, and ya know what? It was very fun. Hard? Definitely, and I won't pretend it didn't have its cheap moments, but they were far from terrible games, with the Return of the Jedi entry being my favorite.

As for what I think is the worst video game based on a movie? Well, there's plenty of options if we're including games I haven't played, but of only games I've played? ... I dunno, I haven't played a whole lot of bad movie-based games, most of the ones I've gotten my hands on I've lucked out on because they were quite fine games, such as the Super Star Wars games or the Gamecube Lord of the Rings games, or Spider-Man 2, which is a contender for the best video game based on a movie. Um... guess I can go with Batman Forever on the Super Nintendo, that one wasn't very good, then again its movie was also of questionable quality...

[TheDarkOne]

I never got that far into the Famicon/NES version of Star Wars, so I didn't know about that.

I'm not saying the games themselves were bad, far from it. My point is that it does not accurately follow the movie storyline. For example, there is a stage in Super Star Wars where Luke Skywalker must battle his way through a Jawa sandcrawler in order to rescue R2-D2. Did that happen in the movie? No. And the only "cheap" part I found in that game was the next-to-impossible final level.

And I could also mention games such as Friday the 13th, The Karate Kid, Back to the Future, just to name a few.

[The Satellite]

I probably should've clarified further when I mentioned the Famicom version of Star Wars, since it's different from the game America got on the NES. Which was also terrible but in a different way. If you've never seen any Angry Video Game Nerd videos, he did a video on several Star Wars games from the NES/SNES era.

[Brasel]

Oh yeah. Batman Forever is pretty terrible. I have it. It's like they tried to make a fighting game into a beatem up platformer. It just didn't work.

[TheDarkOne]

Batman Forever was way too different from the movie. And it wasn't even a very good game on it's own.

Does anyone remember the attempt to make Timecop into a video game? That was another epic fail, IMO.

[rock_nog]

I used to love the Super Star Wars games, but they've... well, you know how you can hate a game but it grows on you over time? I kinda have the opposite feeling about the Super Star Wars games. If only they weren't controller-throwingly insane in terms of difficulty, they'd be among my favorite SNES games.

What I find interesting about licensed games is, while I struggle to come up with a video-game-based movie I can tolerate, I can easily pick a few actually good licensed games just off the top of my head - Spider-man 2, Goldeneye, Batman on the NES... I always thought that was kind of funny, that despite their reputation, there are actually a lot of good movie-based games, while movies based on games struggle.

Oh, and in regards to Lego, I gotta say, I had gotten kinda burned out on Lego after the Star Wars games, though they were excellent, but man, Lego Marvel Heroes is pretty sweet. The GTA-esque sandbox environment and the chance to play as all your favorite Marvel characters (with a tad more variety than the "lightsaber or blaster" options from the Star Wars games) makes it a fun little game in its own right, almost to the point where you're like, "Oh man, if someone did this but without the Lego license, this would be so friggin' awesome!" Not to say there's anything wrong with it in Lego form, I just mean if the combat had been spruced up a bit and whatnot, it'd be incredible.

[TheDarkOne]

I have to agree with you, the only problem I have with the Lego Star Wars games is...well, nothing. I tried the demo version at a store out of sheer morbid curiosity. It was only the first level, and missing some crucial things (like Minikit canisters), but I immediately went searching for a copy of the full version that same day (didn't find until a week later).

And yes, the difficulty levels for the Super Star Wars series was insane, but none so controller-throwingly infuriating as the Death Star run on the first one. I had to resort to buying a Pro Action Replay to actually finish the game...and the ending was hardly worth the effort.

[Ventus]

Mostly any Star War game that has come out has been pure shit from what I've seen. Just sooooo dang boring actually Star Wars in general just was not my cup of awesome sauce.

[rock_nog]

Eh, if you're not really into Star Wars in general, I can understand the lack of appeal of the games - what would be interesting about reenacting scenes from a movie you didn't like? That said, I can come up with a pretty extensive list of Star Wars games that are actually quite good. In fact, the list would be so long, I'm not even sure it's worth bothering.

There's the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series, X-Wing/Tie Fighter, Rogue Squadron series, KOTOR, Republic Commando, Battlefront, Shadow of the Empire, Force Unleashed, and the original arcade game... Not all of those are masterpieces mind you, but I've had fun with all of them - but yeah, if Star Wars isn't really your cup of tea, I'm not really sure I could recommend any of them because I don't know how many of them really hold up if you're just not into Star Wars.

[TheDarkOne]

The list of Star Wars games that aren't any good would be much shorter. Off the top of my head, I can think of only a few, all of which have been mentioned. But this thread of is for movie-based games is general, not just Star Wars, so let's talk about another one--namely, Jurassic Park on the Sega Genesis. I think the only thing that saved that game from being a total crap-fest was the ability to play as a velociraptor--and even that lost it's charm pretty fast. I understand the SNES version of the game was very different, but I know very little about it, so I can't judge that one.

[rock_nog]

Jurassic Park for the SNES was... Alright, from what I remember. The first-person sections were a pain, but I honestly don't remember it being either particularly good or bad. I had the NES version, though, and that was definitely bad. It kinda suffers the Super Star Wars problem of just being plain too difficult. All the enemies took tons of ammo to kill, and there was never enough ammo to kill them with.

[TheDarkOne]

Almost any movie-based game made for the NES was pretty bad. I can't think of any good ones off the top of my head, and there was a number of them. Back To The Future (both versions) sticks in my mind as being one of the worst. There was also a SNES game called "Super Back To The Future" that was only released in Japan, so I know little about that one.

[King Aquamentus]

The SNES game was actually pretty good, albeit very generic.

Here's some good or at least decent NES games based on films!

Top Gun (seriously)
Little Nemo: The Dream Master
Batman
The Goonies (Famicom. For the rest of the world, Goonies II)
Gremlins II
Robocop
The Little Mermaid
New Ghostbusters II

[TheDarkOne]

Okay, I have looked into most of the games on the above list and yes, they are decent ones. Even Little Mermaid was fun to play, in a "be a kid again for a little while" sort of way. Top Gun was...well, I guess if you like that sort of game, it was good, but not really my thing. I was unable to find anything about the Little Nemo game. It surprises me that there would have been a NES games based on that move--when it came out, even the SNES was obsolete.

[rock_nog]

I was unable to find anything about the Little Nemo game. It surprises me that there would have been a NES games based on that move--when it came out, even the SNES was obsolete.
Technically, the movie came out in 1989 in Japan, and the video game was released in the US a year later. I mean, in that regard, it's a little strange because the game came out before the movie it was based on was released in the States. But still, the game did come out before the release of the SNES, it was just a couple of years before the movie saw a US distribution. Actually, I remember that being very confusing to me as a kid. I knew the game existed, though I had never played it, and then the movie came out, and I had no idea that the game had been based on the movie. It was always, "Huh, the game and the movie have similar titles, I wonder if they're related," but I never thought the game was based on the movie because the movie had come out after the game, and of course this was before Wikipedia, and I had no idea the movie was made in Japan and had already been released there.

[Tamamo]

Home Alone Lost In Newyork

[TheDarkOne]

Technically, the movie came out in 1989 in Japan, and the video game was released in the US a year later. I mean, in that regard, it's a little strange because the game came out before the movie it was based on was released in the States. But still, the game did come out before the release of the SNES, it was just a couple of years before the movie saw a US distribution. Actually, I remember that being very confusing to me as a kid. I knew the game existed, though I had never played it, and then the movie came out, and I had no idea that the game had been based on the movie. It was always, "Huh, the game and the movie have similar titles, I wonder if they're related," but I never thought the game was based on the movie because the movie had come out after the game, and of course this was before Wikipedia, and I had no idea the movie was made in Japan and had already been released there.

That was my mistake, I was confusing the movie Little Nemo with the movie FINDING Nemo. Oops. The titles of the two movies got a little jumbled in my head. If you think about when Finding Nemo came out my post makes a little more sense.

As for Home Alone LINY, don't even get me started! The movie was already bad (just a re-hash of the first one), and the game even worse.

[rock_nog]

Oh oh OH, okay... yeah, it makes a LOT more sense now. Your post seemed a little odd, but I thought that was just because of confusion owing to the fact that the game came out before the movie it was based on, which yeah, that confused me, too. I mean, I didn't get why you were saying the SNES was obsolete, but again, I was kinda just thinking that you were thinking the game was released after the movie, and had also somehow mixed up the NES and SNES. Which yeah, if you substitute NES for SNES, and assume the Little Nemo game came out after the movie, the system would've been obsolete by the time the game came out. Too many Nemos, man.

[Tamamo]

For me I've always been a been a huge fantasy fan. So when they made an incredible film adaption of Lion Witch and Wardrobe I was hyped for a video game released. Such video game did not meet my expectations at all.

[TheDarkOne]

There was a video game based on The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe? I loved that book (all the Narnia books, in fact), and two out of the three movies based on it were good, too. But I never knew anything about a game.