Movie Licensed Games That Are Not Terrible

Capturing The Spirit of The Film

For the longest time, all of the gamers knew the risks of purchasing a movie-licensed game. Mostly, back in the ’80s when LJN, for some reason, would acquire licenses from movies and turn them into terrible games. All this is endorsed by studios and covered up by box arts and shady pictures at the back of the box…

Some infamous examples are E.T. by Atari which is well known for having to bury the excess cartridges in the desert.

Also, there’s the ninja turtles game for NES, which can’t be finished because of a long-jump that the character can’t reach.

Don’t forget about the laughable Home Alone games from LJN (usual suspect here).

We can only feel sorry for those poor kids who received any of these games as Christmas gifts back in the ’90s.

Those dark years left us with fear and incredibility when talking about licensed games. But there’s hope.

There are a few examples that are not a cash-grab and you may find yourself enjoying a lot of these titles if you are willing to leave your bad prejudices behind.

The Warriors 

The game came out 25 years after the cult movie with the same name. It was developed by Rockstar Games and it’s a masterpiece. Even if you haven’t seen the movie, you will be not only abducted by the story but also you will definitely want to see the movie after you are done.

It’s a semi-open world experience and it follows the story of The Warriors, a fist-fighting thirsty gang that is working their way to a gang meeting to take over New York. It’s a prequel to the movie, so watching the motion picture after finishing the game is a no-brainer.

Once you beat the game, you can keep playing the brawl mode which is a great addition to play with a friend.

Batman

We can say there’s a Batman reboot every ten years as an average. There’s just something about this rich guy in a plastic bat suit that, for some reason, appeals to us so much.

While there are some terrible Batman movie games (I’m looking at you Batman Returns on Mega Drive) there are some good ones. The latest games were not directly licensed from the movies, but they are groundbreaking in gameplay and story.

The Batman franchise has transcended so many media forms and you can even, nowadays, find Batman-themed slot machines.  However, before choosing the provider where you want to play this theme, there are things that should be asked is what to take into account to select an online casino such as what bonus you can get if it’s possible to play from your mobile or how the support teamwork if you have a problem. Then, you’ll be able to choose the version of Batman will you play in your next session. Furthermore, there’s even a slot from the 70’s show.

They feature sound FX and music from their Hollywood counterpart and offer several payment methods. If you’ve ever played a real slot machine, you’ll feel right at home with the online version.

Batman fans are very spoilt with content.

Aladdin

Someone may say the Super Nintendo version is better, which was developed by Capcom and others praise the Mega Drive version. In the end, it will probably be the one you owned.

Both were fantastic games. The Genesis Version had extremely fluent animations and the level design was spot on, we can’t say the same about the audio though. The Mega drive had an incredible FM sound chip and those tunes could have sounded much better.

That said, Aladdin is a great example of movie licenses done right with hardware limitations.

Conclusion

We could actually write a whole book with games that are good and came from movie licenses.

When developers put their minds to it and studios provide a realistic development timeframe, the results are usually stunning and very profitable.

Games like The Chronicles of Riddick expanded the story further from the movies and we didn’t even get to talk about the latest Star Wars games.

The fact that we nowadays have access to game reviews, gameplays and we don’t have to rely on pictures from magazines and back covers to imagine what the actual game will look like, forced studios to either invest their money into creating a good licensed game or save their bucks for another project.