Could videogame developers still get away with poor movie licensed games, even today?
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VIDEOGAMES Comic book and movie licensed games of today, such as the Arkham series of Batman games are more than decent. But unlike these modern age games, Batman games of yesterday haven't always made the dark knight entirely justice, as I mentioned in my last entry Batman: Arkham City reviewed.
Because back in the day, even more so than today, these kind of games based upon well known, popular characters, movies and TV series, pretty much sold themselves regardless of how good or bad they were. Being a gamer kid in the 80's and 90's, you had no way of knowing what games were good and which ones to avoid. Unless you spent all your hard earned money on renting games and buying gaming magazines, rather than spending them on the actual games and consoles, that is... which seems like a bit of waste to me...
Too early for videogames. The 1966 rendition of Batman
- a TV series starring Adam West as the caped crusader.
Whaaaat? There was life Pre-Interweb?!
Even I fell for this one. Such annoying little game!
Without any Internet connectivity, there was no playable demos to download, no (free) game reviews to read, no trailers or gameplay footage, or at times not even proper screenshots from the game to look at. What you had to rely on was a the box art, your own experience with the game (if any), along with your friends' opinions on what they though was "cool". So what games do you think most kids fell for - the ones with cool box art featuring familiar characters; popular action and comic book heroes (and thus had most its budget spent on license in order for them to use these), or do you think they rather bought some odd game with some unknown characters on the box?
...And the game was even worse.
Some franchises received less flattering videogame incarnations than others, however. Games made after The Simpsons, Barbie, Spider-Man, and a whole bunch of movie licensed titles, were all seemingly thrown together in a haste, always resulting in rubbish. But unlike The Terminator, RoboCop, Jaws, Top Gun, E.T., Wayne's World, Mission Impossible and Cliffhanger, just to mention a few, the Batman series were still honoured with a few quite decent titles, even back in the day. Although in all honestly, I'd guess we could all agree that most of them were rather mediocre, or even worse...
For those who weren't around three decades ago, the Angry Videogame Nerd (AVGN) himself, James Rolfe, guides you through some of the Batman games of yesteryear:
