Licensed Games Appreciation Thread - Why yes, a Scooby-Doo game is better than a Resident Evil game

so I have more snow at my house atm then we've had in years so I've been inside just playing video games. bit of snes & 64, but I got one of those GBA consolizers to play on the tv with an ever drive and a snes controller and I've been hitting up that because I haven't touched a gba since 2006. It's had me revisiting some old games so I have to add some things I think haven't been in the thread.

Mickey Mouse's Magical Quest trilogy, on snes and gameboy. really gorgeous and fun capcom platformers with a costume gimmick. 2/3 on SNES have good co-op, 2 is Minnie as P2, 3 is Donald. Used to run through 2 specifically tons on snes with my brother. Don't know if co-op is in the GBA ports but worth playing, not too easy but definitely not hard. Good games to play together with a kid or a woman.

Dragon Ball Advance Adventure, GBA platforming beat em up with 1v1 fighting game bosses. Last game I bought and played on GBA when it was new. Super fun game, go through Dragon Ball from the beginning to piccolo, lots of collectables in almost metroidvania like levels once you beat the game you can play as every character from the series (and I mean every character) in main levels and fighting game mode to find more secrets.

Dragon Ball Z Legacy of Goku trilogy. had all of these, 3's always been my favorite. First one going back to it is a piece of shit but I still like it. action rpgs where you go around punching shit, leveling up, finding collectables, solving puzzles and doing fetch quests for NPCs play through all of DBZ in 3 games. Starting with 2 you get to be all of the Z fighters each at different points in the story, can change when you want with their own moves and level pools and stuff to do. Solid gba games 2/3 are pretty meaty games for a licenced handheld game. Humorously enough my pop never gave a shit about dbz but always made sure I had the games. he had to go out of state for work and I gave him my gameboy for something to do. He got super into these games and beat them all 100% leveled everyone up to max and everything. these are his point of reference for Dragon Ball and he to this day remembers all this like it was the story of FF7 or something. He thinks 80% of dbz is goku and sons fighting wolves and tigers in the woods. tells people who wear dragon ball shirts in public he's a fan and trunks is his favorite 20 years later.

star wars apprentice of the force. I remember this from childhood I thought of it as "super star wars for pussies". Tie in to the first DVD release of the OT, dad got it for me when he bought the DVDs that day (then bitched about the special edition changes and then almost shit himself out of anger when Hayden is a force ghost in RotJ, funny memory) it's not as good or as bad as I remember it at the same time somehow. Its got a really shitty art style, its a 2d game with 3d character models with no facial features for some reason. You play as Luke throughout star wars through Jedi in beat em up esque stages where the screen locks and you shoot stormtroopers, eventually get a light saber and chop at em instead of shooting. gain force powers as it goes. baby easy, worth a look but not highly recommended. is nothing like super star wars I assume I thought that because you start as Luke with a blaster and run to the right and then in the empire and Jedi levels you do that with a lightsaber.

Disney Tarzan Returns to the Jungle. Came as a pack in with my GBA along with a terrible game based on an equally terrible Nickelodeon show I only remember because the game came with the GBA called Butt Ugly Martians. Tarzan is a surprisingly great platformer. start as a kid, grow up, run through deep stages, collecting bananas, learn jungle parkor moves, almost like a more vertically focused Donkey Kong Country game. surprised it held up as well as it did to me, I always assumed looking back I loved it so much because it was the first Advance game I played, but no it's good.

Peter Jackson's King Kong. I think someone already mentioned the console/PC version and if you were to include both this GBA game and that I believe this is my favorite video game based on one specific movie and not a franchise as a whole (new story or combining them). The gameboy game is a Zelda clone action rpg where you wander through the jungle as jack black, adrian brody, and naomi watts going into temples and dungeons the skull island niggers built as shrines to kong, fighting monsters, solving puzzles, using items. was disappointed in how short it actually is because I couldn't beat it when it was new but where I remember getting stuck is basically the end of the game.


One I hadn't played and ended up liking a lot was a fan translation of the GBA Shin Chan game. basically Mickey's Magical Quest with the Noharas. Platformer where you play through a stage based on every shin chan movie up to that point changing costumes for abilities with them based on characters/moments in those movies, can go back through stages for collectables with newer costumes. good shit. My only gripe is that I wish whoever did the fan translation localized instead of translated it with tons of extremely edgy vulgar shit beyond the original like the funimation dub of the show did. I also wish this happened with the switch game it was good, could have been great with racism, rape jokes, and crystal meth references. Understandable why neither did but personal preference.
 
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The GT one is kinda similar, you might wanna check that out next. It's not as good but worth a play.
I was actually planning on it once I beat Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland (what I'm doing now) this faggot on my school bus had that GT game and Sonic Advance 2 and no matter how hard I tried I could never convince this dude to let me borrow either as a trade for any game I had so it's one I've been trying to play since like 2006 or whenever it came out. I could have emulated it at some point but in high school I went through a GT SUCKS phase and now that DB Super exists I retroactively like GT way more and just haven't gotten around to it yet
 
I was actually planning on it once I beat Kirby Nightmare in Dreamland (what I'm doing now) this faggot on my school bus had that GT game and Sonic Advance 2 and no matter how hard I tried I could never convince this dude to let me borrow either as a trade for any game I had so it's one I've been trying to play since like 2006 or whenever it came out. I could have emulated it at some point but in high school I went through a GT SUCKS phase and now that DB Super exists I retroactively like GT way more and just haven't gotten around to it yet
Funny story there, what were you trying to trade that you had?

Sonic Advance 2 is worth playing through, but it was a big step down from SA1. Also, DBS has had that effect on a lot of DB fans lol
 
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Funny story there, what were you trying to trade that you had?

Sonic Advance 2 is worth playing through, but it was a big step down from SA1. Also, DBS has had that effect on a lot of DB fans lol
I just wanted to play either for a week and anything I had I'd give in collateral for it. The aforementioned Advance Adventure, the final fantasy advance games, any of the 4 Mario ports, Kirby, you name it, and if I had it I offered and this kid told me to fuck myself. I can't imagine that GT game had much replay value its probably a game you can get through in a sitting or two and this dude just wanted to rub it in it that it was out of my reach I guess I don't know lol I'd say his mom was one of those parents super against their kids trading games to borrow or something but we did it all the time! I think he just knew I really liked sonic and dragon ball and was an asshole about it
 
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2006 was a good year for games based on gangster films, The Godfather, Reservoir Dogs and Scarface. I liked the way these studios handled the source material. Reservoir Dogs was a recreation of the film where they expanded on what happened off screen, The Godfather placed the protagonist in the background as a way of explaining his participation in the film and Scarface was a continuation to an alternate ending.

In Reservoir Dogs they show what happened to Mr. Blue (dies in a movie theatre) and depending on your rating Mr. Pink, who either escapes (Professional Rating), gets arrested (Career Criminal Rating) or gets killed (Psycho Rating).

There was gameplay mechanics where you could take control of a hostage to open a safe or a door. They had bullet time when triggered there would be a special animation, as an example Mr. Blue would take his cigar and flick his it to the side. You can make cops surrender by roughing up a hostage or by performing a special execution on a hostage that was unique to each heister.

In 2017 they had a game called Reservoir Dogs: Bloody Days, which was a top down game were you can switch characters at will and rewind time. It looked like a mobile game.

The studio behind the game shut down months after release because they spent all of their money on the license. People thought they shouldn't have wasted their resources on the license since it was just for the the names and not the likenesses of the characters. Even though Bloody Days was not a good game I still would liked to have played it.
 
2006 was a good year for games based on gangster films, The Godfather, Reservoir Dogs and Scarface.
for Christmas my mom got my brother and I scarface and my dad the godfather game. I remember looking at the reservoir dogs game at a gamestop or something and my dad being like that movie is great but its mainly people talking that game can't be fun, so we didn't get it and I never played it.

we got super into the other 2. I was a kid still and I remember being mind blown all the shit in my dad and brother's scarface files in their houses and all the cars they had while I was still in the beginning. My dad to this day if I tell him something is expensive quotes the npc from scarface "why don't you take my gold tooth and one of my balls while you're at it" lol. But the scarface game was fun but I'd say the godfather game was an honest to god good game, not just fun or the novelty of a "fuck you pussy" button. At my parents house in my old room I think the map from the strategy guide is still on the wall. I always wanted to play the second one because it's my favorite of the movies and would be the most interesting period to be an unnamed henchmen in.

I did buy and own reservoir dogs bloody days on pc when it came out and its a shame you can't get it now but it was fucking terrible. not only as a fan of the movie but the genre of game is one of my all time favorites and it was barely playable
 
this reminds me the biggest missed licenced game opportunity I can think of off top is the soprano road to respect. Idk which came first but imagine the notes it could have hit if it had ripped off scarface the world is yours. you're Tony soprano, can wander through the house go out back and look for ducks, get in your blazer and drive around visit your mama at your old house, junior, go to the meat shop or the bada bing, drive around a semi recreation of parts of jersey like the Yakuza games do with that district of tokyo, have side missions at melphis office where you're tryna fuck her, at AJs & Meadows schools where they're fucking up, at the Bing pick up missions where you're Silvio or Paulie and the gameplay is like hitman, some where you're Christopher driving Andrea around or stealing shit/hitmanning, QTEs where Carmella is bitching and maybe you can talk your way out of it if you lose a meter is adjusted and your at home life sucks. The game writes itself. The game we got was a ps1 game in a ps2 skin where you're some random faggot doing levels that do and accomplish nothing
 
The decree from on high with the Sopranos game was "Don't make it like GTA" so the game was fucked from the start. Same thing happened with Predator Concrete Jungle. Funny enough, one of the people who worked on the Predator game bitched about how they had an open city, and got told to knock that shit off and be less like GTA, so they added flying cars, and stages like a parking garage no longer made sense, but were still in the game.

The Sopranos game was such a fucking waste, they 3D mapped almost the entire show, and it amounts to jack shit.
 
The decree from on high with the Sopranos game was "Don't make it like GTA" so the game was fucked from the start.
I never knew all that, that fuckin' sucks. A shame, it could have been a really cool game. I remember liking that Predator game but I haven't played it since it was new and never owned it I just rented it.
 
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for Christmas my mom got my brother and I scarface and my dad the godfather game. I remember looking at the reservoir dogs game at a gamestop or something and my dad being like that movie is great but its mainly people talking that game can't be fun, so we didn't get it and I never played it.
The Scarface game was awesome. It felt to me more like a spiritual sequel to the 80s movies. The Sopranos game was very disappointing
 
The Sims: Bustin' Out (GBA) and its sequel The Urbz (GBA/DS) are some great underappreciated, especially The Urbz. Basically, it takes The Sims and makes it a life simulator with day/night cycles, a bunch of minigames, an overarching plot, stuff to buy, places to live, and relationships to build. There's nothing quite like it, and nothing like it sense (and they changed stuff for The Sims 2 DS).

The downside is that it IS licensed and had to do stuff like keep your urinal/sleep/food intake up (instead of abstracting those), the "skills" your Sim learns, the ultra-safe/ultra-PC world The Sims uses (the biker bar serves smoothies), and so on. The end result makes it a lot more average than it should be, and of course the developers got bought out by some mobile slop years ago, but without those bounds it could've been better. The closest thing to it is The Good Life, and even then, that's what was planned, not in the final release.
 
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Was going through my library of NDS roms, accidentally found this gem, and went through a trip down memory lane.
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Bleach: Dark Souls is probably- actually no not probably, it's definitively the greatest fighting game ever made. This game was such absolute bonkers I sometimes wonder if it was a fever dream because its too autistic to be real.

The game is like, an ultimate amalgamation. It takes literally every single fighting game that has ever been showcased on comiket and condensed it all into one game. You got 4 player fights from Isuca, deckbuilding from Hisoutensoku, campaign tutorial from the naruto games, 8 way dash from MvC, and that's before going into each character's individual kits, like the plushies being references to Melty Blood. This is also the only fighting game in existence- other than its prequel, that has touchscreen option selects.
 
I think I saw someone post it already, but the Mickey Mouse Magical Quest games were great, and (sorry for anime) Pirate Warriors 2-4 were also pretty good. But my favorite licensed game probably still is Asterix and Obelix XXL 2, that game fucking ruled. Good mix of beat em up and platforming and I don't really remember ever getting burnt out from the combat or anything like these games tend to do.
Shame XXL 3 sucks.
 
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Humorously enough my pop never gave a shit about dbz but always made sure I had the games. he had to go out of state for work and I gave him my gameboy for something to do. He got super into these games and beat them all 100% leveled everyone up to max and everything. these are his point of reference for Dragon Ball and he to this day remembers all this like it was the story of FF7 or something. He thinks 80% of dbz is goku and sons fighting wolves and tigers in the woods. tells people who wear dragon ball shirts in public he's a fan and trunks is his favorite 20 years later.
How endearing, what a nice story. I missed this part before.

I think he just knew I really liked sonic and dragon ball and was an asshole about it
Ha, what a prick. My friends had different systems than I did so I didn't get to do trades much myself.
 
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I feel like there's a big aspect of licensed game that is not talked about here, or moreso, not known at all. Browser games. Nearly every film since 2000-2015 had Flash & Unity games. You can still play most these for free on Flashpoint by Blue Maxima.

Some of my childhood classics, that were basically AAA games for me.

xXx: State of the Union
This is the only xXx game in existence. I loved this shit as a kid, could never pass the 3rd level tho. There is a certain user here on this site who'll love it, unless he's a fake fan.

The company behind the games below, Jereon De Cloe (deadname Sticky Studios) were basically the best in licensed browser games. I won't mention all of their games, bur I recommend checking their portfolio & searching it on Flashpoint, some are really fun to play (especially 2 of their The Hobbit games, Nickelodeon, & Kids WB section), & few are basically lost to time (Final Destination 5, Gangster Squad, TDKR: Tumbler Designer, etc.), even their mobile games like The Man from U.N.C.L.E - Mission Berlin are good.

Green Lantern Combat
This is somehow better than both the movie & even the other console games that released for the movie.

Pacific Rim: Jaeger Designer
You basically design & play with a Jeagar (mecha) of your own making from Jaegars of the 1st film (peak designs btw, 2nd movie sucked ass). You can still play it now on Flashpoint, but saving Jaegers is not available due to requiring a Facebook login. Additionally, the splash screen is black.

Pacific Rim: Jaegar Combat Simulator
Probably the closest thing to a free Gundam VS Kaiju game. In Flashpoint, the "Jaeger Designer" feature is not available, meaning there is no way to play as a Jaeger other than Gipsy Danger, killing one of the best parts of this game, playing as the other Jaegars APART from Gipsy Danger. The files for Cherno Alpha & Striker Eureka have been included in Flashpoint in the hope that they can be patched in. Cheat codes are not available, so no 10% damage only during combat (HEART), or unlocking the Hardcore mode (DRAGON), or ability to unlock the missions early on (PLAYON). Achievements are also not available as they require a log-in (either from WB, or Facebook, I don't remember).

Sherlock Holmes 2: A Game of Shadows - Checkmate
Kino film, kino game, simple as. It's a bit wonky at times tho.

Sucker Punch: Annihilation
Again, kino film, kino game. But this was one of the company's starting games, so it feels a bit incomplete & buggy at times, but a good 40 mins to kill.

Blit Interactive was the 2nd best in licensed games department on internet.

Speed Racer: Demon on Wheels
Made for promotion of the premium edition release of the OG anime series.

There's another Speed Racer game, which is technically a promotion for the live-action movie in the Topps Candy Tracks game which ran for 8 weeks where all cars were changed into Speed Racer movie cars. It had 17 million plays during it's time.
Sadly, it's not available in the Flashpoint version.

The list isn't complete. I haven't even talked about some (thanks to the 10 media limit rule) like Mission Impossible 2, John Wick 1 (last licensed browser game that I remember), Inglorious Basterds, Iron Man 3, Unstoppable (The Tony Scott film), The Kevin James browser game duology (Paul Blart: Mall Cop & Zookeeper got games), The Freeway Fallguy game by Ray Gun (it's a rock band that made a game to promote their song "Just Because" it was only famous due to the browser game & it was the only song they ever made). The 3 Split Second (yeah, the kino racing game) games that were made, The 3 Hancock games that were made, etc.

MAD MAX
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Car go vroooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooom
Fun Fact: That game is actually canon to Fury Road, & possibly the upcoming Furiosa film. It's literally needed for any Mad Max binge.
 
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