Weird Licensed Games You Probably Forgot

Plenty of licensed games are bad, but the worst sin any game can commit is to be boring. While the licensed games I’m about to talk about pretty much all have their flaws, some more glaring than others, I don’t think they’re games you’ll be forgetting about in a hurry.

Pepsiman

Pepsiman, my sweet liquid metal baby boy, it’s been too long. I hope you remain unsipped.

Pretty much the byword for weird licensed games, Pepsiman is a Japan exclusive PS1 exclusive that’s never been ported to the west. An American product packaged and presented to appeal to Japanese tastes and break the market? It’d be like Logan Paul advertising Prime in Britain by releasing a queueing simulator game where you have to swig Prime to stop you from tutting.

But what it do? Well, basically, Pepsiman plays like a precursor to something like Temple Run but based. An auto-runner, you’ve got to avoid obstacles and collect all of the Pepsi cans before time runs out to a supremely catchy surf rock soundtrack. It even has some bizarre live-action cutscenes featuring a stereotypical American eating “chips” and drinking “Pepsi” until it ends with him needing a big “piss”.

It’s an odd game that can be beaten in under an hour, and it’s definitely just a shameless bit of Pepsi propaganda — popaganda?, is that anything? — but it goes down smoother than a cold bottle of Pepsi Max Mango, available now at all good retailers and also the bad ones. New look, same great taste.

Akira Psycho Ball

Here’s something that might blow your mind: Akira has never had a “good” video game adaptation. The first attempt was a pretty eye-catching but just frustrating to play old school adventure game for the Famicom, and that was followed up by a side-scroller for the Amiga CD32 in 1994 that peaked in the first 5 minutes with an on-bike section.

So, with 16 years in which to cultivate the ultimate Akira game, where did the license holders turn?

To a pinball game on the PlayStation 2 released to coincide with the DVD release of the movie. As the famous quote goes: “The future is not a straight line. Especially when you whiff the bumper.”

To its credit, as far as pinball games go, Akira Psycho Ball has more to it than, I dunno, Pacific Rim Pinball. It’s no American Dad Pinball, but what is really.

Developed by Kaze, who’d later make a Shin Megami Tensei pinball game, absolutely stupendous, Akira Psycho Ball has a pretty bopping soundtrack, somehow relays the story of the movie through different tables, and also lets players go head to head against each other. However, it is ultimately just digital pinball, and it has the same announcement repeating over and over again in multiplayer.

What’s he even saying? Here’s what I’m saying, and you can have this for free: Akira, but make it like The Warriors PS2 game. Sweep all the awards.

Demon Slayer: Sweep the Board!

Seeing this get announced was the moment I realised that the Demon Slayer IP had become the Despicable Me of anime. I mean, the anime hasn’t even been around for that long, but the level of oversaturation of it already is almost impressive really. Also, they’ve both got annoying yellow idiots.

While I do have quite a bit of time for the more straight Hinokami Chronicles that empowered idiots like me to hit two buttons and do cool things, the mind boggles over SEGA publishing a Demon Slayer Mario Party clone.

The most Nintendo Wii game ever that never came to Nintendo Wii, players choose from all of their favourite Demon Slayer characters, roll dice, and make their way around a board while completing mini-games. Sound familiar? Where Sweep the Board gets open quote interesting close quote is in that players can team up to take down bosses. But, generally speaking, it all just feels like it was made quickly and cheaply, because it certainly was. There are even some reused animations from Hinokami Chronicles.

It says a lot about this game that a fanbase who don’t mind going to the cinema every six months for an extended cut with more of Tanjiro’s elbow just did not take to it. At all. Plenty of room for improvement for the next Demon Slayer game, guys.

Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit!

Listen, as a Welshman who only knows Tim Allen as Buzz Lightyear and Santa Claus, two of history’s greatest heroes, it’s difficult for me to sell just how weird a licensed game based on basically a live action Horsin’ Around sans animals really is. But I’m gonna try.

Released in 1994 exclusively in America for the SNES, Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit! is a decent looking 2D platformer in which you play as Tim as he visits different TV studio sets on the hunt for his missing tools. As far as excuses to put Tim Allen up against flying dinosaurs goes, I think that’s about as good as you’re going to get.

From ancient Egypt to basically poor man’s Castlevania with a bit of alien blasting peppered on top, Power Tool Pursuit certainly does not let you rest for a minute to figure out where exactly your pills have gone. You’re gonna need to find them to get through this game, though.

Power Tool Pursuit has absolutely ear-grating weapon sound effects, and awkward controls that just don’t once feel right. But the overriding sense is that the game is absolutely wasting your time like a 15 minute DIY video on how to put batteries in a Game Boy. The levels are stupidly long and winding, and simply stuffed with more padding than this sentence, for real I mean honestly completely and utterly completely stuffed, to the brim!

Also, Tim Allen just absolutely splurges out a bunch of nuts and bolts when he gets hit, and I hate looking at it, even with my Goldeneye.

Goldeneye: Rogue Agent

I don’t think people realise how insane the Goldeneye universe of James Bond media actually got for a while there. So first there was the seminal N64 FPS game that changed everything.  Then years later there was a temporary Wii exclusive remake that replaced Pierce Brosnan with Daniel Craig, which was originally supposed to be a more conventional remake by Free Radical, the guys who made the first Goldeneye at Rare and also TimeSplitters.

But in the middle we had this game, which took the Goldeneye name so literally that I’m surprised they didn’t include a doctor who can only say no.

Released in 2004 after EA’s legendary run with the James Bond IP that included Nightfire (banger), Agent Under Fire (banger), and Everything or Nothing (banger), Goldeneye: Rogue Agent pits you as a nameless 00 drafted in to replace a legend  with a literal golden eye. Oh, and he’s basically Adam Jensen.

Yes, that literal golden eye lets you do things like see through walls, hack electronics, deflect bullets, and send enemies flying as if you’re the Dragonborn. You also have some shameless appearances from faces in Bond’s past like Scaramanga and Pussy Galore, but also did I mention that you’re a bad guy and Goldfinger is your boss?

Goldeneye: Rogue Agent is pretty much the Nick Cave version of Gladiator 2 that never saw the light of day, but I will be lying if I say it isn’t some real goofy fun. If you want a PS2 FPS game that throws everything out there, this could be the one for you.

The Matrix: Path of Neo

Ah, The Matrix. The most video-gamey action movie series of all time. Which has three games and one tech demo in total.

What have we been doing, guys?

While Enter the Matrix has a pretty soft spot in my 12 year old heart, The Matrix: Path of Neo was what all of us were looking for in the first place.

An adaptation of Neo’s storyline across the original trilogy, Path of Neo follows the handyman as he accepts his destiny, becomes the hero he was meant to be, and saves the world from under the heel of an authoritarian AI.

Also…he fights giant ants. And kaiju Hugo Weaving.

Path of Neo is, frankly, brilliant. Why? Because, all together now, bullet time is always fun time. Booting guys up into the air in slow motion and then shooting them never gets old, and neither does beating up agents to the point where the game just kinda gives up and they die.

You can give me all the criticisms you want about the sloppy controls and daft camera, but ultimately this is a really fun, really off-kilter remix of the trilogy that ticks the power fantasy boxes of every teenager to put on a pair of micro sunglasses in the early 00s.

Also, you can take the blue pill and the game will literally just end. Doesn’t go down quite as well as some Skittles though, does it?

Darkened Skye

Calling this a licensed game in the strictest sense might be pushing it, but Darkened Skye is a game so wonderfully 2000s that it just has to be mentioned.

OK, so here’s the pitch: Darkened Skye is a GameCube console exclusive fantasy action adventure where you play as Skye on a quest to find her mother. You’ll be fighting across vibrant, varied lands, completing puzzles, and casting spells like mad.

Alright, cool. That’s all pretty neat. Magic is powered by Skittles.

I really didn’t know how else to drop that in. Oh, sorry to pile on here: the levels are also based on locations seen in Skittles ads. Just one little extra weird detail: Darkened Skye is published by Simon & Schuster Interactive, yes, the book people, who also published Outlaw Golf.

Darkened Skye has basically zero branding to tell you that it’s a Skittles-type game, and you’ll only really find out when you start playing and collecting S kittles to help you cast specific spells. Bizarrely, it’s about as tasteful about being an advergame as one of these things can get, as at one point the publishers wanted to remove the Skittles entirely.

Darkened Skye is self-referential with some funny writing, but it’s also plenty janky in a way that’s aged poorly. I’d recommend you check out minimme’s awesome video on this game if you want a deeper taste. For now, we have to go back.

Super Back to the Future Part II

This is another one of those weird licensed games based on a western IP that was only ever released in Japan. But while Pepsico were trying to get the country hooked on their brown sugar water, I still can’t figure out how Super Back to the Future Part II never came to the west.

A Super Famicom release in 1993, yes, four years after the movie, Super Back to the Future Part II is a side-scrolling platformer that’s loosely based on the second Back to the Future film. Loosely, in the sense that I can’t remember Marty having to deal with humanoid balloons, martial artists, and dudes with flaming heads. But it does stick to the wider plot of things.

Marty also relentlessly just absolutely stares at you the entire time with that giant bobblehead of his, calling to mind a child looking at someone with a disability on a bus. It’s a tad unsettling, but the vibrant art style and bopper of a 16-bit soundtrack really do a lot of the heavy lifting on this one.

Mechanically, Super Back to the Future Part II does not do much different from platformers of the time, apart from some quite fast, slippery hoverboard mechanics. But that was more than enough to make it the best Back to the Future game ever up until Telltale’s awesome episodic series. And you couldn’t even play it officially over here!

Hey, while we’re talking about iconic 80s stuff:

Rambo: The Video Game

Friends, I’m a liar. The worst sin any game can commit is to be this game.

Alright, that’s hyperbolic. But what a weird and weirdly out of season licensed game Rambo: The Video Game was when it launched in 2014 on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360. Yes, the PS4 and Xbox One were already out.

Not only did this game come out six years after the most recent Rambo movie at the time that you’ve probably completely forgotten, but it’s also a rail shooter that adapts the first three movies, including First Blood, which is not a movie that glorifies shooting dudes for a higher points tally! At all!

While Rambo: The Video Game is painfully misguided in what a Rambo video game should be, which is probably a stealth survival game of some kind, it’s also just painfully dull and plain ugly to look at. Chuck in way too many QTEs and truly awful sound mixing, and there’s little wonder why Rambo felt a couple generations out of date releasing in the same year as actually great licensed games like Alien Isolation.

Bright side: developers Teyon would later go on to develop the far better Terminator: Resistance and RoboCop: Rogue City, so that’s super. Bombad. Racing.

Star Wars Super Bombad Racing

I really cannot understand the reasoning behind this one.

A kart racing game largely based on Episode I, which was already a couple years old with Episode 2 a year away? When you already had Episode 1 Racer and a weirdly forgotten sequel to come out the following year?

Star Wars Super Bombad Racing was aimed squarely at children, to be fair, and also the LucasArts content mines hadn’t been active for about two weeks so they had to release something. 

But how is it?

Star Wars Super Bombad Racing takes what you love so much about Mario Kart, infects it with a deadly dose of Jar Jar Binks, and also remixes all of John Williams’ incredible soundtracks, you know, for the kids with a z.

To Super Bombad Racing’s credit, the fact that you’re hovering gives it a different, weightier feel to other kart racing games, and the personalised special powers per racer is a neat touch. It can also be pretty enjoyable to zoom around the different locales while Yoda’s ears flap about in the wind. The 4-player split-screen is a nice cherry on top.

Ultimately, the fact that Darth Maul has a head that’s almost as large as mine makes it obvious this is just meant to be a bit of fun. It is the greatest Star Wars kart racer of all time.

But it doesn’t have Kit Fisto in it so it’s actually irredeemable trash.