YET MORE LICENSED NES GAMES THAT DON'T EXIST

Previously: Parts 1, 2, 3.

Has it really been well over a year since the last time I delved into the world of fake NES games based on movies and TV shows? Maybe I've been subconsciously avoiding licensed games after playing Wayne's World. That kind of experience leaves a mark, you know? In the interests of healing and catharsis, then - here are some more NES games that don't exist, based on franchises that were (for the most part) never shoddily converted into a half-arsed side-scrolling action game by a company like Tose.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Here's one I actually made a while ago, based on everyone's favourite giant robot / deep questions about the nature of humanity / overpriced merchandise geyser anime Neon Genesis Evangelion. There have been plenty of Evangelion videogames, although surprisingly few focus on the very videogame-y concept of giant robots punching space monsters. Instead you get lots of pachinko games, and a dating sim set in an alternate universe because sure, why not? Maybe that's what this NES Evangelion game could be. Except I've put a robot on the title screen. Hmm... no, I've decided, it's definitely a dating sim. A dating sim about giant robots. The biomechanical guardians of mankind infused with the souls of their pilot's dead mothers need love too.

Daria

Teen angst-haver and role model to many of the MTV generation's less sociable members, Daria strikes me as having even less material suitable to being shaped into a videogame than most of the franchise featured in these articles. Can a videogame teach you valuable life lessons, like that sticking to a strict moral code will often make others dislike you or that pizza is a balm for all human ills? Maybe, if you built it around a choose-your-own-adventure style of gameplay. This being Daria, however, all responses would just be sarcastic put-downs. "Turn to page 61 to insinuate that a schoolmate is an idiot," but, you know, a NES cart instead of a book.

The Silence of the Lambs

Of course, the real question here is would a Silence of the Lambs game have you playing as Clarice Starling or Hannibal Lecter? If only there had been a NES game based on the movie - I'd have loved to have seen someone attempt to justify a game where you play as a cannibalistic serial killer against Nintendo's content guidelines. No, Clarice would have been the more likely playable character, and I can imagine a games developer completely missing the point and turning The Silence of the Lambs into an action game. Clarice jumps from platform to platform, collecting lambs for points and avoiding the deadly moths and falling bottles of lotion until you reach the final confrontation with giant Jame Gumb who fires sewing needles out of his eyes.

Twin Peaks

You might be thinking "that fake Twin Peaks title screen sure does remind me of Super Mario Bros. 3," and that's hardly surprising considering I "borrowed" the curtains from Nintendo's platforming masterpiece. It's more than that, though, and if you look at the SMB3 title screen you might notice that it does actually bear some resemblance to Twin Peaks' Red Room - the black-and-white patterned floor, the red drapes, the two Italian men kicking a turtle shell about. Go on, admit it, you had to think for a second about whether or not that was actually in Twin Peaks, didn't you?
What kind of game would a NES adaptation of Twin Peaks be? Well, I have to imagine it'd be some kind of graphic adventure, probably in the vein of ICOM's Deja Vu but with more coffee, and I think there's a chance that it could have made for a surprisingly good NES title.

The X-Files

From one mysterious tale of FBI agents and spooky goings-on to another, and a chance to admit just how much I love The X-Files. A lot, that's how much. One of the most significant formative influences of my youth, frankly. A slightly depressing thought, that, so I'll just stick to saying that I really love The X-Files.

Like Twin Peaks, this would surely have to be another graphic adventure, with the point-and-click interface allowing Mulder and Scully to solve all manner of bizarre incidents while an on-screen meter records the level of sexual tension in the air. You could have two playable characters, with each agent having their own unique abilities - Mulder can get away with breaching FBI protocol simply by shouting at his superiors, while Scully has a button solely dedicated to rolling her eyes. I really want this one to be a real game, but for the sake of my fragile heart it's probably for the best that it's not. Again, I can still remember that Wayne's World game.

UPDATE:

I knocked up some screenshots for a NES X-Files point-and-click adventure, because I keep thinking about what one would look like. Probably not exactly like this - I think it might be a little too colourful for actual NES hardware to output - but probably not too far away.

Alien

Alien is my favourite movie ever made, and as such I was bound to get to it eventually if I kept making these fake NES title screen. The problem was, how could I make it interesting? What could I do to capture it's essence in 8-bit form? Then it occurred to me I could just recreate the fading letters of the movie's titles, and honestly I think it came out looking the best of the lot. It certainly looks the most like a real game, possibly a proto-Survival-Horror in the manner of Capcom's Sweet Home, or even a claustrophobic stealth game where your goal is to sneak around collecting provisions for the escape shuttle. There's a mission towards the end where you have to find the ship's cat, and if you enter the escape shuttle without finding the cat you get a bad ending. Not as bad as being eaten / impregnated by a space monster, but one that leaves you with a subtle feeling of guilt and the gnawing sense that in your rush to survive you have cast aside your humanity. That's Alien: The Videogame, definitely not coming soon to a NES near you.

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EVEN MORE LICENSED NES GAMES THAT DON'T EXIST

As I had so much fun making them the first two times, here are some more mocked-up title screens from licensed NES games that don't exist - and having played some of the Bill & Ted NES game earlier this week I think that's probably for the best. Some of them are even animated, because apparently that's a thing you can do with The Internet these days. Amazing!

Buffy the Vampire Slayer

I love Buffy, I really do. One of my favourite ever TV shows, even. I'd probably feel less enamoured with the show if I'd had to play a NES title based on it, though - it would almost certainly have been by someone like Ocean Software, it would have been derivative and stale, it would essentially have been the NES RoboCop games but with a group of pixels vaguely shaped like a teenage girl instead of Detroid's finest. This version would have been much better, of course: think Castlevania 3 with its cast of multiple playable characters and alternate routes through Dracula's castle. Swap Alucard for Willow and clocktowers for gymnasiums and bang, Buffy: the NES Game is ready to roll.

They Live

A thought-provoking treatise on consumer culture that just happens to feature Rowdy Roddy Piper killing aliens, They Live could have a been a NES game that made you think as well as tested your reflexes. Something Contra-like, perhaps, with the backgrounds and enemy sprites changing to reveal their true forms once Nada picks up some sunglasses. There's a sub-boss fight against a digitised Keith David that lasts roughly forty-seven minutes, and if you could cram a voice sample of Piper bemoaning his lack of chewing gum into a They Live NES cartridge you'd have something special on your hands.

King of the Hill

Obviously this could never have been a real NES title screen, because it features drinking and smoking and Nintendo's American censors weren't exactly fans of that kind of thing appearing in their games. Change the beer to soda pop and the cigarette to, I dunno, an oral thermometer or something and you'll be fine.
There's only one thing that comes to mind when planning a King of the Hill game: SimPropane. Use your managerial and sales acumen to progress from a man with a truck and some propane canisters, to regional manager of a propane store, to eventually becoming the biggest supplier of barbeque fuels in the whole of Texas. Imagine Romance of the Three Kingdoms but set in the southern USA and not ancient China and rival propane salesman instead of warring nation-states.

Red Dwarf

Every British nerd's favourite space-based comedy, (because Hyperdrive was hardly much competition,) Red Dwarf could have spawned a videogame in all sorts of genres. Point-and-click adventure? Elite-style galactic trading simulator with an emphasis on scavenging? Or even a scrolling shoot-em-up, Gradius but with the Vic Viper piloted by an unhygienic Scouser?

Yeah, let's go with that one. I can only apologise to Danny John-Jules for my inept pixel representation of The Cat, but in my defence I was distracted because I was listening to this the whole time I was working on it.

Re-Animator

Of all the potential NES titles featured here, this is the one I would have wanted the most. The idea of playing as Herbert West, a scientific genius who has a lot of trouble with his experiments in re-animating the dead (especially considering he's a genius and all,) is one I can get behind. An action-platformer for this particular film-to-game conversion, I think: West has to run, jump and fight his way through the Miskatonic campus, collecting all the ingredients he needs to make a fresh batch of his re-animating formula. Enemies include zombie cats, zombie dogs, zombie people... pretty much anything you can zombify, really. Oh, and one supremely pissed-off severed head.

IT

To any coulrophobes reading: I'm sorry. Just be comforted in the knowledge that Pennywise A) isn't real and B) isn't actually a clown, thus making him far less terrifying. Stephen King knows how to terrifying people through his books, but could a NES game ever really by scary? Judging by LJN's Friday the 13th game, probably not. I think IT: The NES Game would have worked best as a Shadowgate-type graphic adventure, though - King's text for spooky details married with pixel artwork of Derry and its surroundings might have made for a NES game that was frightening in the intended sense and not because it's Fist of the North Star-levels of concentrated awfulness.

There you are then - games that could have been but never were. Well, except Buffy and King of the Hill because they started well after the NES's heyday. I know some of these aren't technically possible to recreate on an actual NES and its limited hardware but hey - it's my fantasy Re-Animator game and it'll look as fancy as I want it to.

BONUS - GODFREY HO'S NINJA COLLECTION!

Godfrey Ho is a man of many and varied talents: it's just a shame none of them have to do with filmmaking. He's famous for one thing - making ninja films by splicing footage of western actors in garish ninja costume into pre-existing films and attempting to tie the two halves together through phone-calls, inner monologues and poor dubbing. A Godfrey Ho ninja film is a treasure, a beautiful crystal of laughable acting and fight scenes most LARPers would find wimpy and unconvincing. I tried to make a NES title screen that captures some of this awfulness, but I think I made it too good. Only a ninja can defeat a ninja, and only a terrible NES development team could make a game bad enough to do these films justice.

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MORE LICENSED NES GAMES THAT DON'T EXIST

A couple of months ago, I introduced you to a parallel dimension of NES games: a mysterious otherworld where the Gods are kinder and The Shining has a videogame adaptation while Robocop 3 doesn't. Well, I just couldn't stay away, so here's some more licensed NES games that don't exist!

Night of the Living Dead

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George A. Romero. That man has a lot to answer for, not least for warping my youthful mind with the Dead series of films and the hundreds of imitators they spawned. It's okay George, I forgive you. Romero has had a few encounters with the videogames industry over the years, including a cancelled FPS based on his works. More importantly than that, he inspired me to create a whole host of alternate-future movie fantasies by directing a Japanese-only commercial for Resident Evil 2.



Romero. Resident Evil. A dream team, and for a time he looked to be a shoo-in to direct the first Resident Evil movie. Then Paul W.S. Anderson showed up and ruined the franchise for everyone by turning it into some odd Milla Jovovich fetish series. OKAY YOU CAN USE SLOW-MO WE GET IT YOU FUCKING HACK. And it could have been so beautiful, or at the very least not eye-gougingly, offensively bad.
Sorry about that. So, a Night of the Living Dead videogame. As far as I'm aware, it's never been made into a videogame, probably because standing around in a house arguing isn't the most thrilling of gameplay styles, but also because that ending is a serious downer, man. Given how hard NES games are to complete, imagine if after all that effort, you got the ending of Night of the Living Dead in pixellated cut-scene form. Talk about a kick in the balls.

Videodrome

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A personal favourite film of mine, and another that has never been turned into a videogame. Why? Because the publishers were worried about people shoving the cartridges into fleshy orifices that have suddenly appeared on their torsos. I know they say there's no such thing as bad publicity, but that's not going to look good when you're taken to court.

But what would a Videodrome game play like? I honestly have no idea. The way licensed characters were often shoehorned into settings that bear only the most tenuous of links with the source material, Videodrome: The Game would probably be a Contra-style run-and-gun game, with a tiny James Woods sprite shooting floating televisions with his nightmarish (and gooey!) biological hand-gun thing. Soundtrack provided by Debbie Harry!

Duck Soup

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Three words for you: Spy vs. Spy. If there was to be a Marx Brothers game, that would be the perfect gameplay style for it. Pick one of the brothers and attempt to steal Freedonia's war plans while the other two try to stop you by setting traps around the place. Aaaand now I'm a little sad that this game doesn't exist. Honestly, the Marx Brothers would have been a perfect match for the NES, but I guess videogames that are both hilarious and a pretty damn fine satire of war and jingoism just don't resonate with the videogame-buying public, you bunch of philistines you.
P.S. I know the "Contract" skit isn't actually in Duck Soup, but I couldn't not use it.

Léon

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A true masterpiece of a film, with the ability to make even the manliest of men break down in tears. Combine that with most NES games having difficulty levels that cause bitter tears of rage, then this is a game that might well lead to dehydration, a need to replace lost salt and looking like a total wuss. I'm a little surprised that, given the film's cult status, there's never been a videogame adaptation: I guess it's just one of those things that we should be glad and give thanks for.
Gameplay wise, I think it'd work well if it was in the style of A Boy & His Blob. A Hitman & His Small Girl, if you will, with Mathilda performing various actions depending on which type of milk you give her to drink. Have Léon's health be represented as a pot plant whose leaves fall off as you take damage, throw in some digitised speech from Gary Oldman and you're on to a real winner.

American Psycho

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This game would be a rhythm action game, like an 8-bit version of Gitaroo Man. No, wait, bear with me. You have to press buttons in time to chiptune versions of 80's new-wave classics such as "Sussudio" and "Hip to be Square". Perform well, and Patrick Batemen successfully has sex with prostitutes and hacks douchebags to death with an axe. Seriously, if you have any talent for programming games, please get this made.

Jacob's Ladder

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There already is a Jacob's Ladder videogame; it's called Silent Hill 3. Okay, maybe not, but SH3 takes an undeniably large chunk of inspiration from Adrian Lyne's film. In fact, I guarantee that there's a post on a message board somewhere where someone claims that "Jacob's Ladder ripped off Silent Hill 3". That's the gameplay, then; a NES version of Silent Hill 3, but with the added complications of minigames where you have to sort mail into the correct pigeonhole or repeatedly hammer the buttons to avoid dying of a fever. Free LSD sample included with every purchase!

Nosferatu

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The oldest film on this list, which is pretty impressive when you think it also includes Duck Soup. Personally, I think the cinema of German expressionism is sorely overlooked by videogame developers: there's not even a game adaptation of Metropolis, for pity's sake!

Do you remember Night Trap for the Mega-CD? I know you remember the furore over nothing that surrounded its release, but do you remember the actual gameplay? No, of course you don't, because it was boring as sin. It essentially amounted to watching utterly unexciting footage of girls in a house that you had to save from intruding vampires by pressing various buttons to set off traps. Now, imagine that premise, but with a creepy German vampire leering over the comely females. Then stop imagining it, you pervert. Still, a game where you play as a vampire and lure victims to their grisly fates could be pretty cool.
There actually is a game based on Nosferatu, made in 1994 for the SNES. It's an clumsy Prince of Persia ripoff, but at least it looks nice. Nice for the dungeons of a vampire's castle, I mean.

And there you have it, seven more NES games that don't exist. It's probably for the best, apart from that American Psycho one. Somehow I can't see it appearing on WiiWare.

Previous LICENSED NES GAMES THAT DON'T EXIST
Also, SILENT HILL 2: NES EDITION

SILENT HILL 2: NES EDITION INTRO

I love Silent Hill 2, I love the NES and I love chiptune music. So, I thought I'd bundle all that love together into one package, and the result is this fake intro for SH2 if SH2 were a NES game. Enjoy!

(Click through to Youtube for a better look.)

And there you have it, the introduction to a Silent Hill 2 NES game that sadly doesn't exist. I hope you like the chiptune version of "Theme of Laura (Reprise)" as much as I do!

LICENSED NES GAMES THAT DON'T EXIST

Licensed games, eh? Sure, there are a few that buck the trend and aren't soul-curdlingly terrible, but on the whole they're a way to slap a recognisable face on any old dreck and hope that seeing, say, Superman's chiselled mug beaming out of an advert or some boxart will get gullible saps to part with their hard-earned. Hooray for capitalism and clueless grandparents buying games for their spawn. The NES has its fair share of awful licensed titles (I'm looking at you, Conan), but I'm going to redress the balance with some fake title screens from licensed NES that don't exist. You'll wish they existed, though, oh yes. You'll wish so hard your eyes turn into tomatoes and fall from their sockets, splattering on the floor in a chunky red paste. First game please!

Blade Runner

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What would a Blade Runner game for the NES be like? Well, it wouldn't be like the PC game, and by that I mean it would be neither a detailed, 3D point-and-click adventure, and nor would it be good. It would have almost certainly been a side-scrolling platformy shootery thing, like Megaman, but again; not good. There would probably have been a terrible on-rails section where you piloted a Spinner, with one hit kills and everything. Also, there's something about the combination of those particular orange and brown colours on Deckard's coat that just screams "NES graphics", don't you think?

Clockwork Orange

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Surely this would have been a River City Ransom-style scrolling beat-em-up, complete with chiptune version of "Singing' in the Rain" that plays as you kick a tramp to death. Also included would be a button-mashing minigame where you have to hammer the buttons like the mighty Thor himself to help Alex resist the Ludovico Technique. Or course, you cannot resist the Technique, and you're left with an inability to listen to the music of Beethoven as well as irreparably damaged thumbs.

Ghost World

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A Zelda-style RPG where you much travel the city collecting vicious put-downs and cynical quips. Call Steve Buscemi a Klansman! Wait for a bus! As a sub-weapon, you get to hurl rare blues vinyl at people. Comes with a warning label due to strong language and the fact that Steve Buscemi's digitised face is terribly, terribly disturbing.

Hellraiser

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Did you know that there almost was a Hellraiser game for the NES? Color Dreams, a company infamous for making NES games with license from Nintendo, were working on a Hellraiser game that was apparently so advanced it required a special "Super Cartridge" to work. Sadly, the whole endeavour was just too expensive and the game was cancelled. You can read a bit more about it here, if you like.
This version would have been better though. Imagine Metal Gear, but instead of avoiding soldiers you're trying to sneak past a group of sadomasochistic demons who want to drag you back to hell with them so they can do horrible things to you involving chains and hooks and possibly the music of Peter Andre. Sounds fun, huh? Well, I've played Haunting Ground, and that wasn't fun, but then again it didn't have Pinhead in it. More's the pity.

Mystery Science Theatre 3000

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All I can imagine is that an MST3K videogame for the NES would play like a primitive version of Guitar Hero, but instead of pressing a button to play a musical note you have to press it to make jokes at the expense of a cut-scene that is playing in the background. The films start off gentle, perhaps with something like Jack Frost, but they get more and more painful to watch until the final confrontation with Manos: The Hands of Fate.
P.S. This one is my favourite.

The Shining

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Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece of isolation, madness and creepy guys in bear suits as a videogame? Why the hell not! There are two ways you could go with this one: either play as Wendy and hide around the hotel, trying to avoid Jack and his axe. Or, play as Jack and attempt to brutally murder your wife and child. Hmm, that one might not have got past the censors.
I'd like to imagine it'd have cutscenes like the ones in Ninja Gaiden (the NES version, not the new ones) of the opening scenes, with a little pixellated car driving along some winding mountain roads. That'd be great.

And that's your lot. I hope you enjoyed this little glimpse into a parallel world that could have been. I hope you're not too disappointed that these games don't exist: if you are, I'd like to remind you that they would have been licensed NES games, and therefore would have been shit.