Yes we all know about these: Shoddy games that were thrown together in a short space of time with no thought beyond simple brand recognition. They are despised by gamers everywhere and treated with nothing but absolute contempt for their purpose and utter shamelessness in proclaiming it.
I find the contempt for movie-tie-in games interesting because I grew up in the era of the Commodore 64. There were certainly a lot of movie-tie-in games there but some of them were creative, interesting and fun to play. Okay so maybe back then the developers had a far inferior platform to work with (compared to now) but it's interesting to see some movie-tie-in games where effort was being put into and not being just a quick cash grab.
Here's some worthy of note:
Batman.
It follows the plot of the original Tim Burton movie closely and does so with different styles of gameplay. The music's pretty good too (or at least for a c64 SID chip)
Here's a clever use of a film license: A split screen dogfight between enemy jets! And the absence of Tom Cruise is even better!
Platoon
An odd choice for a film license to be sure but it works here. Somehow.
Still the music is pretty good
Ultimately though, these are relics from an age long gone. Now, the reason why movie-tie-in games are such a damning sight is that the developers have a very limited amount of time to deliver upon a brand. Is it therefore any wonder why many of these movie-tie-in games come across as being half-arsed? Of course there is only one movie-tie-in game that is highly regarded (both then and now) and that's Goldeneye 007 on the N64. But even that a) had something of it's own say b) was the product of a long time in development even well beyond the movie's original year of release and c) really something revolutionary hiding behind the guise of brand recognition. And Goldeneye 007 turned out to be both a massive hit and a revolution in console FPS. So what does that success represent for movie-tie-in games? One in a hundred? One in five hundred? Lightening in a bottle?
Still is there any hope for movie-tie-in games to recover from this stigmata and somehow be taken seriously? Probably not but ina way I am hopeful. It would be nice to have a movie-tie-in game to be both recognised as brilliant and not Goldeneye 007
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