When a television series becomes a hit and executives come knocking on game publishers' doors, it’s common for such tie-ins to be released exclusively on mobile devices. Casual fans aren’t as likely to shell out $60 for a next-gen game as they are to download a free app, then maybe spend a little onthe inevitable microtransactions. This is especially true of comedies, like sitcoms and sketch shows, where their settings and themes don’t translate as well to the world of AAA gaming.
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This was not quite as true in the years long before smartphones, where consoles and computers were a publisher’s only option. Anything with even a hint of name recognition was up for grabs, and comedy shows were no exception. Sometimes developers bent over backward to craft action-adventure games out of unlikely licenses, while others went for a more literal, but equally baffling approach. Whatever the case, the results were often messy.
8ALF - Master System
Considered one of the worst games released for theMaster System,ALFsees the titular alien from the planet Melmac puttering around the suburbs trying to reassemble his spaceship. In practice, this means collecting random items and trading them at various stores until ALF has the right tools for the job. These range from a swimsuit that lets him safely dive into the backyard pond to, inexplicably, a stick of frozen salami used to beat hordes of bats in the basement to death.
The game is short enough to be beaten in about 10 minutes, but that’s only if players can avoid instant death at the hands of motorcyclists, scuba divers, and an endless supply of grabby-handed government agents. The developers also snuck in a fiendish trick at the player’s expense: the ALF Book, an item that explains the plot of the game once purchased, then immediately sends players back to the title screen after reading it.
7The Flintstones - Amiga, Master System & More
There have been plenty of games based onHanna-Barbera propertiesover the years, often taking liberties with the source material to create a more action-packed experience. Grandslam Interactive’s 1988The Flintstonestitle for various home computers took the opposite approach, resulting in a game that feels a little too down-to-earth.
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Players guidethe Flintstone patriarch Fredthrough an average day, where the only adventure to be found is painting walls and driving to the bowling alley before it closes. The majority of the game is made up of the interminably long bowling minigame that follows, before wrapping things up by rescuing baby Pebbles from a construction site. The Master System port released three years later did little to spice up the tedium.
6Auf Wiedersehen, Pet - ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 & More
A UK sitcom about a group of builders emigrating to Germany, the very existence of anAuf Wiedersehen, Petgame is proof that almost anything with some brand recognition was on the table. It would have been easy to make a generic platformer with vague references to the show thrown in. Instead, the developers churned out a title that could be considered depressingly true to life.
The game has only three levels. The first has the player helping “famous Geordie brickie” Oz lay as many bricks as he can without falling off the wall or getting beaned by falling trowels. The second has Oz careening around a pub grabbing pints of beer. Finally, Oz staggers back home, trying to avoid policemen hiding under cover of night. After that the game loops like an endless purgatory. A commentary on the repetitive grind of modern life? Or maybe it’s just a bad game.
5Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit! - Super Nintendo
Arguably the most well-known example of a sitcom being turned into a video game, if only for its infamous instruction booklet that merely proclaims “real men don’t need instructions!” This adaptation ofHome Improvementdrops the player into various fake TV sets filled with very real dangers, searching for his stolen power tools. It’s all just an excuse to have Tim Allen running around jungles and haunted houses, battling dinosaurs and UFOs with a nail gun.
Despite its reputation,Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuitis far from the worst of its ilk. The graphics are fairly detailed and it controls competently enough, but its tedious level design and lack of passwords meant that few gamers ever saw past its first few stages.
4South Park - Nintendo 64, PlayStation, PC
It can be hard to remember that, before titles likeSouth Park: The Stick of TruthandThe Fractured But Whole, developers were much less sure about how to translate the series into the world of video games. There’s no better example of this than the very firstSouth Parkgame, developed by Iguana Entertainment and cut from the same cloth as their biggest hit at the time,Turok: Dinosaur Hunter.
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Players must cut a swathe through hordes of foes, their arsenal consisting of oddities like cow launchers, chickens that act as makeshift sniper rifles and, when in a pinch, pee-soaked snowballs. Unfortunately, there isn’t much more to it, as most of the levels take place in bland snowy plains or brown nondescript caverns. Navigation is like swimming through milk due to the obtrusive fog, while enemies are so plentiful that carving through them is a chore. Very little of the show’s humor is on display here, being relegated to repetitive voice clips and the occasional expository cutscene.
3Monty Python’s Flying Circus - DOS, Amiga & More
ManyMonty Pythongames were released long after the show had gone off the air, most of them being multimedia packages likeMonty Python’s Complete Waste of Time. The very first one, simply titledMonty Python’s Flying Circus: The Computer Gameis more straightforward: a 2D platformer starring the recurring Gumby character on a quest to reassemble his missing brain. Iconography from the show is everywhere, from cans of Spam to the Spanish Inquisition, all rendered in that familiar Terry Gilliam style.
Aesthetic aside, it’s a relatively run-of-the-mill platform game, but attempts were made to emulateMonty Python’s madcap structure: there are several shoot ‘em up segments where Gumby’s head is transplanted onto a fish or a bird. Bonus rounds take place at the Argument Clinic where Gumby has to repeatedly contradict the host, and occasionally the game will stop to teach you “How to Recognize Different Types of Trees from Quite a Long Way Away.”
2Homey D. Clown - DOS
A recurring character from the sketch showIn Living Color,Homey D. Clownwas a convict who becamea clownas part of his community service, causing plenty of trouble with his anti-social tendencies. He’s an odd character to base an entire adventure game around, but publisher Capstone Software had a habit of picking up all kinds of bizarre licenses, fromL.A. LawtoThe Beverly Hillbillies.
It’s hard to consider the resulting game much of an adventure. Your average player will spend most of their time wandering the grimy streets picking up loose change. Homey can barely walk a block without getting accosted by muggers or passersby asking him to do tricks (to which he can only respond with one of his several catchphrases). If these constant distractions don’t make players want to quit, the shrill, wailing soundtrack is likely to instead.
1Little Britain: The Video Game - PlayStation 2, PSP & More
An enormously popular sketch show in the UK,Little Britainwas known for itscontroversial characters, toilet humor, and incessant catchphrases, such as “yeah but, no but…” and “computer says no.” Naturally, this made it a particularly big hit among pre-teens, so a video game was inevitable. But what kind of game could be made out of a show with characters like “Letty Bell the Frog Lady” and “The Only Gay in the Village?”
The answer is a compilation of dire minigames involving rollerblading, cycling, and football, alongside clunky rip-offs ofPac-ManandTetris. Just about every one of them outstays their welcome, the grimy graphics and repetitive voice samples doing little to liven up the experience. There’s a reason it’s considered some of the worst shovelware to be released on the PlayStation 2.
