There was once a time when licensed video games were always bad, especially movie tie-in games. These monstrositღies were often ru🌸shed out by publishers, handed off to inexperienced or poor developers with little time or budget to make something good. Worst still, many of these games had to follow a strict structure established by whatever they were based on.
Nowadays, licensed games tend to be a little better. There’s still a torrential downpour of garbage on the mobile market, but AAA licensed games are usually pretty excellent. The Witcher and Metro series are two examples of games based on books that have been great. Insomniac’s recently released Spider-Man PS4 and Rocksteady’s Batman Arkham gಌames have revolutionized super hero video games.
But, again, the deck is stacked against these games by greedy publishers and rights holders. For every one good licensed game, you can bet there are three Superman 64s or E.T.s for the Atari 2600 not far behind. Can you believe Cars 3 got a tie-in video game on PS4 and Xbox One? In this day and age, we got a throwback to crapꦯpy tie-in games from the PS2 and Xbox era.
But there are many licensed games that are truly bad, some of the worst games ever made. T😼hese games have been so bad they’ve tainted the name of whatever movie, TV ♍show, or book they’re based on. These are the games that fans wish they could forget, but are haunted by in their worst nightmares. Pretty melodramatic since they’re just video games, but hey, it’s their nightmares, not mine.
25 Ju-On: The Gr💦udge ᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚᩚ𒀱ᩚᩚᩚ
While never really catching on in the West, Ju-On is one of the most popular horror franchises in Japan. Ju-On: The Grudge, the third film released in the series in 2002, got a video game tie-in for the Wii seven years later, sub-subtitled Haunted House Simulator.
Like many tie-in games on the Wii, Ju-On: The Grudge is a rushed, slap-dashed mess designed to capitalize on the success of the console. With terrible graphics, terrible gameplay that involves waving the Wiimote around at random, and only a few hours long, Ju-On is a terrible introduction to the series i𓄧n the West.
24 The Itchy & Scratchy Game🌟
Believe it or not, Itchy and Scratchy, two car♏toon characters within The Simpsons, got their own game on the NES and Game Gear. You play as Itchy, with the sole goal of chasing and harming Scratchy.
The game was criticized for its repe🤪titive nature, boring and overly simplistic gameplay, and oddly low-quality audio. A Genesis (Mega Drive) port was planned but never released, pres🍰umably due to the poor reception and sales.
23 Jaws
It seems pretty easy to make a game based on Jaws, right? Just give the player a harpoon gun and a boat, going around hunting sharks. Well, that’s pretty much what the NES version of Jaws was.
Jaws (the 🌳NES game) had little in the way of gameplay. You get in your boat, randomly move around an overhead map until you run into an encounter, then go underwater to shoot a shark. That’s it. The graphics were basic and ugly, the gameplay boring, and is (mercifully) short.
22 ♏ Kiss Pinball
Kiss Pinball, based on the band of the same name, was released for the PlayStation and PC in 20🍒00. How hard can it be to mess up aꦏ pinball video game, you ask? Apparently pretty easy, as developers Wildfire Studios and Tarantula Studios showed us.
The game’s physics were a mess, the ball felt too light-weight and would fly across the screen after the slightest tap, which൲ would send the camera flying at light speed to try and keep up. Yet somehow, the tables were almost all completely e🎀mpty, making the game incredibly boring.
21 💛 Looney Tunes: Acme Arsenal
There have been some really good Looney Tunes games over the years, but Acme Arsenal is not one of them. Developed by new studios Redtribe for the Wii, 360, and PlayStation 2, strangely, Acme Arsenal is a 3D platformer.
The game is full of terrible jokes, bad physics, and boring gameplay. The levels are mostly empty, and the game has terrible controls. Game Informer went so far as to give the game a 1.8 out of 10, saying the best thing about this game is “a ♛low point in Bugs Bunn💃y’s career.”
20 🍨 Doctor Who: Return To Earth 🐠
Another low-rent Wii game, Doctor Who: Return to Earth, based on the popular BBC series of the same name🍌, was released in 2010. The game starred Matt Smith’s Doctor, and 🥃he and Amy Pond must stop some bad people from doing bad things. That’s about the extent of it.
The game was roundly panned for ugly graphics and uninspired gameplay. Official Nintendo Magazine even gave it a 19% rating, calling it “an insult to Doctor Who fans.”
19 ಌ Gౠhostbusters (2016)
Ghostbusters, the 2016 game, was the lowest ranking game o🌟n Metacritic in 2016. The PS4 version currently has a 30 out of 100 score, with the highest score being 58. That tells you just about all you need to know about this awful twin-stick shooter.
Yes, they turned Ghostbusters in a twin-stick shooter, and not a very good one either. The game lacked any real humor and variety. Weirdest of all, developer Fireforge Games filed for financial trouble three days after the game cam🎶e out, being approximately $12 million in debt.
18 🦹 Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Mega Battle
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Mega Battle is basically an online flash game that Bandai Namco thought they could get away with charging 𒐪full retail price for. One look at the game is more than enough to tell you this game is cheap.
Mega Battle is a slap-dashed beat ‘em up, and that’s all there is to say about it. Like many games on this list, it lacks variety, looks cheaply made, and only just meets the bare minimum to be considered a video game. Bandai Namco likely rushed this out in 2017 to be ready in time for the Power Rangers movie that year.
17 Back To 🦄The Future (NES) ꧂
Turning Back to the Future into a video seems difficult enough, bu꧅t trying to make an NES game out of it seems impossible. Proof of that exists thanks to LJN, who tried their hand at an NES adaptation of the⛄ classic film in 1989.
The game was… interesting, to say the least. It was an eclectic mix of skateboarding, side-scrolling, a rhythm mini-game, and even a Paperboy stage. The game was a total mess and remains by far the worst video game adaptation of Back to the Future.
16 🅷 𝄹 Batman: Dark Tomorrow
If licensed games used to be universally bad, then superhero games were always train wrecks. Case in point: Batman: Dark Tomorrow, easily the worst Batman game, and probably the third or fourth worst superhero gameꦑ ever.
Dark Tomorrow was a stealth action game chock full of awful controls, terrible graphics, and repetitive game🐲play. Game Informer gave the game just 0.75 out of 10, saying the game was “incomprehensible and littered with bugs.” Ouch.