Namco Star Wars
Namco Star Wars, or just Star Wars, seems like a relatively simple licensed platformer for the Famicom. It’s got to be the earliest game on our list, dropping in 1987 during the long draught between the original trilogy and the prequels. This Star Wars game wasn’t about to satisfy anyone, not especially the fans, thanks to a pretty unique interpretation of Darth Vader.
1987 might as well be the wild west when it comes to licensed games. There was no quality control, and just about anyone could dump a crappy game onto the Famicom. Star Wars fits the mold — where Luke Skywalker immediately encounters Darth Vader in the first level on Tatooine. Fudging the beats of a story? That’s standard operating procedure for old Nintendo games.
If only you actually fought Darth Vader. The Dark Lord of the Sith transforms into a giant alien scorpion during your first battle — which appears to take place in an Egyptian tomb instead of Tatooine. And the animals just keep coming. In future fights, Darth Vader transforms into a skeleton pterodactyl, a shark, and a wampa. One of those things is from Star Wars, right?
Jump Force
If you think weird licensed games are a thing of the past, think again — Jump Force released in 2019 to a resounding chorus of “Huh” and “What”? This Bandai Namco cross-over game pits the biggest stars of Shonen Jump, a weekly Japanese young adult comic magazine, against each other to see who’s the best. It’s kind of like a light anime fighting game — like the ones we’ve seen for Dragonball Z or Naruto. But Jump Force is an entirely different beast.
Instead of setting everything in a nebulously defined universe like Smash Bros., Jump Force is entirely set in the real world. Y’know, our world. You’ll fight in arenas across the globe that are disturbingly realistic. Characters from a wide variety of popular manga series just look plain weird together in the game’s sorta-anime sorta-realistic style.
There’s a complicated storyline behind all this, involving evil A.I.s, mind-controlled “Venoms”, and heroes recruited across multiple universes to save the day. So much effort was put into making such an ugly, ugly game. I’m sure someone thought the idea sounded awesome on paper.
Discover more poorly thought out corporate decisions on the next page.
