Now Playing: A Guide to 1980s and 1990s Movie Licensed Games is now available for preorder from Press Run Books! There are 420 pages here covering over 900 games. It’s quite a lot! You can find the full list of covered franchises/games here.
For a bit of personal background, my father was a movie theater projectionist (when that was a job that existed) and my mother was a school librarian. When I got old enough, I worked at a movie theater (RIP Cinema 10 in Succasunna NJ) and later at a book store (also RIP Borders in Rockaway). This accounts for at least 50% of who I am, and is certainly what drove me to put this book together.
18 year old me working at the concession counter
Movie licensed games have a poor reputation, and there are indeed many that are quite bad, but we’ve dug into what really makes them interesting. After all, movies and video games are inherently different mediums, and there have been many attempts over the decades to bridge the two. Not all of them worked, but the creativity that comes with the process is worth celebrating.
We’ve aimed to be as comprehensive as possible, covering games across PCs, consoles, arcades, portables, cell phones, smartphones, basically everything we could find. In a few cases, it also covers some interesting bootleg titles, and a few games from the 1980s which were based on specific movies despite not being officially licensed (like Manhattan 95 for the Amstrad CPC, which is clearly meant to be Escape from New York). The book is broadly divided into genres, including action, sci-fi, horror, and family/comedy.
We’re also covering all of the games in a given franchise, even if they’re not technically based on a specific movie. This includes a whole bunch of games based on Alien and Terminator, even ones that were released in the 21st century. And while the focus is on movies, we’re also looking at some of the games based on cartoon tie-ins in cases like Batman and Ghostbusters, because these were big parts of their identity in the 1990s and they’d feel weird without them. Two exceptions: Many Star Wars games are covered, but since that’s such an expansive topic (that could fill its own book!), this just focuses on the games based on the Original Trilogy. Same deal with the Star Trek section, which features the games released through the late 1990s based on the Original Series and Next Generation. Even though the title is “1980s and ’90s”, we’re digging a little further back into the past – after all, Star Wars, Alien and Jaws came out in the 1970s, and there are some other properties that received tie-ins like The Godfather and The Rocky Horror Picture Show.
Movie licensed games have a tendency to be forgotten, too, in no small part due to the complications that come with their licenses. And that’s unfortunate, because despite of widespread beliefs, there are many movie games that are excellent! For example, there were two FPS games based on The Terminator – Future Shock and SkyNET – which were both big names in the 90s PC scene, which drove 3D technology forward and were often mentioned in the same breath as Quake. But the Terminator license has prevented them from seeing any kind of re-release, leaving them to be forgotten except for the most hardcore players. And they definitely shouldn’t be.
There are also plenty of legitimately excellent, or at least historically important, titles that have fallen through the tracks. Did you know there was a fully 3D game based on the original Terminator movie released in 1990 where you could play as either the Terminator or Kyle Reese? Did you know there was a Game Boy Color beat-em-up based on Blade which was made by some of the same folks behind the Double Dragon games? Did you know there was a James Bond Game Boy that plays like a Legend of Zelda title? There are so many weird and wonderful titles featured here that I hope you’ll gain a greater appreciation for some of these overlooked games.
Also, some licensed games are lost forever! There were a number of Ghostbusters games released on smartphones through the 2010s, but they didn’t last long, and many are not only no longer available for purchase, but are completely unplayable. These games aren’t even that old and yet they’re completely lost to time!
