Licensed games from early in the life of the franchise

[Anonymous No.8335247]

I've always found the The Simpsons arcade game being a snapshot of the early development of The Simpsons as an expanded franchise to be interesting, with scrapped elements (like Marge's rabbit ears), unusual characterizations (evil lunatic Smithers), and even the downright bizarre (the boss of Moe's Tavern is seemingly based on some random, inconsequential background character from the series).

Any other examples of licensed games like this, which appear to feature content based on early plans for the franchise as a whole that were never fully developed or were perhaps scrapped entirely, making their inclusion in the game seem strange as a result?

[Anonymous No.8335250]

Okay, but how do you know which part of that was sticking to the source material and which part was completely made up / guess-worked by the devs?

[Anonymous No.8335254]

>>8335250
Sometimes you don't, so I guess I should add instances where the lack of source material led to decisions by the development team which became amusing in hindsight, once the related elements were fleshed out later in the source (quite possibly what happened with Smithers).

Anyway, the Rocko's Modern Life game was apparently developed concurrently with the first season of the show.

[Anonymous No.8335263]

This game is a weird mix of 1987 cartoon and 1984 comics aesthetics

[Anonymous No.8335269]

The South Park N64 game is only based off of elements from Season 1

[Anonymous No.8335278]

I saw an early build disc of this game which still featured the Empire in the Sun name on it, so development seemingly started before they settled on the final name. Granted, I doubt it would've been too dissimilar from the final product beyond being unfinished, since the actual early iteration of the movie was named Empire "OF" the Sun, while In the Sun was used when the movie was going to be like what was released.

Still could've had earlier designs, but sadly we will never know, as it sold quickly and the buyer was apparently backdoored.

[Anonymous No.8335285]

>>8335278
>still feels the need to have ugly CG on the cover for absolutely no reason
Fucking PlayStation era cover art

[Anonymous No.8335287]

>>8335263
Turtles comic sucked. Cartoon is life.

[Anonymous No.8335329]

>>8335269
>The South Park N64 game is only based off of elements from Season 1

N64 Game: NA: December 21, 1998
South Park Season 2: Start: April 1, 1998, End: January 20, 1999

I think the N64 game was in development while Season 2 was still airing, and the bulk of the gags are based on season 1 episodes. But I think there may have been a few season 2 gags as well?

[Anonymous No.8335450]

>>8335287
Eh?
No

[Anonymous No.8335453]

>>8335285
Wasn’t this exclusively an American thing

[Anonymous No.8335475]

>>8335285
I don't think that is CG. It's some weird airbrush art, that they for some reason went with over the actual art from the movie. Maybe it's meant to look 3D?

[Anonymous No.8335485]

>>8335247
might just be my head canon but I think this might be the case pretty often. Properties will get most of their merchandising in the first big explosion of popularity while it's still a new fad, by the time the series has established itself fully the merchandising will have usually tapered off somewhat.

[Anonymous No.8335490]

Dalek Attack is pretty funny from a modern view of the franchise. A Doctor Who game as a scrolling shooter.

[Anonymous No.8337654]

>>8335247
Obviously the earlier SpongeBob games for Playstation and stuff were based on the first or maybe second season
Now there's over 20 years of the show and it's gone through at least five distinct eras
>Season 1
>Season 2-3/Movie
>the time in season 4 before it became shit
>the time between season 4 becoming shit and creativity kicking back in
>the nu-Spongebob that isn't anything like the old show but at least they're trying again

[Anonymous No.8338025]

>>8335247
I dread to ask but in all the many many seasons since, did this rabbit ear marge idea ever get referenced at all?

[Anonymous No.8338030]

>>8338025
Think if it had I would have heard about it by now

[Anonymous No.8338052]

>>8338025
>I dread to ask but in all the many many seasons since, did this rabbit ear marge idea ever get referenced at all?

That idea was probably veto'ed out by the other Simpsons viewers. Weird that marge was suppose to be a lagomorph of some kind.

[Anonymous No.8338060]

>>8338025
>>>8335247 (OP)
>I dread to ask but in all the many many seasons since, did this rabbit ear marge idea ever get referenced at all?

That idea was probably veto'ed out by the other Simpsons producers like James L. brooks and Coeh. Weird that Marge was suppose to be a lagomorph of some kind. But I guess it fits with his Life in Hell series.

[Anonymous No.8338067]

>>8338060
The show itself was very grounded in Season 1 so I'm not sure how an apparently normal human turning out to have giant cartoon rabbit ears would work. It's just tonally wrong.

[Anonymous No.8338080]

>>8338067
>The show itself was very grounded in Season 1 so I'm not sure how an apparently normal human turning out to have giant cartoon rabbit ears would work. It's just tonally wrong.

Maybe it was an idea that Groening had for the original Tracey Ullman Show shorts? It may have also just been an inside joke, and was never meant to be expanded on. I would imagine that the idea was filtered out by the other show producers.

[Anonymous No.8338105]

Yu-Gi-Oh Forbidden Memories had a really weird out of character Isis. They also gave Kaiba the Millennium Rod. Atem's entire back story is different too.

[Anonymous No.8338134]

>>8338105
Think the game came out years before this part of the lore actually got fleshed out in the manga itself

[Anonymous No.8338165]

>>8335247
Not quite the same thing, but most Transformers games were made after the franchise was already big so they tend to focus on later year characters as those were the then-current toys to shill at the time. Mystery of Convoy, despite the cartoon elements, is blatantly a game about advertising the 1986 toys and characters of Season 3 of the cartoon. In fact, the title screen song is the Transformers 2010 theme song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4EcH11o3gA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNhmsKTE3b4

That's also why none of them have playable Optimus Prime. GI Joe has a similar thing, which is why you get things like the NES games having franchise anomaly Golobulus as a boss fight, or the arcade game having your iconic GI Joe cartoon characters... and Metalhead.