Oddest game tie-ins

[Jemble Fred]

More recently there were some Burger King tie-ins for the 360:

Scariest games on the Xbox too.

[lazarou]

It's not a tie-in,[nb]sort-of tied-in with his band The Freshies, I suppose[/nb] but this game was written by Frank Sidebottom: http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0000544

Definitely a tie-in, but not really a game, there's also the ZX81 music video you could load up to run 'live' along with the record. No bugger ever got it to load apparently, except for the YouTube hero above. I'm glad he did, because it's fucking great.

[El Unicornio, mang]

[lazarou]

That's reminded me of the custom Quake 3 map 'Chronic', complete with Dre and Eminem as playable characters. Wouldn't be anything unusual as far as mods go, except it was officially produced by Interscope as a promotional tool.

[Small Man Big Horse]

Not one mention of Samantha Fox's Strip Poker? Where the ultimate prize for winning the game was to see a poorly pixelated version of her boobs? But this is CaB, what the christ is going on?!

[KLG-7B]

Ah yeah. There was a The Young Ones game, an odd license.

Here's a promo with bad impressions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaiSIhE24i4

Also,

[JesusAndYourBush]

Wow, that's incredible. I've never heard of this before. There appears to be a recent sequel as well http://www.deusexmachina2.com/

Unfortunately I don't understand the website.

Edit: Aha, here's the trailer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0a6e6UyCr_I&feature=player_embedded

It looks a bit shit.

I remember the original, I still have the tape.  I didn't play the game much.  Because it was timed to synchronise with the soundtrack it was pretty much the same every time you played but I used to listen to the soundtrack a lot.  It makes a great concept album... like The Wall only not as long.  I can't see much appeal in a remake though.  Anyone who isn't familiar with the original will be left confused, and those who do remember the original will probably prefer it to the remake.

[Default to the negative]

A few more for the rubbish pile here.




Because it's CaB, I think GTA Ricky belongs on this list. It was pretty damn odd when he showed up in the game.

[Operty1]

Nightmare on Robinson Street. The Neighbours based shoot em up available as a cover game:

http://www.worldofspectrum.org/infoseekid.cgi?id=0003427

[KLG-7B]

Kick Off developer Dino Dini started insisting on putting his name (bear in mind he's a DEVELOPER) on his football games (e.g. Dino Dini's Goal) due to uncontrollable ego problems.[nb]https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Design&diff=81127267&oldid=80060817[/nb][nb]http://everything2.com/user/TheNavigator/writeups/Dino+Dini[/nb] A very odd thing for a man most famous for arguing with Stuart Campbell[nb]something 90% of Internet users can claim to have done[/nb] to do.

[El Unicornio, mang]

This one was quite odd



I actually played it a lot as it was probably the first "open world" game I had experienced. Also there was a bit where you OD'd to death on the top deck of a bus so it was, like, educational too.

[Rolf Lundgren]

Definitely a tie-in, but not really a game, there's also the ZX81 music video you could load up to run 'live' along with the record. No bugger ever got it to load apparently, except for the YouTube hero above. I'm glad he did, because it's flipping great.

I love that video, Chris Sievey was at least 10 years ahead of anyone else with that. And the bloke's dedication in getting that uploaded is fantastic. 

[KLG-7B]

I love that the backing vocals are by the "Vizzable Girls", and on a Martin Hannett production no less.

[Spiteface]

Essentially a sort of Space Invader-y kinda game where you play as, yes, a Weetabix. Not really as "unique" as the cover says.

[Consignia]

Ah yeah. There was a The Young Ones game, an odd license.

Here's a promo with bad impressions: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaiSIhE24i4

That was actually my introduction to the Young Ones. I had a second hand Amstrad 6128 circa 1991 with a ton of games, and one of the more appealing tapes was that beast. It wasn't until years later I actually saw an episode of the damn thing. I could never figure out the objective, but I did once or twice get into Narnia.

[KLG-7B]

They should have mentioned that bit in the ad! What a selling point.

[Rev]

Getting desperate now, but it's one of the world's weirdest things so I want to link to it anyway:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwJBsYJ16IE

Deus Ex Machina, the Spectrum game with an odd audio tape featuring Jon Pertwee, Ian Dury and Frankie Howerd.

Which I nominated in the top 1000 games of all time thread - it'd probably be in my top 10, really.  The remake/sequel probably won't work anywhere near as well, because it was very much of its time.  It had ideas far bigger than what could be technically achieved, and got a little of the way there.  Plus it was eerie as all fuck.

Anyone talking shit about the Frankie Goes to Hollywood game needs to stand in the corridor and have a word with themselves.  It was a fantastic and weirdly polished game, that had clearly had more time and effort put into it than many of Ocean's AAA titles (they weren't called that then, but, you know what I mean).  It stood out like a sore thumb at the time, because there was no shortage of bizarre and rubbish tie-ins, but Frankie was one of the best games of its year.  If it was good, why was it a tie-in?[nb]I half-remember something about it being an original game that was a bit too weird for the publishers to have any confidence in releasing, so it got reconfigured slightly with the Frankie licence.  That's either half-remembered or completely made up, in an attempt for my brain to make sense of it.[/nb]

[Marty McFly]

or as the Amiga version was known, "Viz: The Soft Floppy One"

[jenna appleseed]

just before getting my first computer my dad off loaded passed on his just rediscovered in a box/chest zx spectrum & tapes to me - this was one of them.
(forget the rest except scrabble, pong and a hobbit / lotr text adventure - my dad used that one to demo it/show off how good he was and stuck in a room/cave lol)


remember being confused but thrilled being massively into the books at the time

killed the bloody thing (pulling the cable out mid boring game of computer v computer scrabble) before I got as far as playing it (or following the guide instructions to programme my own verson of Frogger)

eta: old review says it was based heavily on the book text - bit like a choose your own adventure book but with less options http://www.sincuser.f9.co.uk/045/advent.htm

[Rev]

That's pretty much what it was - paragraphs from the book with the occasional multiple-choice decision, in which the right one was to do what was in the book.  Can't remember if you could kill the overrated little shitbag, though - I think bad decisions tended to loop back until you made the right one.

[KLG-7B]

Andy Capp