Raiders of the Lost Games: how the licenced titles of the seventh generation are renewed, resold, or replayed
The Xbox 360 and PS3 were the last proveedores of tie-in titles, providing a chaos menu of curiosities and cult hits.
Consider this a spiritual successor to my article on The Simpsons: Hit & Run; I want to thank this lovely community for taking a truncated trip down memory lane by my side.
The central concern of that piece - fan-made Moe DLC notwithstanding - was the concept of abandonware: reclaiming a title lost to an expired licence or general apathy. Ultimately, the ethics of this practice fall upon two opposing lines: whether a game without commercial distribution should be played, as residuals cannot be delivered to its creative team, or if it should be given over to the people through piracy. As I believe games to be an art, I tend to agree with the latter - additionally, it prevents a grey market of opportunists from emerging.
In my prior piece, I deferred to one of gaming’s foremost auteurs in Tim Schafer, who contended that the best way to honour a lost title is to play it; piracy is righteous in this regard, as developers who worked upon these titles likely cannot receive royalties. The only indignant party would be the publisher - who, evidently, could not care less. Look, I understand those who desperately want to play Transformers: The Game will not spare a moment to consider the moral repercussions of their deed: it was once a widely accessible title, designed to be a prominent property in Activision’s portfolio. Thus, treating its recovery with the dogmatic severity of a Crusade is understandably silly.
Transformers: The Game is an adaptation of a film that was itself adapted from a toy line … and not a pixel was lost in transformation translation.
However, Valve recently restricted access to Steam for Windows 7 and 8 - which ran in tandem with the seventh generation of home consoles. Consequently, finding a streamlined link to the past outside of Nintendo’s restrictive commercial model has become increasingly cumbersome. Attempting to emulate titles of a bygone era requires substantial tinkering, losing the robust charm of a CRT or a 4:3, 720p monitor. Through the magic of GOG, I can fire up Rayman 2: The Great Escape with ease - however, it loses a part of its character in rendering itself upon my 144hz monitor from a mercifully swift install. Perhaps I am yearning for the past, a time where these experiences felt elusive and haptic; it was certainly not ideal then.
Indeed, we are in a golden generation of video game access. Just as universities in the 1960’s expanded their faculties to include dedicated film programmes, providing its students with greater access to the medium’s established canon, emulation has cultivated a culture of preservation: regarding games as statements, rather than products. Though Mother 3 has yet to receive a formal release in Western markets, canny creators made their own English translations, distributing it through entirely emulated means. In order to play the patch, players must have a Game Boy Advance emulator and a ROM file - that is, a replica of the game. The website encourages players to legally procure their own ROM through importing the game from Japan: a costly and potentially lengthy process. However, if this proves to be too great a hurdle, the team encourages those interested to purchase official merchandise to offset their illegal acquisition of a ROM. Or, you could simply download the ROM and get started.
I tend to choose the last option.
Even earlier than my trip through Springfield, I assessed all of the major Spider-Man titles of this century. Within this collection, only three are freely accessible through a digital storefront: Insomniac’s Spider-Man trilogy; the rest are tied up in purgatory due to Activision’s expired licence. Though we have not lost an essential inflection in the medium’s maturity through losing access to Edge of Time, it is worth charting each of these titles to understand how their respective teams evolved both the character’s virtual vocabulary and his wider reputation. Web of Shadows bore an ostensibly symbiotic relationship with its predecessor in Spider-Man 3, yet its original story and thrilling aerial combat renders it closer in concept to Insomniac’s iteration than Treyarch’s troubled tale. Shattered Dimensions’ wallcrawling quartet introduced the concept of the Spider-Verse to a mainstream audience - particularly in its mechanic of a Web of Destiny that would evolve from an upgrade tree to the central crisis of Across the Spider-Verse. Were it not for this one element, the notion of a canon event would not have entered the public lexicon, nor would we have Spider-Man 2099’s powerful leitmotif of wa-we-wa-wah-waa.
The four titles I mentioned above debuted within the seventh generation of home consoles, the final era wherein publishers would look to Triple A tie-in titles as a valid measure of revenue. Licenced titles persist to this day, albeit in a highly monetised, live-service form: either through collaborations with existing properties in Fortnite or Fall Guys, or in free-to-play mobile titles. In conceiving of an interactive Game of Thrones title, why would Warner Bros. potentially spurn themselves by developing an RPG that would either be too complex for casuals or simple for fans? The easiest alternative is to deliver an accessible mobile experience with recognisable iconography and social interactivity, appealing to the greatest possible audience. 13.6 million people watched the finale live on HBO alone; cable subscribers may not have consoles, but they have phones.
The power of Westeros in the palm of your hand, playable on whatever euphemism the term “Iron Throne” may suggest.
In these final years, THQ - the industry’s most skilled hand in shovelware - collapsed, finding their boilerplate model of taking a known franchise and delivering a minimum viable product had fallen out of favour. Disney terminated their deal with the studio ahead of Toy Story 3, which introduced a genuinely innovative concept in its “Toy Box” mode: a sandbox allowing players to break from its standard narrative form to pursue their own adventures. THQ’s last major adaptations were of Up and Wall-E, which were certainly not in conversation with their respective source material - particularly Wall-E, a cautionary tale for wanton consumption and excess. Perhaps Disney recognised that their interactive media should retain the qualities of its inspirator, rather than retrofitting its aesthetics to a fairly rote platformer. Their fatal blow came through the uDraw tablet: a peripheral designed to push the boundaries of artistic expression within the medium.
The system was bundled with uDraw Studio, designed to showcase the potential of the device. You could paint upon a canvas with a full spectrum of colour, play Pictionary, and break the traditional form of a platformer with the bare stroke of a pen! Nevertheless, the uDraw failed to sketch a model of success, underperforming to the tune of $100 million. Culpability for its design can be attributed to both consumer apathy and a crisis of creativity; THQ, known for publishing the Drawn to Life series that allowed players to draw their own player, inventory, and environments, released a Wii adaptation that was incompatible with the uDraw.
This astounding degree of mismanagement is but the tip of their pen: they spilt ink on bizarre titles best exemplified in Kung Fu Panda 2, which made the uDraw mandatory for the entire game despite its functionality being mostly limited to colouring pages. Kids love to draw at random; why limit their interactivity to incidental minigames? THQ could not manage to make a single compelling argument for the uDraw against literal pen and paper or the Wii’s prodigiously effective motion control scheme. Thus, in trying to have their cake and eat it in making Frankensteined licenced titles by committee and shoving them onto superfluous hardware, THQ discovered that they had an immovable feast on their hands.
It’s astounding to think that Kung Fu Panda 2 for the uDraw did not inspire confidence within THQ’s shareholders.
In switching from a merchandising warehouse to a production powerhouse, the industry further established its identity as a hermetic economy. Film and television would have to beckon at their feet for recognition, rather than the reverse. In 2012, the penultimate year of the seventh generation, the industry was worth $79 billion worldwide. Last year, its figure was $183.9 billion. The medium has codified a language of its own; each successive generation of players will have been born into an entertainment climate wherein gaming is the greatest seat of power. Publishers do not need a Disney licence to succeed, Disney needs them.
Ultimately, THQ’s collapse was the final word on hurried licenced titles. Today, adaptations in Hogwarts Legacy are scrutinised on a tantamount scale to their contemporaries, rather than a quick cash grab to tie into a feature film. They are fully realised experiences, incubated for extended periods of time to respect the breadth of their source material. Returning to these titles of yore represents an indulgent exercise in nostalgia, a time in which games were considered as marketing expenses rather than essential entertainment properties. If you desire a time machine of your own, take a trip through each era of tie-in titles, from The Simpsons Arcade to The Simpsons Game; Super Star Wars to Star Wars Jedi: Survivor. The conclusion will be the same for each: hey, I know that character!