In the early days of console dominance, video game tie-ins were all the rage. Every summer blockbuster and popular TV show had to release alongside a 16-bit cartridge. In the game held within, characters from the movie run and jump through a virtual world to the delight of fans and the dread of video game reviewers. While there are definitely some highlights in this category, there are far more that exist solely as marketing devices. These games tend to combine subpar gameplay with narratives that stretch reasonable limits, and while it's a tall order to adapt a family sitcom or a simple mascot into a Mario knockoff, that doesn't discount just how strange some of these games look to modern eyes.
The flood of licensed games in the days of the NES and SNES may be explained by the platformer's dominance on the gaming landscape of the time. Nowadays, the biggest games around are either violent shooters or complex RPGs, neither of which are easily adaptable to a vast majority of licenses out there. Platformers are easy to whip up in comparison, as just about any known character can run, jump and collect rotating logos from their home franchise. No one would expect Marvel's Captain America or Loki to wield a SHIELD assault rifle, but they can surely leap across a helicarrier to attack their foes.
Another factor that differentiates the games of today from the games of yesteryear is the wide variety of platforms a license could utilize for their gaming spinoff. Many movies and TV shows find it much simpler to adapt to a mobile game than a console game, and it's true that just about anything can hold up a gem-matching puzzler or a gacha-style character collectathon. In the Mario-heavy SNES era, it was home console or nothing, which led to these rather strange game adaptions hitting store shelves.
Strange 16-Bit Platformers - Home Improvement
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Not to start with the showstopper, but Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit! is the poster child of wacky licensed platformers among those in the know. After misplacing expensive power tools, Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor must pursue the missing products across stone temples, haunted mansions, and more.
Tim shoots nails at a ghost and somehow defeats them, dispatches a scorpion with a chainsaw that inexplicably shoots energy waves, and barbeques aliens with a blowtorch. The assorted light fixtures attempt to frame the action as the actor himself running through TV sets, but that doesn't really lessen the impact of this bizarre action game.
Strange 16-Bit Platformers - Normy's Beach Babe-O-Rama
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While Home Improvement's SNES outing was odd because of its adaption of a family sitcom, Normy's Beach Babe-O-Rama gains its spot on this list simply through pure obscurity. Based on the comics of cartoonist and current Intellivision president Keith Robinson, Normy sees the titular beach dude rescuing women in swimsuits from alien invaders. He accomplishes this by using a suntan lotion that sends him back in time (for some reason) to defeat the aliens and restore the beach.
Developed by the licensed game veterans at Realtime Associates and published by Electronic Arts, Normy's Beach Babe-O-Rama devolves into a run-of-the-mill Sonic the Hedgehog clone once players wrap their heads around the unruly premise. Even so, that initial stretched premise and the fact that Normy's character has seemingly faded into obscurity make his Genesis outing a true historical oddity.
Strange 16-Bit Platformers - Snow White: Happily Ever After
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It's Snow White, but not the one that many grew up with. Happily Ever After is a 1993 film in the vein of Disney's classic fairy tale adaption, a fact that led animation company Filmation to court during its production. Following a disastrous launch to theaters, a platformer based on the film released the following October, serving an audience that had largely forgotten about the film's existence.
The game largely follows the plot of the film, wherein the Evil Queen's brother Lord Malliss has vowed revenge on Snow White and transformed her prince into the mysterious Shadow Man (not to be confused with the comic book and game hero of the same name). Players can choose between Snow or the Shadow Man as they play through busy platforming stages that very much reflect the British sensibilities of developer Imagitec Design.
Strange 16-Bit Platformers - Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill
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Socks the Cat Rocks the Hill is stone-cold proof that politics and video games have always been bedfellows. What discerning Super Nintendo player wouldn't want to run and jump through an adventure as Socks the cat, pet and unofficial mascot of President Bill Clinton? Who wouldn't want to hop on Richard Nixon's head in a boss battle as he calls in tracking missiles in a basement? It's a bulletproof gaming concept the world was robbed of before it had a chance.
Gamers never got the chance to rock the hill on their own, as the game was canceled right before release. While it would be easy to assume that a game where a cat battles Ross Perot to the death left circulation because of its wild premise, it was instead due to the sudden closure of its publisher. The finished game was given to reviewers at the time and finally made it out onto the Internet due to a successful Kickstarter in 2018.
Strange 16-Bit Platformers - Izzy's Quest for the Olympic Rings
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Released in anticipation of the 1996 Olympic Games, Izzy's Quest for the Olympic Rings is a prime example of the trend for companies to view video games as an easy marketing tool above all else. The biannual Olympic Games are a merchandising machine all its own, and the '90s brought that machine right alongside the video game craze.
Izzy (originally known as Whatizit) was an unpopular choice of Olympic mascot, garnering ridicule across the board when it debuted at the end of the 1992 Olympics. The committee behind Atlanta's event commissioned a video game that was part of a rebranding effort that also changed the design to something that looked more athletic. What resulted is another mediocre Sonic clone, and that's not the type of release that's going to revitalize a reviled branding exercise.
Strange 16-Bit Platformers - Chester Cheetah
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Yet what might be less appealing as the hero of a run and jump adventure could be a jungle cat that exists to sell the nation junk food. Chester Cheetah got a series of platformers in the age of the Super Nintendo, all published by would-be Socks the Cat publisher Kaneko.
In both Too Cool to Fool and the multiplatform sequel Wild Wild Quest, the cheetah dashes through various stages while collecting his favorite cheesy snack. Just like Sonic's rings, the mascot leaves the mortal coil only if he runs out of cheese puffs.
Out of all these bizarre platforming heroes, only Chester has returned to video games in the years since the age of extreme. He features as a background character in an early entry of the ever-popular Just Dance series, which is a video game tie-in both just as baffling as his full-length platforming adventures and also perhaps the perfect place for a spokescat for processed corn puffs.
Source: NintendoComplete/YouTube, VideoGaming4U/YouTube, LongplayArchive/YouTube