Strange Product Tie-In Games

Finding new ways to get the word out about a product has always been something that marketers have toiled over. Whether it’s cleverly placing a can of pop in the background of a scene in a movie, flying blimps over stadiums, or wacky publicity stunts, increasing mindshare and getting people excited about their widgets has always been their thing. So, when video games came along, executives in board rooms the world over looked at the technology and thought to themselves, “Hey! The kids seem to like that stuff. How can we use that to our advantage?”

With that we’ve seen a steady stream of games come out over the last 30 years centered around this or that corporate mascot reminding us that their products exist and, just maybe, we should buy some. Obviously, a lot of these were pretty bad, but on the rare occasion one turned out to be somewhat entertaining. One thing is for sure, though, the majority of them raised eyebrows when they came along as people questioned who in their right mind would make a game based on that.

Today we’ll be taking a look at some of the stranger and more interesting product tie-in games to come along, the vast majority of which seem hell bent on reminding us that things like fast food exist. For the sake of brevity, we’ll be limiting this to console games and PC titles with proper releases. Browser and mobile games won’t be mentioned because we’d be here forever if we tried to wade through the legions dross to show up on those platforms.

Spot: The Video Game

In the late 80s and early 90s, 7Up actually had a mascot. The little red dot on the drink’s logo sprouted arms and legs, slapped on a pair of sunglasses, did cute things, and was suddenly a hit. The thing was plastered across billboards, in magazine ads, and getting into adventures in TV spots.

In time it made its way to video games. Most people are probably more familiar with the Genesis platformer Cool Spot (more on that in a bit), but the first appearance that the little guy was featured in was for 8-bit systems with Spot: The Video Game. It was basically reversi with the little Spot guy being moved around to choose where to play the next chip. The game could be played by up to four people with everyone passing the controller around when it was their turn.

It was a very simple game given the premise, and only took about six weeks to develop, eventually making its way to the NES, Amiga, Atari ST, Gameboy, and DOS.

Cool Spot

Here’s the Spot game that most people probably remember. It was a platformer, and a very good one at that. This shouldn’t come as a surprise when one considers that David Perry and Tommy Tallarico worked on it, two key members in the team that would go on to make the Earthworm Jim games.

It had solid controls, interesting level design, and looked amazing when it came out. As one would expect from the genre, players had Spot run and jump around levels, climbing to hard to reach areas, and shooting fizzy bubbles at enemies. In a lot of ways, it felt like a logical progression from the television commercials that aired at the time featuring the little guy.

Importantly, the game remembered to embrace the cutesy feeling that Spot gave off. He was pretty adorable in the ads, so people had a certain expectation he’d be the same in a game featuring him. This wasn’t really the case in the first game, but Cool Spot managed to pull this off much better with all of the little animation touches that the developers gave him.

Each level was a bit of a collect-a-thon as players had to explore them in search of cool points. Once they had enough, they’d be allowed to leave and progress to the next area. If someone wanted to put a little bit extra effort in, they could keep collecting these points and if they found enough, they would be able to go to a bonus stage.

In the end, this game gave people a bit of hope that video games based on products could actually be good. In hindsight, it’s easy to see things didn’t turn out quite so well, and Cool Spot is more of an anomaly. While it may have turned out to be one of the better platformers of the 16-bit era, other developers didn’t take the game’s example to heart unfortunately.

Spot Goes to Hollywood

A few years later, another Spot game came out. Once again, it went in a very different direction from the previous game. This go around, traditional platforming was eschewed in favor of a game with an isometric overhead view. It was still pretty much a platform game, but the change in perspective threw a lot of people off.

The basic premise was the same as Cool Spot with players hunting down cool points on each level. There weren’t as many to track down as the last game, but they were scattered all over the place, so could take a while to find.

Combat was where players tended to get frustrated while playing the game. Since it was an isometric view, aiming Spot’s projectile attacks could be difficult. This type of perspective can be quite finicky about this, and Spot Goes to Hollywood was a good example of it. Worse still, is that enemies tended to have quite a few hit points, resulting in them taking entirely too long to go down. The viewpoint also resulted in many a player watching Spot plummet to his death after miscalculating a jump while platforming.

The game eventually got ported to the PlayStation and Saturn when those systems came along, but in the end most people just scratched their heads trying to figure out why the developers opted to make the game isometric in the first place. Cool Spot was very good, and most people would have been just fine with more of the same, rather than this.

Spot: The Cool Adventure

While all of these home versions were coming along, 7-Up had their eye on the Gameboy as well. It was becoming popular, and what better way to encourage people to buy their drink while they’re out and about than to have a game based on it that they can take along with them.

This was actually the first platformer to feature Spot, having released a year prior to Cool Spot. It’s very straightforward in that regard and one has to wonder how much effort the game’s publisher really wanted to put into it.

This because the game is pretty much McDonaldLand (aka Mc Kids). The only difference is that the sprites were swapped out to reflect the fact is was a 7-Up based game rather than being a land of hamburgers.

Pepsi Invaders

In the early 80s, it seemed like just about anything would appear on the Atari 2600. In fact, just about anything did show up on that system, hence why the US video game industry eventually experienced a crash.

Helping to contribute to this was Pepsi Invaders, a game promoting Coca Cola. So bold was the company that not only did they place themselves as the hero in the game, but they put their arch rival in as the villain.

As the name suggests, it’s basically a Space Invaders clone, but instead of the usual ship fighting off swarms of evil aliens, players controlled the forces of Coca Cola as they shot down rows that read “PEPSI” with an alien at the end for level after level. While many point at ET as being the straw that broke the camel’s back when the crash came, Pepsi Invaders is a reminder that there were plenty of other terrible games that helped it along.

Pepsi Man

It would be over 15 years before we saw another Pepsi-based game, and, miraculously, it was actually not bad. Developed by KID, Pepsi Man came out for the PlayStation in 1999.

The game was a primitive endless runner where players controlled Pepsi Man as he ran down the street collecting Pepsi cans, dodging all manner of obstacles like trash, falling furniture, cacti, or whatever else seemed appropriate for a given level.

Looking back, most folks who remember the game think fondly of it for its silly, lighthearted style and simply being a product-based game that wasn’t completely terrible. Many have clamoured for a new game featuring the mascot, but given all of the legalese involved with such an endeavor it probably isn’t going to happen. One kind soul did make a mod for Metal Gear Rising that allows players to use Pepsi Man in it, though, which is nice.

Probably the biggest tragedy with the game is that it apparently didn’t sell well, which is a real shame.

Yo! Noid

Depending how old one is, and assuming they grew up in North America, some folks may remember when Dominos Pizza had an annoying red mascot called The Noid. People were reminded to avoid him because he’d steal our pizza. During the late 80s, good luck trying to turn on a TV and not see the thing cackling maniacally while making off with somebody’s pizza.

With him being everywhere, it was only a matter of time before he showed up in video games. Oddly enough, Yo! Noid isn’t the first game that he showed up in, but it’s probably the one most people are familiar with.

Developed by Capcom, the game was a reasonably decent platformer, and a major overhaul of Kamen no Ninja Hanamaru, which it was released as in Japan, with very different art, but identical gameplay. Nobody knew what the Noid was over there, so it made little sense to feature him in the game.

The game was by no means easy with a lot of quick deaths for the unprepared, and even the prepared. Really, folks got mad playing this game. If they didn’t already hate the Noid from all those commercials, surely this would push them over the edge.

Avoid the Noid

The first Noid game and was released on the Commadore 64 and for DOS in 1989 and it made a lot more sense than Yo! Noid did. Players took on the role of a pizza delivery boy who had to deliver pizzas, answer the phone, and basically do what the game told them to right on the box: Avoid the Noid.

It wasn’t a very long game, and was quite simple, but the spectacle of it all was a pretty over the top. Your character could dive out of the way of danger, and with good reason, seeing as there were rockets flying around trying to blow him up. The Noid traditionally took pizza theft quite seriously, and the developers made sure that this game reflected his zeal.

In the end, Avoid the Noid fell between the cracks as far as product-based games go, but it’s still worth remembering for being the first Noid game if nothing else.

Chester Cheetah: Too Cool to Fool and Wild Wild Quest

Cheetos seem to be something a lot of people associate with those who play a lot of video games. I’ve never been one of them, because it just doesn’t make sense. Cheetos are one of the worst things to eat while playing video games because your fingers get all messy, and before long so does your controller. It’s disgusting and wrong. Who in their right mind does such a terrible thing? Usually people have that one friend who does that, but they quickly learn to never let them near their video games.

Nonetheless, we got two games featuring the things’ mascot during the 90s, Chester Cheetah, with Too Cool to Fool in 1992 and Wild Wild Quest in the following year. Both were extremely uninspired platformers that looked like a quick money grab by the developers to make something quick and easy.

Neither were worth wasting one’s time on and before long people knew to treat the games just like the people who ate the terrible product they were trying to promote and didn’t let them anywhere near their video games.

Kool Aid Man

A game featuring the Kool Aid Man sound like something that should work. Something aggressive with destructible environments. Just give us a game where we bust down walls and give kids sugary, vaguely fruit flavored drinks, and no sense of responsibility for such wanton destruction. It would perfectly encapsulate what Kool Aid is all about.

Unfortunately, the game came out in the early 80s for the Atari 2600 and a number of other systems during that time and technology just wasn’t ready for something like that yet. Players would have to settle for moving a juice jug around the screen and catching other jugs as they wastefully poured their libation to the evil Kool Aid Man god.

It was a very colorful game, though, so that was nice.

Global Gladiators

While McDonaldLand was alluded to earlier, the McDonald’s game that we really want to focus on today is Global Gladiators. This was a sneaky one because first and foremost the game was promoting environmentalism rather than fast food, which, of course, will set off all sorts of alarm bells for anyone who is remotely cynical at corporate attempts at altruism.

The game runs on the same engine as Cool Spot and Aladdin seeing as it was developed by David Perry and his team at Virgin Interactive. As such, it was actually pretty decent on the whole. Players controlled a couple of kids who were going around stopping all sorts of toxic shenanigans while taking orders from Ronald McDonald.

All the while, images of the McDonald’s logo were pasted across the screen, reminding folks that the company existed because non-stop TV commercials and locations just about everywhere apparently just weren’t enough to solidify the fast food chain’s place in the public’s mindshare.

Burger King Big Bumpin’ and Sneak King

Not to be outdone, Burger King also had a could of games come out in recent years. On the whole, these were a lot creepier than anything McDonald’s ever put out, but given how unsettling their mascot at the time was, someone dressed as a king with an over-sized head, this probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise.

It all started innocently enough when Big Bumpin’ crept into the Xbox 360’s library. Players whizzed around bashing into one another in bumper cars. Sure, the king was their in all of his creepy glory, but the game was good clean fun, and refreshingly not crap, so not much to complain about there.

However, Sneak King was another beast altogether. Here players controlled the king as he snuck up on unsuspecting people to surprise them with a present: a hamburger. (Although given his attire, one couldn’t be blamed for thinking the present might be something pervy instead). It was like a high cholesterol Metal Gear Solid with tights. Folks enjoyed it, but at the same time it’s hard not to think the whole thing is a little unsettling.

Yoshinoya

Most people in the West likely have no idea what Yoshinoya is, although they apparently have a few locations in the US. It’s a chain of beef bowl fast food restaurants from Japan that are quite popular over there when someone wants to hop in for something to eat quick on the cheap.

In 2004, a game based on the chain was released for the PlayStation 2 in Japan. It was basically a restaurant manager where players oversaw a location, filling orders, serving customers, and generally making sure that everyone was happy. On the whole, the game was pretty decent as it was a reasonably well put together manager game at its core.

Unfortunately, it never left Japan, which is understandable given that it doesn’t have a huge presence outside of there. Nonetheless, it would have been nice to see it come West even if it got rebranded as something more recognizable for audiences there.

Darkened Skye

The Gamecube got a very sneaky product tie-in game about a decade ago. At first glance, Darkened Skye looks like a very straightforward action adventure game in a fantasy setting. There are monsters, forests, warriors, the usual stuff. However, upon closer inspection someone can see something is wrong. What could it be? Wait a second… Magic is powered by Skittles?

Yes, that’s right, Skittles. The little sugary fruit flavored candies that get stuck in one’s teeth and are the bane of fillings everywhere is an integral element of sorcery in the realm of Darkened Skye.

The game’s developer had made several games based on M&Ms which were largely forgettable being quickly cobbled together platformers and kart racing games. This one largely sticks out simply for being based on Skittles. People know what the things are. Some even like to eat them. It just seems so out of left field that of all the candies out there, this is what was selected for a game.

Wild Arms Revival Incoming?

One of the earliest JRPGs on the original PlayStation was Wild Arms. For a lot of early adopters of the system, it was what kept them busy as they waited for Final Fantasy VII to come out. What they discovered, though, was that the game was actually pretty good. While simple, it handled 3D visuals reasonably well, and the Old West aesthetic was a setting that just wasn't coming into play in the genre (or any other genre for that matter). With that, Wild Arms became a reasonably successful series, resulting in five mainline games and a tactical strategy RPG. However, we haven't seen a new entry in the series since 2007.

Now there's reason to be excited as the series creator, Akifumi Kaneko, tweeted about meetings he was having with Sony regarding Wild Arms' 20th anniversary. Gematsu has a translation here, and it looks like the series composer, Michiko Naruke, was there as well. That's all we have to go on right now, but it does open the door to some interesting speculation.

Will this just be a remaster of one of the early games, possibly with some new arranged music tracks a la Final Fantasy X / X-2 Remaster? Maybe a bit of fanfare for the Wild Arms PS2 games before they become available on the PS4? If it was a new game in the series, I could see people being pretty happy about that. There've been rumors floating around that Sony has two JRPGs in development for the PlayStation 4 with one possibly by Level-5, but we don't know what the other is. For all we know, it could be a new Wild Arms.

For now, though, all we can do is wait and see if any more information trickles out. I for one wouldn't complain if the series came back. The Western theme always struck me as unique and the games are something I've closely tied with the PS1 and PS2. Star Ocean managed to stick around, making an appearance last generation. However, Wild Arms just disappeared. It could all be a pipe dream, but it would be nice if this is a beginning to actually reviving the series.

Revisiting Romancing SaGa (PS2 Version): Dancing to a Better Tomorrow

There are a couple of JRPG franchises that I really wish did better in the West. One of them is Phantasy Star and the other is Squaresoft's SaGa games. It wasn't for a lack of trying. Square did make an effort to bring these games across the Pacific a few times. Unfortunately, not enough people showed interest in them.

It's a shame, because SaGa games have done a lot of things differently from your run of the mill JRPG, standing out as a very unique oasis in the sub-genre. The series did quite well in Japan, but its style of play never really caught on here. There are more RPGs that do what SaGa did now, however, so I am left wondering if maybe the series was a little ahead of its time for when entries came to the West, especially the non-linear storytelling.

With that, I've been having a hankering to revisit the series for the last while. It was a toss up between SaGa Frontier and my PS2 version of Romancing Saga. Both have their charms, but in the end I opted for the latter, as I do like some of the changes they made to the game when updating it from the Super Famicom version.

It's been 10 years since the remake came out and almost that long since I last played it, and consequently forgotten much about the game. I remember playing as Hawke, the pirate, but after that a lot of things get very fuzzy, very fast.

Found this alter early on. It's in a pentagram. It must be
important.

So, I've decided to play through the game once more, and as a different character. That's one of the things that's nice about the SaGa games, as a lot of them have multiple characters to choose from, each with their own goals. For this go around, I went with Barbara. She's an entertainer in a travelling troupe of dancers and the like. It's always been a dream of mine to save the world through the power of dance and this will finally allow me to do so vicariously through her.

I'm not entirely sure what her motivations are in the game. It never really said. Some of the characters have clear goals as to what they want from life, others not so much. So, I'm left to take her and her friend Herman as they wander around, talking with folks, and generally making the world a better place...well, hopefully anyway.

And this is one of the things that I like so much about Romancing SaGa: it's non-linear, a rarity in JRPGs. If anything, I think this is one of the things that scared away a lot of Westerners when Square tried to bring SaGa games out over here. They had expectations of a much more linear experience where adventures would go on rails from points A to B to C with NPCs explicitly telling the player what to do. Romancing SaGa doesn't have this. There's a lot more figuring things out for yourself.

You'll need to visit towns and talk to everyone to take in the local color and figure out what the situation is in a given region. Is there a conflict in the area? Is someone in town missing? How are the local deities doing? Are there any points of interest near this village? Your characters are travels in this world and they may know a bit about some of the major cities, but that's about it. They need to learn all of these things in order to have a better idea of what is going on in a given region. How are they supposed to know there's a monster-infested cave just outside of town? Of course they'll have no idea it exists. They don't live in that city. Only by talking to the locals and learning this themselves can they go there.

Shooting the breeze with townfolk.

Even after getting all of this information, there's still the question of what they plan to do with it? Will they check out those ruins, cross that desert, or explore that cave? Maybe. It's up to the player. Even the big bad guy that players will have to deal with is only hinted at early on. There's a forest inhabited by fairies early in the game that hints at them, and a travelling minstrel that you'll cross paths with many times tells a story about them. Players learn about them, and at the back of one's mind the thought, "I should probably do something about that..." comes into play.

Sometimes you don't even need to do anything about problems some town folks are having. For example, there's one village where a mother is panicking because her son has gone missing in a nearby cave crawling with monsters. I popped in there and took a look around, but noticed some of the monsters were to strong for me, so I left thinking I'd come back later. However, when later came along the kid was already back home as he'd figured out a way to escape on his own. So, to an extent it feels like a real, living, breathing world.

That's what I've been doing up to this point, just wandering the land meeting people, helping them with their problems (or not). I can have up to five people in my party and I actually managed to find Hawke, and decided to bring him along for old times sake. He has some nifty moves in his repertoire, and an entertainer and a pirate seem like a match made in heaven, or at least a seedy bar by the docks. I even managed to find his helmsman, Guella Ha, who has some pretty great stats and is an expert at pokie-pointy-stick type weapons. For a time, even the minstrel that hangs out at all of the local pubs and volunteers to boot people I don't want in my party anymore asked to join me for a bit. He actually hit quite hard, but then the guy got bored and buggered off after when we rolled into town. I have been on the search for a mage and finally found one in North Estamir. Her name is Myriam and she likes to burn stuff.

The game likes tossing much stronger enemies at players out
of the blue sometimes.

Helping my party grow is pretty neat because Romancing SaGa doesn't use a traditional leveling system. Instead, individual abilities improve after each battle, and depending on the person certain things will get better faster than others. It's usually pretty intuitive with stats that accentuate the characters play style going up much faster than others. However, enemies seem to scale with the party's strength to some extent, so these gains are quickly offset.

I've largely been making the party stronger in a more viable way by leveling their skill sets (aka professions) with trainers in town. Getting a bunch of strength or vitality pales in comparison to hitting up a trainer, spending some jewels, and getting martial arts training up an entire level, for example. That's how you get big results. Unfortunately, jewels come slowly early in the game, so getting a skill set past level two will take some time while saving these up.

You can also buy new gear for everyone, which yields big improvements very quickly. The best way to do this is by raiding treasure chests as you find them. Enemies drop a bit depending what you run into, but chests are much better. Of course, completing quests is better still. Suiting everyone up in nice equipment makes a huge difference, and it improves your standing with the various merchant associations in the game. Doing business at item or weapon shops boosts your reputation with their affiliated association and as your levels go up with them the better deals they'll have for you and the more of an item that they'll have in stock at a given time. Loyalty does have its rewards.

We even helped a grave robber.

So, there is definitely a bit of a grind in order to get jewels for leveling skill sets and to get enough gold to buy all of the goodies, but the thing that makes it feel worth it is the glimmer system. This is something that was introduced in later SaGa games and not in the original Romancing SaGa, but since this is a remake the developers decided to toss it in. This is a system where characters are struck by a moment of clarity and suddenly learn a new ability during battle. A little light bulb blinks over their head, and bam, they do the new thing. This comes from repeated use of a specific weapon type or school of magic making it feel like they're constantly learning something new. It's really satisfying to see them discover these abilities while grinding, and then you even get to figure out combos where two or more characters' special abilities synergize for an even more powerful attack. These attacks are a little bit RNG in when they get used, but if they do whip them out it usually helps a ton.

And with that, I still have no idea what I want to do next. From what I can tell, there's a demon of some sort imprisoned somewhere and some not-so-nice people are trying to free it. That's probably the big bad, and what I'll probably have to get around to eventually. There's no rush, though. I've yet to see much of this world and there's a lot of other stuff going on. For now, I'll just take Barbara and the gang for a merry romp around the world exploring everything, soaking in the sights, getting to know the local townsfolk, and maybe do some vaguely heroic stuff along the way. It really is nice to spend time with such an open-ended JRPG and I don't want to rush things.

Random Game Talk: Bujingai (PS2)

Today, Mr. Nash takes a look back at one of the early spectacle fighters on the PlayStation 2, Bujingai: The Forsaken City, a game full of swirling, flashy sword fighting, magic, and a singer most Westerners have likely never heard of.