Let's be honest — the '80s and '90s licensing machine did not care if a game made sense. Studios had six weeks, a movie poster, and a deadline. What came out the other side ranged from surprisingly fun to genuinely baffling. Here are some of the weirdest.
The Ones That Made Zero Sense on Paper
- Action 52 — not licensed exactly, but it deserves a mention for cramming 52 unlicensed, mostly unplayable games onto one NES cartridge and charging full retail price for the privilege. Collectors chase it today purely for how audacious the scam was.
- Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (NES) — based on the classic novella, if the novella had involved walking slowly down a street getting hit by dogs and old ladies with canes. Widely considered one of the worst NES games ever made, which ironically makes it a collector curiosity.
- The Uncanny X-Men (NES) — a Marvel license that somehow produced one of the most punishingly unfair platformers of the era. Great character select screen. Everything after that, less great.
Licensed Games That Had No Business Being Good
Here's the twist — not every weird license was a disaster. A few punched way above their weight:
- Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers (NES) — a Capcom-developed Disney tie-in that's genuinely a tight, well-designed co-op platformer people still speedrun today.
- The Little Mermaid (NES) — also Capcom, also shockingly solid. Capcom basically had a great run of these licensed games actually being good for a while.
- Goldeneye 007 (N64) — the gold standard of a movie tie-in becoming one of the best games of the generation. It redefined console shooters and still gets ported and remade decades later.
The So-Weird-It-Circled-Back-to-Legendary Category
Then there's the stuff that's less “good” and more “a genuine cultural artifact.” Games based on soft drinks. Games based on dental hygiene mascots. Games where the entire pitch seems to have been: we have the rights, someone make something. These are the games that show up on collector wishlists not for gameplay, but because owning one feels like owning a piece of a very strange marketing decision.
Why Collectors Still Chase These
Bad licensed games often had small print runs — nobody expected the tie-in to sell for years after the movie left theaters. That scarcity, combined with the sheer novelty of wondering why the game exists at all, makes some of the weirdest titles surprisingly valuable today. A rough-shape cart might not fetch much, but a complete, well-preserved copy of an obscure licensed oddity can be a legitimate grail for the right collector.
Chasing an oddball license for your own shelf? Dig through our NES & Famicom collection — you never know what's hiding in there.