Licensed Games: What Are Your Favorites?

Licensed games are a strange lot. They can be very exceptional or they can be horrible abominations. I'll be focusing on the former because I have played some pretty awesome games that had a license attached.

When most gamers think of good licensed titles, the N64's GoldenEye 007 usually is the first to spring to mind, and for good reason. At the time, it was one of the finest first person shooter offerings on the consoles. However, despite the acclaim that Rare's hit received in 1997, more than a few gamers will freely admit that it has not aged well, but for many that have fond memories of it (myself included), it's one of their favorite licensed games.

As fun as GoldenEye was, I have not played it recently so I cannot comment on whether it has aged gracefully or not. I can, however, talk about one of my favorite GBA games I've been playing a lot of again recently, staring one of the coolest fictional characters, ever. Astro Boy: Omega Factor is without question one of the most noteworthy games Sega has ever published and they've published a lot of great games. Omega Factor stands out for a lot of reasons. Along with the superb audio and visuals, the gameplay and story are among the best you'll find on a handheld or any game for that matter. It has a healthy blend of beat 'em up and shooter play styles so you can defeat your foes with hand-to-hand combat, finger lasers, arm canon-like Kamehamehas, or machine guns. Astro can be upgraded by finding numerous characters throughout the game. I'll be reviewing Omega Factor soon so I'll have more in depth thoughts on this portable masterpiece then. Omega Factor may very well be my all-time favorite licensed video game. Yes, it's that good.

Other licensed games I like can be found on the NES courtesy of Capcom. Chip 'N Dale's Rescue Rangers is a lot of fun alone or co-op. DuckTales is still a lot of fun to go through and even though Darkwing Duck is a Mega Man clone, it still rocks. I wish Capcom was given the Disney license again as the odds of of seeing these games on the Virtual Console are non existent.

Konami did Batman and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Justice. Batman Returns on the SNES was a good beat 'em up and nearly every Turtles game they put out was a riot. Why does Ubisoft of the TMNT license? Outside of some lackluster efforts, they haven't done anything good with our favorite reptiles and the company is basically preventing Konami's TMNT games from ever getting a Virtual Console release.

On a side note, the reason I haven't updated the blog in the last few days is because work has taken a lot out of me. I think I'll eventually get into the groove of things and have more energy and I'll try to keep this blog updated more often.