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9 great weird video games based on rock bands and rap groups

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9 great weird video games based on rock bands and rap groups

As a longtime enthusiast of music and video games, I’ve always been intrigued by the intersection of these two worlds, especially when iconic bands take a stab at creating their own gaming experiences.

In the past, our society was known for creating video games featuring a wide variety of rock bands and hip hop collectives across multiple genres. This included first-person shooter games starring KISS, Def Jam fighting games, and the title “50 Cent: Blood on the Sand”.

9 great weird video games based on rock bands and rap groups

Check out our special issue TopMob FM, a week of stories about all the places where music and games connect — retrospectives, interviews, and much more.

Currently, there’s a scarcity of musician-led video games; it’s typically only the most popular groups like BTS who star in their own titles, often designed for mobile devices. Musicians in console and PC games are usually confined to appearing as characters represented by skins in games such as Fortnite and Call of Duty: Warzone.

Looking back, the time of band-centric video games appears to be winding down. Sega has bid farewell to Make My Video, it’s uncertain if another Spice Girls game will ever grace our screens, and a Michael Jackson’s Moonwalker remake seems like a distant dream. For nearly three decades, we were treated to some intriguing, puzzling, and undeniably poor video games inspired by bands. I was among those who experienced the joy, confusion, and occasional frustration they brought.

Here are nine of the most memorable — and frequently dystopian — band-based video games.

Journey, the video game

In 1983, Bally Midway introduced an arcade game called “Journey,” inspired by the popular rock band with the same name. This band was basking in the afterglow of their seventh studio album’s massive success, titled “Escape.” Hits like “Don’t Stop Believin’,” “Open Arms,” and “Who’s Crying Now” were among the standout tracks on this album. Interestingly, Journey had already ventured into video games, albeit less memorably, with a game titled “Journey Escape” released in 1982 for Atari 2600.

The arcade version of “Journey” established an unusual pattern for video games centered around rock bands. The premise was that a group of wild, alien beings called Groupoids had taken control of Journey’s electrified instruments. Your objective was to help each band member retrieve their equipment scattered across five galaxies. Once you collected everything, there would be a massive Journey concert at the Galactic Stadium. Inside the arcade machine, a looped cassette tape played “Separate Ways” from the 1983 album “Frontiers”.

Journey was distinctive due to its incorporation of digital graphics; the playable characters were constructed using black-and-white photos of Steve Perry, Neal Schon, Steve Smith, Jonathan Cain, and Ross Valory, positioned on small animated figures. Nowadays, Journey is often associated with the thatgamecompany game bearing the same name from 2012.

Mötley Crüe’s Crüe Ball

Back in the ’90s, Electronic Arts was a more daring and unconventional business. For instance, they released a digital pinball game called “Crüe Ball” for Sega Genesis, which was inspired by the heavy metal band Mötley Crüe. Initially titled “Twisted Flipper,” the developers ultimately obtained Mötley Crüe’s approval and incorporated elements from their hit song “Dr. Feelgood.” The game featured artwork and music that were popular among us in the late ’80s, albeit without irony. The game’s box art showcased the Crüe mascot, Allister Fiend, and he even made appearances in cutscenes.

Crüe Ball wasn’t great, and the tinny sound chip of the Genesis did Mötley Crüe’s music no favors.

Aerosmith’s Revolution X

Originally conceived as an arcade spin-off of Jurassic Park, Midway eventually transformed their on-rails shooter game, Revolution X, into a title centered around the band Aerosmith. This reimagined version was launched in 1994. In the dark future depicted by the game, a tyrannical government/military force known as the New Order Nation has seized control of the world. To make things even more dire (theoretically), Aerosmith members have been abducted by NON, which is ruled by the leather-clad Headmistress Helga.

In the game titled “Revolution X”, players are tasked with targeting a multitude of characters who aren’t soldiers, each appearing in diverse forms such as rollerblading gunmen, ninjas, and spear-wielding natives. The game has raised some concerns regarding its cultural sensitivity. Moreover, it was known for its explicit content. Female characters, from Helga to the bikini-clad hostages, were all voiced by Kerri Hoskins, who is famous for her role as Sonya Blade in “Mortal Kombat 3”. These female characters included cage dancers in bikinis and women sentenced to hard labor in just denim cutoffs.

Much like the arcade shooter Terminator 2: Judgment Day, produced by Midway, Revolution X was strategically created to maximize the number of coins played by gamers. Finishing it demanded not just a substantial amount of money, but an appreciation for Aerosmith’s music from the early ’90s.

Kiss: Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child

1998 saw Kiss, known for their flamboyant glam rock style, embark on a multimedia blitz with their album “Psycho Circus”. This album led to a 31-part comic book series, action figures, and the video game “Kiss: Psycho Circus: The Nightmare Child”, which is a first-person shooter.

Introduced for both PC and Sega Dreamcast in the year 2000, the game titled “The Nightmare Child” placed players in the role of a band known as Wicked Jester, endowed with mystical abilities. As part of this band, your mission was to vanquish the Nightmare King. Each member of Wicked Jester is associated with a character from the band Kiss, and you’re tasked with completing specific parts of the game related to each one. Besides tapping into the divine powers of Paul Stanley and Ace Frehley, you can also obtain armor that transforms you into Gene “The Demon” Simmons during your journey to slay a resurrected Nightmare King, who appears as a red skull with scorpion limbs.

It seems that there’s not much connection between all this discussion and the rock band KISS, as their distinctive makeup and silver-and-black attire primarily served as a decorative backdrop for an ordinary shooting session.

Devo Presents Adventures of the Smart Patrol

In the mid-1990s, there was an influx of innovative games that were based on interactive CD-ROM technology. These games showcased a fusion of primitive early 3D graphics and full-motion video. Notable examples from this era include the enigmatic puzzle games like “Myst” and “Riven”, chilling horror adventures such as “The 7th Guest” and “Phantasmagoria”, and even eccentric experiments like “Devo Presents Adventures of the Smart Patrol”. This game trend also produced quirky trials, such as the one reviewed by GameSpot upon release, which was described as a disorganized assortment of sounds, images, crude animations, and ill-fitting transitions, lacking a coherent plot, regardless of its purpose.

Originating from the minds of Devo members Gerald Casale and Mark Mothersbaugh, the game titled “Adventures of the Smart Patrol” immerses players in a bizarre, hyper-futuristic cityscape reminiscent of a turbocharged “Blade Runner,” where sickness equals profit. The goal is to track down a genetically modified creature known as Turkey Monkey and discover a cure for the progressive disease Osso Buco Myelitis. This illness transforms humans into wailing sacks of quivering, oozing skin. Despite Devo’s reputation for being peculiar, “Adventures of the Smart Patrol” falls short of their most exceptional work.

Queen: The Eye

Prior to the release of Queen’s futuristic dystopian musical “We Will Rock You,” there existed a futuristic dystopian CD-ROM game by Queen titled “Queen: The Eye.” This game was created by Destination Design, a studio that only produced one project, and was published by Electronic Arts. The game, which spanned across five CDs, was largely expansive due to the abundance of remixed and remastered Queen songs it contained.

In the game titled “Queen: The Eye“, participants assume the persona of Dubroc, a covert operative who serves under an omniscient government agency called The Eye. When Dubroc stumbles upon a hidden vault of rock music, deemed hazardous by The Eye due to its subversive artistic influence, he is condemned to participate in a live-action television spectacle reminiscent of “The Running Man“, called “The Arena“.

First debuted in 1997, the game titled “Queen: The Eye” appears to draw significant influence from Capcom’s “Resident Evil“. Similarities include the use of 3D characters over pre-rendered backdrops and the tank-style controls for navigation through the game’s five realms. The gameplay combines elements such as exploration, puzzle-solving, physical combat, and frustrating platforming sections. Critics were unimpressed by the outdated visuals and forced Queen allusions within the game.

Iron Maiden’s Ed Hunter

Back in 1999, I got my hands on a thrilling interactive journey known as “Ed Hunter”, an on-rails shooter included in Iron Maiden’s greatest hits compilation. This game had me, the avatar of Eddie, blasting through levels that were reminiscent of the iconic album covers from classics like “Iron Maiden”, “Killers”, “Piece of Mind”, “The Number of the Beast”, “Live After Death”, “Powerslave”, and “Somewhere in Time”. It was like living the metal fantasy!

It appears that Iron Maiden put a lot of heart into “Ed Hunter,” as they abandoned a previously planned project due to quality issues. Afterwards, the band introduced another game starring Eddie, titled “Iron Maiden: Legacy of the Beast.” Additionally, an Iron Maiden pinball table has been developed and released through Stern.

Metallica: The Game (aka Damage Inc.)

During the early 2000s, Metallica ventured into a unique direction for a music-based licensed game. Instead of following the usual path, they aimed to create an open-world game that would rival Sony’s Twisted Metal series. In the year 2003, alongside the controversial release of their album “St. Anger,” they announced that “Metallica: The Game” was set to hit video game consoles by 2005.

Although the release of the game titled “Metallica: The Game” (originally known as “Damage Inc.: Metallica“) was eventually scrapped, there has been a release of concept art and preliminary gameplay footage since then. This game, inspired by titles like “Twisted Metal: Black“, “Grand Theft Auto 3“, “Mad Max“, and “Blade Runner“, was intended to showcase Metallica’s take on car combat. The band members, James Hetfield, Lars Ulrich, Kirk Hammett, and Robert Trujillo, were envisioned to star in the game as drivers of their own heavily fortified and armed vehicles.

Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style

The intriguing history of the game ‘Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style’ or ‘Wu-Tang: Taste the Pain’ is captivating. Initially, this game destined to become a fighting game endorsed by the Wu-Tang Clan originated from the controversial and ultra-violent adult-only title ‘Thrill Kill’. This abandoned BDSM-themed arena fighter was initially conceived as a game based on the notoriously violent Mesoamerican sport, Pok Ta’ Pok.

After encountering difficulties with the development of Thrill Kill, Studio Paradox successfully transformed the project into Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style. In this revamped version, all nine members of the Wu-Tang Clan were playable characters, both in a narrative mode and for local multiplayer. The game retained the same level of violence as Thrill Kill, with each Wu-Tang member possessing finishing moves at the end of matches, similar to Mortal Kombat. Upon its release, Wu-Tang: Shaolin Style garnered mixed reviews, but it’s worth noting that it introduced the iconic W-shaped PlayStation controller featuring the Wu-Tang emblem.

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2024-08-08 16:19

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