Topic: Licensed Nintendo DS Games That Don't Suck

[Patchkid15]

With ThunderCats on the DS almost here, what other licensed games impressed us. 

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/feature/31765

With the upcoming release of Thundercats on the Nintendo DS, it is the perfect time to look back at the life of the DS and recognize licensed games that didn’t pale in comparison to their source material. Your favorite television show, movie, or character may have made the leap to your DS, and you might never have known it. What other licensed Nintendo DS games did you enjoy? If you have any favorites feel free to shout them out below.

One Piece: Gigant Battle
One Piece lived a short life on North American cable, but has been a long running manga and anime series in Japan. It is only fitting that such a story deserves such an amazing game. This sprite-based brawler caters to fans of the series through its familiar locales and extensive character roster. Along with the game’s single player campaign, there exists a leveling system, secret missions, and even shops to buy additional moves. One Piece: Gigant Battle was never brought to North America, but it did make its way to Europe. A sequel was released exclusively in Japan last fall and also received much praise. Check out our review of the game here.

Batman: The Brave and the Bold
The games in the Batman universe have been well-received over the past few years, with the most recent of which heading to the Wii U. Batman: The Brave and the Bold, developed by WayForward, is a fairly straightforward platforming brawler. The game features not only Batman, but plenty of other playable characters like Aquaman and Green Lantern. It may have been a short game, but its fun combat, great presentation, and bonus missions made it a licensed game that wasn’t half bad. Read our review.

Ben 10 Ultimate Alien: Cosmic Destruction
There are plenty of Cartoon Network shows that get their own video games. Ben 10 Ultimate Alien: Cosmic Destruction is a case where that video game is actually good. With the ability to transform into many different aliens, it gives the platforming elements of stages a greater variety. The game uses detailed 3D character art that looks great, and ultimately stands out over other Ben 10 DS games. Check out NWR' review here.

The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road
Being such a well-known franchise, it might be surprising that there exists a Wizard of Oz RPG on the DS. The game features a completely original story that contains many of the key players from the original tale. The game is controlled completely via the touchscreen, and is done quite well. The world of Oz’s 3D environment looks great and detailed on the DS’s screen. The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road proves that even a license like The Wizard of Oz can be turned into a great game. Check out our review.

Spider-Man: Web of Shadows
Spider-Man is another super hero that generally makes his way to stellar licensed games. Spider-Man: Web of Shadows features a Metroid-like style of exploration that provides non-linear gameplay, and a fantastic control scheme makes combat entertaining and more rewarding than a standard beat ‘em up style of gameplay. Read the review here.

[joshnickerson]

Why is it that a good majority of cartoon licensed games that come out usually arrive just as the show its based on gets cancelled?

[Phil]

One that wasn't mentioned is Dragon Ball Origins. I have yet to play the sequel, but it is an awesome action-adventure game that has both d-pad and touch screen controls a la Phantom Hourglass. Plus it's really funny and a good showcase of the DS system's 3D graphics. I don't even care for the source material, and I really dug the game.

[ejamer]

Perhaps Aliens: Infestation should be listed. Expectations were pretty high going in, which probably left some people feeling disappointed. But despite some flaws and very limited replay value, it was an enjoyable action game that certainly didn't suck.

All of the LEGO games are solid, even if they are easy games that target a slightly younger audience. So Indiana Jones, Star Wars, and Batman are all covered.

Not sure if it's an actual game, but Duck Amuck is an interesting experiment in interactive cartoons. Then again, the mini-games did kind of suck... Meh, better scratch this one off the "doesn't suck" list, even though I'm really glad to have had the opportunity to try the game. The content was just too uneven to really be worthwhile.

The upcoming Adventure Time game looks pretty decent for the writing if nothing else. After all, who doesn't want to know what it's like to be a bridge once in a while.

[MegaByte]

Retro Game Challenge.

[UncleBob]

Is the Wizard of Oz licensed?

[MegaByte]

Wizard of Oz is a weird case. It wasn't licensed in Japan and wasn't really based on the movie, but Xseed did get the Warner Bros. license in the US.

[UncleBob]

Hm.  Just finished some reading on it.  Wasn't aware of the court ruling last year.

I assume that there are enough aspects within the game (I haven't played it) that could be taken from the movie's visual or changes to the story line that Xseed just felt it necessary to play it safe and get it licensed.

Kinda sad that a book made so long ago and totally out of copyright has such a crazy and wacky issue with copyright now.

[StrawHatChopper]

Gigant Battle is easily my favorite licensed game for the DS (and not just because I'm a huge One Piece fan!). The gameplay is great, and the atmosphere is spot-on.

[Jonnyboy117]

Huh. I thought the Oz game was based on Baum's books, which are in the public domain (and thus don't technically need to be "licensed" -- it's akin to basing a game on Beowulf or Tom Sawyer). I wonder why XSEED would bother paying for a movie license from Warner Bros. when all the characters and scenarios they localized are surely contained in the original books.

[UncleBob]

Apparently, WB owns the copyright to anything *original* in the movies.

For example, if the original books didn't specifically describe Dorothy with pigtails (I don't know if they did, just using that as an example), then Dorothy in your adaptation can't have pigtails unless you license it from WB.

So, someone at XSeed had to have decided that either something in the game was too close to the movie (and they didn't want to go through the trouble of changing it) or they just didn't even want to risk a lawsuit.

[MegaByte]

Probably some of that was true (I don't know if WB was as sue crazy as they are currently), but officially,

The game was originally inspired by Frank Baum's original story, which is now public domain, so it was actually not made in any kind of co-relation with Warner Bros. and their film, The Wizard of Oz. With that being said, though, we found out that once we got the rights to publish it in the US, Warner Bros. was releasing the 70th anniversary of The Wizard of Oz movie, and we started communicating to them about co-promotion opportunities, and it just seemed like a good fit where we could promote with each other.

[Jonnyboy117]

Considering the game is still obscure even after all that so-called cross-promotion, I'm not sure the deal was a great success. Anyway, quite an interesting story.

[UncleBob]

Hm.  This website and an ad or two in Nintendo Power are the only times I've ever even seen the game.

Their cross-promotion sucked.

[Dasmos]

The new Adventure Time game from WayForward looks pretty ballin'. I'm pretty sure it's a throwback to Zelda II: The Adventure of Link.

[Bboy]

I would also add the Star Wars Revenge of the Sith game.
I got it as a gift and was surprised to find that it was a really fun beat 'em up with RPG elements, but with a Star Fox-type level every once and a while to add some variety. The beat 'em up parts were really simple, gaining experience to unlock new force powers, but, as I remember, the enemies were well-designed and in the early days of the DS I ended up playing through it multiple times. It also had a dogfight mode like in Star Fox 64 that seemed fairly fun even if I was only ever able to play it against the CPU.