One thing that has always perplexed me is video game tie-in products. They’re almost always the crappiest thing on any video game store shelf, and while we may think of ourselves as astute gamers who are immune to the allure of a bad licensed game, odds are you’ve bought a couple over the years. No matter how much we tell ourselves otherwise, all of us have at least once ignored that little voice of reason in the back of our heads and bought a game based on a license we love dearly only to have the game blow serious chunks and leave us emotionally damaged.
I was a serious fan of Nickelodeon game shows as a kid. My weekends consisted of Super Sloppy Double Dare, Legends of the Hidden Temple, Nickelodeon Guts, Nick Arcade, Get the Picture, Wild and Crazy Kids, Make the Grade, Finders Keepers, and any other assortment of lesser known game shows. Specifically, Double Dare in its many incarnations was a childhood obsession. It was easily my favorite TV show of all time. At its peak, Double Dare was a cultural phenomenon. Aside from spawning a decade of kick-ass kids shows, Double Dare was just the most fun thing on TV. Watching kids run through mountains of slop for cheap prizes was pure joy. You could tell the cast and crew had as much fun making it as we had watching it. Double Dare inspired the slew of plastic playgrounds built on to fast food chains in the 90s, as well as the creation of kids birthday destinations such as Discovery Zone and Circus Capers. It’s influence was massive. Kids loved it. Most parents disliked it. Teachers loathed it. That’s usually a recipe for success.
Actually, the Double Dare obstacle course and the yellow on-screen clock that accompanies it (with that terrifying countdown music) has given me a lifelong hatred of digital alarm clocks. Of course as with all 1980s/90s childhood obsessions, a NES game was produced as a tie-in product. That way all of us who didn’t have parents willing to send us to Orlando were instead able to live out our Double Dare TV fantasy in 8-bit glory. Too bad it sucked mammoth donkey balls.
Take a look at this little comparison video of the NES facsimile of the famous Double Dare obstacle course followed by an example of the real Double Dare obstacle course.
Produced by Rare back when they were a tiny studio known for producing endless tie-ins, ports, and game show adaptions, Double Dare for the NES (like most TV game show adaptions of the era) is a pile of crap. Most of the mini-games are either very loose re-imaginings of the TV show’s famous physical challenges, or new creations that have nothing to do with the TV show at all. Since when did any Double Dare physical challenge involve throwing bananas at a giant gorilla? The show’s immortal physical challenge music was also butchered in the process (while also reusing music from their Jeopardy conversion), but you’d never hear it anyway. The question rounds can go on for ten minutes (longer than a whole round in the actual show), and if you wind up daring the computer team, they will never dare you back. They’ll just answer. The real show was staggered so that sooner or later, the questions would get too difficult and the teams would just take the physical challenge and get the gak flying. Not happening in this stupid game.
Double Dare was an exercise in why game show video games don’t work. You cannot capture the excitement, variety, humor, and physical entertainment value of a live game show in a video game, let alone something as limited as 8-bit 1980s console technology. So instead of taking the hint, Nickelodeon went ahead and commissioned an even worse sin: they made a video game about Nickelodeon Guts.
Guts was a show created as the kid Olympics (aka “The Extreme Arena”) of the 90s. Unlike stupid American Gladiators, Guts played it pretty straight and never talked down to kids. The show inspired young people of our generation to get off their asses and get active. Watching kids do these inhuman things with bungee cords and funny yellow mouth guards was endlessly entertaining; then they made a video game. Tell me exactly, what is the point of any video game based off an Olympic type activity, let alone extreme sports like Guts? Guts was a spiritual precursor to the X-Games geared towards kids. A video game kind of goes against the whole point of the show. No kids, don’t get out and get active. Stay inside and play a crappy video game based on a Nick game show.
Guts was like a failed attempt at a modern Wii mini-game compilation with worse technology. Now, to the game’s credit, they did manage to include most of the events from the show’s first season in simple mini-game form, and the kick-ass theme song is intact. Track stages and the mighty Aggro Crag are represented as sloppy and generic platforming stages. Most of the rest are poor exercises in button release sequences. You can’t really die (this is a Nick game show after all) so kids lose energy if they take spills.
There have been many failed game show tie-in products. We’ve seen endless Jeopardy! games throughout the years, but none that actually offer speech recognition so that we can, you know, actually play the game rather than rely on Hasbro spell-check. But Nickelodeon game shows were special. They were the epitome of 90s kid-dom. Bad video games based on these classic memories was something unforgivable. If you have a copy of one of these piles of crap, hold on to it. There’s certainly some schmuck out there who will need them to complete a collection. Otherwise, run like hell and instead remember how awesome it was to be a Nickelodeon kid in the 90s.
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