Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 8:18 am Post subject: LJN Prototypes?
I've been researching LJN for a while now, trying to figure out who developed some of their earlier NES games. I cannot find ANYBODY who worked at LJN pre-Acclaim acquisition (1990) and would have been involved with games. It's like Acclaim sent them to a Soviet Gulag after they bought the company. I was just thinking, are there even any prototypes, betas, or review copies of LJN games pre-1990? Just curious.
Joined: 04 Nov 2003 Posts: 578 Location: 33.884906 | -84.053758
Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2009 3:41 pm Post subject:
You know, the only thing I know about LJN pre-acquisition is that they made action figures. They made the Karate Kid action figures sometime after the first or second movie came out.
If Game Over's to be believed, LJN was... you know, I can't find my copy, but they were originally a Japanese company.
Joined: 04 Nov 2003 Posts: 578 Location: 33.884906 | -84.053758
Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2009 4:59 am Post subject:
Evan wrote:
I believe that Acclaim still published under LJN until 1994.
There's at least one Dreamcast game under the LJN label....
EDIT: Spirit of Speed 1937
Also, Wiki says LJN was founded in the 70's in the US as a toy company, but I seem to recall a different backstory to them listed in Game Over. GO has been wrong before, though.
Various sites say LJN was a subsidiary of Matsushita. Even Moby Games says it! The only thing the two actually have in common is MCA - Matsushita bought MCA in 1991.
LJN was started by Jack Friedman, who later started THQ and JAKKS Pacific.
LJN was founded in 1970 by Jack Friedman (who later founded the toy companies THQ and Jakks Pacific). The name LJN came from the initials of Lewis J. Norman, the reverse of Norman J. Lewis, whose toy company Friedman had been employed by as a sales representative. Lewis initially backed the company financially, but later sold his interest to a Chinese investor.
Huh, wha?
On an unrelated note, i had forgotten THQ stands for Toy Headquarters...
Since LJN made bad and crappy games, we shold look back at what ''the Angry Video Game Nerd'' said and call LJN ''Laughing Joking Numbnuts'', His words of wisdom against LJN is great!
We should also call to consideration this ''Hi-Tech Expressions inc.'' as a similar company, but not related to or the same, they have the same crappy quality as LJN, but they are really not the same company as far as I know.
You've really narrowed your games down when you isolate it to LJN Developed Titles from 1990 or earlier. They only had 4 games developed to begin within that time frame:
Gotcha! The Sport! 1987
Town & Country Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage 1987
The Uncanny X-Men 1988
Friday the 13th 1989
Everything else was developed by various other companies like Rare, Enterbrain, Atlus, etc. and LJN just published it.
You've really narrowed your games down when you isolate it to LJN Developed Titles from 1990 or earlier. They only had 4 games developed to begin within that time frame:
Gotcha! The Sport! 1987
Town & Country Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage 1987
The Uncanny X-Men 1988
Friday the 13th 1989
Everything else was developed by various other companies like Rare, Enterbrain, Atlus, etc. and LJN just published it.
The following games were published by LJN Toys, Ltd. (the pre-Acclaim company): Major League Baseball, NFL, Gotcha! The Sport!, Back to the Future, Friday the 13th, Jaws, The Karate Kid, Pictionary, T&C Surf Designs: Wood and Water Rage, The Uncanny X-Men, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
LJN didn't develop anything. Back to the Future was developed by Beam Software. Pictionary was developed by Software Creations. Roger Rabbit was developed by Rare. The rest were developed in Japan. handofg0d, I think you got Enterbrain mixed up with Enteractive, which for whatever reason is listed as the developer on some LJN games on Wikipedia and allgame.
I've written at length on GDRI about the Japanese-developed games. At least seven of the eight titles done over there were contracted to Atlus (I don't know about X-Men; it definitely wasn't developed by Atlus, but that doesn't mean it wasn't contracted to them). Jaws is even listed on the Westone website. We've received official confirmation that some of these games were produced by Atlus.
A disgruntled Atlus staffer named "Hidemushi" left a hidden message in a Famicom game called Erika to Satoru no Yume Bouken. The first piece of music you hear is from Karate Kid, during which he calls out some people for their behavior. One of those people is Kaoru Ogura, who he calls a whore or something to that effect. She supposedly programmed the bonus stages on Karate Kid.
LJN must have had some great distribution because a lot of people remember them. I can't completely come to grips with the Pavlovian effect LJN has on people. Maybe it's because my brother and I never owned any LJN games (but we certainly must have rented some). You don't see this level of hate directed at companies that are arguably worse like Gametek, Hi Tech Expressions, or even Color Dreams. In my opinion, nothing LJN published is sooo bad that it warrants that much hate. But then again, these same people will tell you that ET for the 2600 is the worst game ever made (sorry, it ain't), but that's another topic.
Joined: 04 Nov 2003 Posts: 578 Location: 33.884906 | -84.053758
Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 10:32 am Post subject:
GDRI wrote:
You don't see this level of hate directed at companies that are arguably worse like Gametek, Hi Tech Expressions, or even Color Dreams. In my opinion, nothing LJN published is sooo bad that it warrants that much hate. But then again, these same people will tell you that ET for the 2600 is the worst game ever made (sorry, it ain't), but that's another topic.
Short answer: Blame Seanbaby and AVGN.
Long Answer: I think the reason LJN/Acclaim get the most hate is because, unlike the other guys, their games were, as you noted, widely distributed and advertised. Because of those two factors, they became widely bought, either by parents that didn't know better or kids that never learned to rent first. On top of that, Acclaim was almost always the one to win the really, REALLY lucrative video game rights to beloved franchises that could have theoretically been made into a good game if given to capable developers.
Look at Capcom's Willow. Wasn't a very popular movie, but damned if that wasn't a good game. Of course, most of their internally developed Disney games (i.e. everything that wasn't Mickey's Mousecapade) was grade A material. Konami... okay, they messed up the first TMNT game, but the Arcade version and the NES port made up for it. They did okay with that franchise overall, as well as with Tiny Toons and (of all things) Bucky O'Hare.
Konami can publish a fun game on an ignored franchise like Monster In My Pocket, but Acclaim couldn't find anyone better to create a playable TERMINATOR game?!
Now Color Dreams I can forgive; they had very little to work with. As far as Hi-Tech, Gametek, T*HQ and the other franchise shit shovelers (some of whom used the same developers like Beam and Software Creations), well... they gathered some big franchises, but not as many. I don't know anyone that actually believed Home Alone would have made a fun game (it didn't!) Do people really expect much out of console games based off of game shows? I only knew one person who owned a Hi-Tech game, and even then, he had it because it was given to him. Thing is, unlike Acclaim/LJN, the other guys' games didn't have nearly as much exposure or have as much interest generated.
No, not all of Acclaim/LJN's line up was horrible; I was a Capcom fanboy during the 8-bit era and actually preferred Rare's NES version of Roger Rabbit over Capcom's GameBoy version. Jaws I thought was a blast to play. T&E 1 was pretty fun at times. And The Karate Kid wasn't the worse game ever made.
But the rest ranged from dull to unplayable. X-Men? Back To The Future (any of the ones LJN/Acclaim published)? Gotcha!? Any of their WWF games? The official MLB and NFL games? Let us not forget those who waited patiently for The Simpsons (Nintendo Power reported that this was supposed to be published by LJN in their CES showcase back in 1990[?]) only to get something almost unplayable.
There was also the Acclaim exec that actually said "We could shit in a cart and sell it", but not many people know about that one. Still, they introduced a mentality a lot of companies borrowed. Acclaim kept producing 80% crap until the bitter end but started going senile in the marketing department, even after everyone caught on.
Personally, when I was a kid, I knew most of the games that had "the death prism" were NOT going to be very enjoyable nine times out of ten. But the company I always hated was T*HQ who didn't have one single game I enjoyed... ever, actually. Even now, I don't really pay much attention to their stuff since they don't really focus on genres I pay much attention to, but I've heard they've actually learned the concept of quality control. Something that could have helped Acclaim.
In retrospect? I still hate Old Acclaim (pre-acquisition LJN included; X-Men alone was THAT BAD) as much as all the other guys, if only for the fact that they were giving the same talentless developers work and/or picking up horrible crap from Japan like Rambo. The crew that did the NES Simpsons games went on to do Swamp Thing on NES for THQ... you'd think that they would have learned by experience, but Swamp Thing is actually worse. Beam Software? Only game I liked by them was published by Konami; that's right, Nightshade. There are other examples I could give, but... you're also talking to a guy who thinks Rare was and has always been overrated.
(As a side note, I agree with you on ET, and learned to play it without the instructions. I actually appreciated it more when I learned how long it took to develop.)
Joined: 26 Aug 2003 Posts: 1600 Location: beneath enemy scrotum
Posted: Wed Aug 26, 2009 1:12 pm Post subject:
GDRI wrote:
LJN must have had some great distribution because a lot of people remember them. I can't completely come to grips with the Pavlovian effect LJN has on people. Maybe it's because my brother and I never owned any LJN games (but we certainly must have rented some). You don't see this level of hate directed at companies that are arguably worse like Gametek, Hi Tech Expressions, or even Color Dreams. In my opinion, nothing LJN published is sooo bad that it warrants that much hate. But then again, these same people will tell you that ET for the 2600 is the worst game ever made (sorry, it ain't), but that's another topic.
I think it's the licenses they picked up. I didn't go out of my way to play every awful Nintendo game when I was growing up to see who made the worst, but my parents kept buying me LJN games even after I alerted them that they were crap, because they kept producing games based on properties my parents thought I'd enjoy - like Back to the Future, Wolverine, Punisher and X-Men.
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