Looking back at the parts of Rare's back catalog they actually still own, you tend to forget just how many "payin' the bills" games they made back in the day.
If I recall, Rare did a lot of game show games for Gametek. I wonder how much work it was for them to proofread the trivia questions to make sure they were in American English? I only recall one odd mistake in Double Dare where your grand prize is a "holiday" rather than a "vacation". Of course, as hard as the obstacle course is, most probably never saw that.
AVGN Home Alone 2 review actually made a mistake where he thought THQ stole sound effects from Acclaim Bart’s vs the Space Mutants. When both were developed by the Imagineering
@@Channeleven2345789you're overreacting, it's just a shitty 30 year old game, why would you care so much about such a minor thing to make it unpleasent for you? Seriously people find anything to attack AVGN these days
@@Blitz8566 Because it's hilarious to hear AVGN fans cope over the faintest bit of criticism thrown at him. Anyone can fuck up. Also meant in general, not just one thing.
My cousin and I got Bart Vs. the space mutants as kind of a shared Easter gift after my grandmother got a deal on a second hand NES at a church rummage sale. It only took us about 15 minutes to become incredibly frustrated and disappointed but I remember us playing until we figured everything out because we didn't want to hurt grandmas feelings.
Not always. Wolverine was done by Software Creations Rare did Beetlejuice and Nightmare on Elm Street Atlus did Friday the 13th These are just examples off the top of my head.
Some like Roger Rabbit and Beetlejuice were even made by Rareware, but granted the reason they weren't as good as most beloved Rare games, is because the publisher and licensors made them hurry production. Furthermore, David Wise the music composer of Donkey Kong Country, actually made the music for those games.
@@beauwalker9820call me crazy but I actually like Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The end boss fight is INSANE, and you do so little damage to Judge Doom with each hit that it's infuriatingly laughable, but I think the rest of the game is well done. I want to play it through without cheating some day. (Minus the end boss fight. Screw that.)
Great video! I forced myself to like Bart vs Space Mutants as a kid and I guess it stuck. If you press A and B together at the same time you do a super jump without having to worry about running first. Start not just pausing is just cause there's too many buttons, Select cycles through the inventory, Start uses the inventory. It almost plays like an old Computer game more than an NES game, shocked but not shocked Garry Kitchen was involved!
I know what you mean. I actually beat Bart vs the World and Bart vs the Space Mutants. There is some fun to be had, but the games have some glaring issues, mainly in the controls. Bartman Meets Radioactive Man got rid of the super jump ability unfortunately.
Imagineering did an ace job with implementing such a large Barbie sprite with that many frames of animation and with not much in the way of flickering.
Am I the only one who thought the first level of 'Bart vs. the Space Mutants' was really creative? I'll admit they messed up the controls(especially the genesis) but the items and ways to use them in that first level felt similar to a games like Maniac Mansion.
Aah, the race to the beginning of the alphabet. Acclaim was named such the best Activision. Infogrammes bought a company called Aardvark, the ultimate winner of the race to be first in the yellow pages. The only thing that could beat it was AAAAAAA Games. Maybe that's why they call them Triple A publishers. And to think. Atari's original name was Zyzygy. Atari would have won the race to the back of the alphabet, and a slogan could have been "Save the best for last.'
Regarding that TV advert for Bart vs the Space Mutants? At first I wanted to to the usual nerd complaining. "That NES controller is weird as hell". But then some old dusty memory came up, making me think acclaim had their own controller out at some point. Turns out they really went the extra mile to insist that advert showed Bart using their 3rd party controller. Go frame by frame at 0:55, its a spot on representation of the Acclaim Double Player controller.
3:56 ANOTHER interesting tidbit about this game is that this was one of the first NES games developed entirely in the US, and after being shipped to Nintendo JP for publishing review, Shigeru Miyamoto flew out to their studio unannounced to personally congratulate Crane on B&HB.
I remember renting Bart vs. the Space Mutants when I was a little kid and having the worst weekend ever trying to figure that game out haha. Great video as always!
For me, Bart's Nightmare was that game. I picked it up at my local Video Update, which had 99 cent game rentals on Tuesdays. Got stuck with that atrocity for a whole _week._ For a series that was such a pop culture phenomenon, it's surprising that Simpsons video games were consistently bad during the show's heyday. Only Hit & Run and The Simpsons Game were what I would call good. If not for the marathon loading times, especially on PS2, I'd add Road Rage too. All three titles released deep in Zombie Simpsons territory. I don't count Virtual Springfield since it's not a "game" in the traditional sense. Fun fact relevant to 7:50: developer Sculptured Software was, much like Imagineering, a gun-for-hire developer with a close relationship to Acclaim. Besides Bart's Nightmare and Virtual Bart, they developed... -All four SNES Mortal Kombat ports (Midway sublicensed Acclaim to publish MK games on home console) -Genesis ports of MK3/UMK3 -The Super Star Wars trilogy (co-developers with LucasArts) -16-bit ports of NBA Jam -NES version of Monopoly, which got torn apart by FractalFusion in his very entertaining TASes -Many, _many_ other sports and pro wrestling titles (including SNES/Genesis ports of "WrestleMania: The Arcade Game"). They even developed two ECW games!
@@TheSuperiorQuickscoper I loved both of those games at the time. The Bart Vs. games get a bad rep but they're decent games once you get used to the controls. I loved Bart Meets Radioactive man too, that was one of my favorites. Barts Nightmare was tough but it was creative, I really liked the Bartman Stage and the music was awesome in the SNES version.
@@PlasticCogLiquidThe Bartman stage and its music were good. That's about it, really. Why, oh why didn't Konami get the Simpsons license for home consoles? They knocked it out of the park with the Simpsons Arcade Game.
Actually, swamp thing isn’t the only game by THQ to reuse sound effects from Bart versus the space mutants, home alone 2 on the NES also reuses the same sound effects as well and that game is also made by THQ. I learned this thanks to AVGN when he reviewed it in one of his Christmas episodes.
Bart vs. The Space Mutants only got a visual improvement with the Genesis Port. The Iconic theme song was not present, due to it Plus, it played a lot faster. I guess even though it was on better hardware, the game itself can't be improved. Still, it's like LJN being the publishers for games like Beetlejuice and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Though they DID publish those two games, it was actually Rare that developed those games. They also developed Time Lord for Milton Bradley.
When you are the original developer of a program, and have your original source code, modifying the program is not a "Rom Hack". Rather, you're building something new on top of previously written code. Mega Man 2 was shown to be built on top of Mega Man 1, as well as Sonic 2 being built on top of Sonic 1.
It's an interesting video to bring up that covers the "difference" between developer and publisher. 👏👏👍 At the very moment I laid my eyes on the thumbnail, I chuckled a little - thinking right away that this feels like a clickbait. But after clicking and started watching, I also realized that "It is not as common knowledge as one could believe, and this is good material for those who don't know". And I remember many years back and just a month or so such talk-points where I landed in some debates on game versions and publisher mistaken for being the "developer". Acclaim, Activision, THQ, US Gold etc. back in the day was well-known big publishers who had no in-house developments but owned a lot of various game licenses based on Movies, TV-shows, Cartoons etc. and when they wanted to make a video game off that license, they turned to multi-workhorse studios incl; Rare, Imagineering, Probe Entertainment, High Score Productions, Beam Software, Sculptured Software, Bits Studios etc. Of some interesting thing, Konami is often brought up here. Konami was as we know once a great developer and publisher, and it was (kind of still is) easy for people to believe they made all there games, witch 8/10 times they also did BUT they have many times acted as region publisher ONLY. Ex. "Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex" where they published the game in the US, but in PAL regions it was Universal Interactive, but still I encountered so many people who referred "there" US version was made by Konami (because the Konami logo was on the box) but if they had bothered to check endgame, it was clearly presented as Travelers Tales who did the game and that it was a Universal Interactive product (as all early Crash & Spiro games was). Or another "Konami" incident was the SNES port of Prince of Persia, where Konami was publisher in the US and PAL regions, but the game was published by Masaya in Japan - to add, the PoP games/ports was made by a lot of different studios and published by various publishers for various systems so Konami was just one among many BUT it did not stop people from believing it was a Konami game just the same! I remember I was fooled by my self in my teens with the High Moon Studios game "Dark watch", a game that was published very different from two big publishers, with Capcom having the US region and UbiSoft having the PAL region. Since I had the PAL published edition and never saw a Capcom label on its box in stores, I believed it was Ubisoft for a long time who owned Dark watch = there product, but one day realized Ubisoft was just a region publisher of the game and that it was the studio High Moon Studios I. P (!)
My cousin had Bart vs The World and that was a game I played a lot. What was Imagineering thinking putting jump and run on the same button? Okay, they probably didn't want to use B since that was for using items. They couldn't put in a double tap like in Kirby? I also rented Bart vs the Space Mutants, and I could never beat the first stage. You only got 2 hit points instead of 3 or 4. And I think the controls are worse with the whole "Start uses secondary items, Select cycles" thing. Couldn't they have made Select always pause and the D-pad cycle items while paused? It'd certainly be more useful than having the player cycle through your inventory just to pause...
The Japanese have been doing it even prior to the North Americans. Vanguard in the Japanese Arcades, published by SNK, being a prime example. The company that truly developed it exists to this day and has created over a thousand games. But they keep a very low profile, preferring to operate in secret for the most part.
Imagineering also developed the SNES version of Family Feud. Remember when the A family whooped the Hall family by bathing Keanu Reeves and not stealing pornography?
i remember reading magazines back when, and they always made note of the publisher ("from the publisher that brought you XYZ") and next to never mention the developer. i found this immensely frustrating as even then i knew what developer made more sense. glad to see you address the difference between publisher and developer in this production.
Imagineering had a composer on their team known as Mark Van Hecke & his particular kind of music is easily identifiable as being from him when it came to NES & SNES games.
I've never heard of "Bartman vs Radioactive Man", but the art design is very impressive. The gradients and the tile work looks great. Too bad about the poor choice of controls.
It is also worth mentioning that Imagineering later developed several Japanese exclusive games, namely the Hello Kitty franchise for Game Boy and Game Boy Color.
Honestly, the idea that a publisher with the logo on the box not being the developer wasn't even a new concept by the time of Atari, Activision and Absolute - this feels like a stretch.
Publisher are the ones with money paying devs enabling them to make a game they wouldnt afford to create otherwise. Thats how publishers have a say in devs deadlines and what they can and cannot have in their games. So in a way, a publishers name on the box art can tell how a game is.. see: EA lol
with these bad licenced games its hard to tell who is to blame sometimes the developer just wasn't good any if they made original ip's it would have just failed .but often the publisher made insane demands when it comes to deadlines and budget .and sometimes you even had the licence holders coming in and making demands about what the game should look like and the game play. but since this was the early 90s most of these guys had never played video games or used a computer so they demanded things like there being voice acting or very big sprites or other things that were hard or impossible on the nes. so they had to cut content and rush things out to meet these demands .i know this is why the super man games have been so bad over the years.
I honestly thought ocean made these for some reason.. no idea why maybe I assumed imagine and imagineering was same thing? Because then you have the ljn confusion too.
Of all the things the AVGN should be held accountable for it's not knowing the difference between a developer and a publisher (prior the Beetlejuice review)
I know at least LJN didn't develop a lot of their own games, and I know Rareware was responsible for some LJN games (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Beetlejuice, Roger Rabbit). But let's hear about Acclaim's devs. (Watches video) Oh, this is mainly about one development company. Not what I expected, but okay. Although, I had thought Hi-Tech Expressions (a horribly misnomer, btw) was a developer, since their name is also on that terrible Muppet Adventure game. If Imagineering developed Barbie, then who made Muppet Adventure? (Googles it) Mind's Eye? Never heard of them, but apparently that game was on other systems like the Apple II and the Commodore. Oh, no. I may have research to do. ;~;
5:02 the funniest part is that that track, along with a bunch of others like it are literally just taken from the theme song of the game. i guess it was to save on rom space? still pretty lazy though lmao
I feel like you forgot home alone 2 on NES because the game actually uses the same sound effects from Bart vs the space mutants in fact, Avgn mentioned it
I know you gotta clickbait to get views, but I feel like the way you've presented this is kinda backwards? While sometimes publishers have internal developers, pointing out that developers make games and that publishers publish them is not a huge revelation or lie or a trick. That's just how the industry works. Also, calling a game that uses the same code as an older game doesn't make it a "romhack." The vast majority of developers don't have the money or ability to publish a game to a cartridge. This is just how things have been done for a long time. Ultimately the publisher decides when a game is ready to go to market and the publisher is responsible for low quality or unfinished titles arriving on the shelves.
They meant that people need to learn that infamous publishers like LJN and Akklaim aren't the ones who developed them in house because many people assume the publishers are the devs. You won't believe how many people think publishing company = the creators. But yeah, the romhack comment was pretty dumb ngl. It's a reuse of sound effects and assets, it doesn't mean they built it over Bart vs the world.
@@Dawntje_ ultimately though when a bad product is released it's the publishers responsibility. It's their job to either fix the issue or cancel the game. There are bad developers, but the publishers put their names on the game. It doesn't matter who develops it.
@@gswanson Very true but my point was that people need to look to the devs more than they do the publisher. Yeah, the publishers are dumb for choosing bad devs and were likely thinking that it didn't matter if the game was crap because big ip means a whole stack of cash. They also likely got shitty devs bc they were cheap and gave them a strict deadline. It's not "Don't think publisher and devs are the same" it's more to understand it's not a black and white thing and there's so much more to say and to not oversimplify. Sorry, I'm just passionate about these things.
You know what's weird? The only game I know Absolute Entertainment for is the computer version of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, which was on this 5-in-1 _"Classic Collections"_ CD with a couple other great games. I dunno. Weird.
Nintendo had a rule about how many titles a publisher could produce a year per thier license from Nintendo, so publishers would create secondary publisher compy names to aquire a 2nd license so that they could come out with more titles than thier license would permit. More titles equalled more money.
Rare developed A Nightmare on Elm St on the NES and LJN was the publisher. I figured that Accliam wasn't the developer of the Simpsons games on the NES they were just the publisher. Also I think Rare developed Who framed Roger Rabbit as well on the NES.
I'm prob wrong but it seems like these games are made with a software and the controls are implemented later. The n64 game Glover is a good example, the dreamcast version works so much better
Can you really say you've been lied to when the very first thing you see when you boot up the game is the copyright screen, where Imagineering's developer information is there front and center?
I remember when i rented Bart Vs the Space Mutants and i got to the end. I couldn't figure it out before i had to return it. I bought it and finally figured it out. The way to beat it was complete ass.
Bart vs Space Mutants was so frustrating! The show was so popular and the graphics looked a lot like the show.So I wanted it to be good, but it was just terrible. This was the first time I ever saw level three😂😂
The Simpsons and Baribie games were all awful in the 8-bit and 16-bit days. It's a shame Konami didn't have the licence to make Simpsons console games instead. They did a great job of the arcade version and their console games were nearly all great.
not going to lie, Pojr, you have a creepy smile bro. but that is also a part of your brand and I would not change it . we love that creepy smile and this is why we all subscribe. to get a glimpse of it in all of its glory
@@pojr Sorry, I was being a bit glib here. AVGN never was really one for details -- he was always just going for laughs. I do appreciate your attention to detail.
The problem just associated that brand with bad games almost all of their games were sub par .i used to boycott thq because i found out all their games were bad and then i found out thq was founded by the same people who worked for ljn
i had bart v the world as a kid. it was infuriating. i never did finish it, though, that was a time when half the games in your collection would never be finished. one of the most maddening was the original final fantasy. the difference between the NES version and the recent remasters is night and day. the NES version was at least 10 times harder. i did managed to finished that though.
'You've been lied to'.. No. Publishers are publishers, and developers are developers. Someone not understanding the difference in those roles doesn't mean they're being lied to.
I had Bart vs. The Space Mutants as a kid. I could never figure out what to do. I did like that you could put on glasses to see which people were mutants a la They Live.
Bro I believe your missing out on button mechanics. If I remember one button jumped the other used items both together super jumped I think but if u mix em up running it changed mechanics. Not sure if u know or not but id gamefaq it for control descriptions. Be safe
I admire Crane's work ethic in crapping out so many licensed Simpsons titles while the NES remained relevant, but he REALLY should have just sublicensed the work to Konami. They were able to produce 4 TMNT NES games in the same time frame, all of which were superior to any Simpsons console release at the time. Crane would have made more money and 90's kids wouldn't have had to deal with his dogshit Simpsons games.
That's not how it works. What most likely happened is that Konami obtained the rights to the Simpsons for arcades, but Acclaim had a separate license to make Simpsons home console games. David Crane in this period was doing work for hire, most likely. So Acclaim hired his company to make these Simpsons games. Since Konami and Acclaim are separate competing companies, they needed to make unique games for NES, and were not allowed to use the beat-em-up formula from the arcade game. It's just how business works.
There are plenty of examples of developers subcontracting their work to other developers, especially on the NES . Nintendo themselves did it all the time. Konami would have probably jumped at the chance to launder one of their games to circumvent Nintendo's yearly limits.
A direct example of something like this would be Capcom publishing Micky Mouscapades, which was developed and published by Hudson in Japan. Capcom acquired the Disney license in the USA, so they were able to license and publish Hudson's game over here.
@@WilliamBurns-ip9bn You're thinking about this backwards. You're talking like developer and publisher are interchangable. David Crane didn't have the Simpsons license. Acclaim did. Why would Acclaim go to their Japanese competitor and hand them a game and a license? They paid good money to make Simpsons games.
Imagineering were pretty much the American version of Rare, or Micronics for the NES, a real workhorse team for everyone.
You should hunt for some facts about Micronics. First time I hear about it.
Looking back at the parts of Rare's back catalog they actually still own, you tend to forget just how many "payin' the bills" games they made back in the day.
If I recall, Rare did a lot of game show games for Gametek. I wonder how much work it was for them to proofread the trivia questions to make sure they were in American English? I only recall one odd mistake in Double Dare where your grand prize is a "holiday" rather than a "vacation". Of course, as hard as the obstacle course is, most probably never saw that.
were they a workhorse team if everything they made sucked?!?!
Praise from Caesar
AVGN Home Alone 2 review actually made a mistake where he thought THQ stole sound effects from Acclaim Bart’s vs the Space Mutants. When both were developed by the Imagineering
I swear when AVGN fucks up and you know where he went wrong, it's just not pleasent. Especially given how he influences things.
@@Channeleven2345789you're overreacting, it's just a shitty 30 year old game, why would you care so much about such a minor thing to make it unpleasent for you? Seriously people find anything to attack AVGN these days
@@Blitz8566 Because it's hilarious to hear AVGN fans cope over the faintest bit of criticism thrown at him. Anyone can fuck up. Also meant in general, not just one thing.
Fuck! Hahhahahaa! That guy is comedy genius! Asss!!!! Hahahahahahaa!
Shit!!!!! Hahahahhahaha! How does he write such comedy gold?
My cousin and I got Bart Vs. the space mutants as kind of a shared Easter gift after my grandmother got a deal on a second hand NES at a church rummage sale. It only took us about 15 minutes to become incredibly frustrated and disappointed but I remember us playing until we figured everything out because we didn't want to hurt grandmas feelings.
Those 'LJN' games AVGN plays are mostly from an Australian game company called 'Beam Software'
Not always.
Wolverine was done by Software Creations
Rare did Beetlejuice and Nightmare on Elm Street
Atlus did Friday the 13th
These are just examples off the top of my head.
@@LUCKO2022 Atlus did Karate Kid as well.
Some like Roger Rabbit and Beetlejuice were even made by Rareware, but granted the reason they weren't as good as most beloved Rare games, is because the publisher and licensors made them hurry production.
Furthermore, David Wise the music composer of Donkey Kong Country, actually made the music for those games.
@@beauwalker9820call me crazy but I actually like Who Framed Roger Rabbit. The end boss fight is INSANE, and you do so little damage to Judge Doom with each hit that it's infuriatingly laughable, but I think the rest of the game is well done. I want to play it through without cheating some day. (Minus the end boss fight. Screw that.)
I hated those Simpson games. Ridiculously difficult.
I never got past level 2 on the Space Mutants one. I had it on the genesis though instead
Great video! I forced myself to like Bart vs Space Mutants as a kid and I guess it stuck. If you press A and B together at the same time you do a super jump without having to worry about running first. Start not just pausing is just cause there's too many buttons, Select cycles through the inventory, Start uses the inventory. It almost plays like an old Computer game more than an NES game, shocked but not shocked Garry Kitchen was involved!
I know what you mean. I actually beat Bart vs the World and Bart vs the Space Mutants. There is some fun to be had, but the games have some glaring issues, mainly in the controls. Bartman Meets Radioactive Man got rid of the super jump ability unfortunately.
@@pojr I feel like a lot of the fun goes out the window after the first level! Great first level though... with nostalgia glasses on :D
Good to know i've been tricked
Imagineering did an ace job with implementing such a large Barbie sprite with that many frames of animation and with not much in the way of flickering.
Am I the only one who thought the first level of 'Bart vs. the Space Mutants' was really creative? I'll admit they messed up the controls(especially the genesis) but the items and ways to use them in that first level felt similar to a games like Maniac Mansion.
Aah, the race to the beginning of the alphabet. Acclaim was named such the best Activision.
Infogrammes bought a company called Aardvark, the ultimate winner of the race to be first in the yellow pages. The only thing that could beat it was AAAAAAA Games.
Maybe that's why they call them Triple A publishers.
And to think. Atari's original name was Zyzygy. Atari would have won the race to the back of the alphabet, and a slogan could have been "Save the best for last.'
Maybe a game company could start their name with a number, that would make it show up alphabetically before A lol.
Accolade was another company started by ex-Activision people.
Man if Aardman was a game developer then they gonna be ahead them by 5th letter and become ultimate winner 😂😂😂
Regarding that TV advert for Bart vs the Space Mutants?
At first I wanted to to the usual nerd complaining. "That NES controller is weird as hell". But then some old dusty memory came up, making me think acclaim had their own controller out at some point. Turns out they really went the extra mile to insist that advert showed Bart using their 3rd party controller. Go frame by frame at 0:55, its a spot on representation of the Acclaim Double Player controller.
I mean, book publishers do the same thing. Penguin released a lot of books in print but they did not write them...
And board game publishers, and-
And most books "written" by celebrities are actually written by ghostwriters.
Oo yea it’s Pojr coming at me with another video 🙌
indeed!
3:56 ANOTHER interesting tidbit about this game is that this was one of the first NES games developed entirely in the US, and after being shipped to Nintendo JP for publishing review, Shigeru Miyamoto flew out to their studio unannounced to personally congratulate Crane on B&HB.
I remember renting Bart vs. the Space Mutants when I was a little kid and having the worst weekend ever trying to figure that game out haha.
Great video as always!
Lol sorry that game had to be your entire weekend
It was a horrible game
For me, Bart's Nightmare was that game. I picked it up at my local Video Update, which had 99 cent game rentals on Tuesdays. Got stuck with that atrocity for a whole _week._
For a series that was such a pop culture phenomenon, it's surprising that Simpsons video games were consistently bad during the show's heyday. Only Hit & Run and The Simpsons Game were what I would call good. If not for the marathon loading times, especially on PS2, I'd add Road Rage too. All three titles released deep in Zombie Simpsons territory. I don't count Virtual Springfield since it's not a "game" in the traditional sense.
Fun fact relevant to 7:50: developer Sculptured Software was, much like Imagineering, a gun-for-hire developer with a close relationship to Acclaim. Besides Bart's Nightmare and Virtual Bart, they developed...
-All four SNES Mortal Kombat ports (Midway sublicensed Acclaim to publish MK games on home console)
-Genesis ports of MK3/UMK3
-The Super Star Wars trilogy (co-developers with LucasArts)
-16-bit ports of NBA Jam
-NES version of Monopoly, which got torn apart by FractalFusion in his very entertaining TASes
-Many, _many_ other sports and pro wrestling titles (including SNES/Genesis ports of "WrestleMania: The Arcade Game"). They even developed two ECW games!
@@TheSuperiorQuickscoper I loved both of those games at the time. The Bart Vs. games get a bad rep but they're decent games once you get used to the controls. I loved Bart Meets Radioactive man too, that was one of my favorites. Barts Nightmare was tough but it was creative, I really liked the Bartman Stage and the music was awesome in the SNES version.
@@PlasticCogLiquidThe Bartman stage and its music were good. That's about it, really. Why, oh why didn't Konami get the Simpsons license for home consoles? They knocked it out of the park with the Simpsons Arcade Game.
Actually, swamp thing isn’t the only game by THQ to reuse sound effects from Bart versus the space mutants, home alone 2 on the NES also reuses the same sound effects as well and that game is also made by THQ. I learned this thanks to AVGN when he reviewed it in one of his Christmas episodes.
Very true. I was going to talk about home alone 2, but ended up not.
@ why? When you mentioned swamp thing were reusing sound effects, I was actually expecting you to mention home alone 2.
The source code for HA2 has surfed online. There’s code and graphical assets straight from Bart meets Radioactive Man.
Bart vs. The Space Mutants only got a visual improvement with the Genesis Port. The Iconic theme song was not present, due to it Plus, it played a lot faster. I guess even though it was on better hardware, the game itself can't be improved.
Still, it's like LJN being the publishers for games like Beetlejuice and A Nightmare on Elm Street. Though they DID publish those two games, it was actually Rare that developed those games. They also developed Time Lord for Milton Bradley.
Atlus of Persona fame did a few ones on LJN
When you are the original developer of a program, and have your original source code, modifying the program is not a "Rom Hack". Rather, you're building something new on top of previously written code. Mega Man 2 was shown to be built on top of Mega Man 1, as well as Sonic 2 being built on top of Sonic 1.
Yeah, that was one of the dumber things I've heard. It's their own game engine, of course they're re-using their own code.
It's an interesting video to bring up that covers the "difference" between developer and publisher. 👏👏👍
At the very moment I laid my eyes on the thumbnail, I chuckled a little - thinking right away that this feels like a clickbait. But after clicking and started watching, I also realized that "It is not as common knowledge as one could believe, and this is good material for those who don't know".
And I remember many years back and just a month or so such talk-points where I landed in some debates on game versions and publisher mistaken for being the "developer".
Acclaim, Activision, THQ, US Gold etc. back in the day was well-known big publishers who had no in-house developments but owned a lot of various game licenses based on Movies, TV-shows, Cartoons etc. and when they wanted to make a video game off that license, they turned to multi-workhorse studios incl; Rare, Imagineering, Probe Entertainment, High Score Productions,
Beam Software, Sculptured Software, Bits Studios etc.
Of some interesting thing, Konami is often brought up here. Konami was as we know once a great developer and publisher, and it was (kind of still is) easy for people to believe they made all there games, witch 8/10 times they also did BUT they have many times acted as region publisher ONLY.
Ex. "Crash Bandicoot: Wrath of Cortex" where they published the game in the US, but in PAL regions it was Universal Interactive, but still I encountered so many people who referred "there" US version was made by Konami (because the Konami logo was on the box) but if they had bothered to check endgame, it was clearly presented as Travelers Tales who did the game and that it was a Universal Interactive product (as all early Crash & Spiro games was). Or another "Konami" incident was the SNES port of Prince of Persia, where Konami was publisher in the US and PAL regions, but the game was published by Masaya in Japan - to add, the PoP games/ports was made by a lot of different studios and published by various publishers for various systems so Konami was just one among many BUT it did not stop people from believing it was a Konami game just the same!
I remember I was fooled by my self in my teens with the High Moon Studios game "Dark watch", a game that was published very different from two big publishers, with Capcom having the US region and UbiSoft having the PAL region. Since I had the PAL published edition and never saw a Capcom label on its box in stores, I believed it was Ubisoft for a long time who owned Dark watch = there product, but one day realized Ubisoft was just a region publisher of the game and that it was the studio High Moon Studios I. P (!)
My cousin had Bart vs The World and that was a game I played a lot. What was Imagineering thinking putting jump and run on the same button? Okay, they probably didn't want to use B since that was for using items. They couldn't put in a double tap like in Kirby?
I also rented Bart vs the Space Mutants, and I could never beat the first stage. You only got 2 hit points instead of 3 or 4. And I think the controls are worse with the whole "Start uses secondary items, Select cycles" thing. Couldn't they have made Select always pause and the D-pad cycle items while paused? It'd certainly be more useful than having the player cycle through your inventory just to pause...
The Japanese have been doing it even prior to the North Americans. Vanguard in the Japanese Arcades, published by SNK, being a prime example. The company that truly developed it exists to this day and has created over a thousand games. But they keep a very low profile, preferring to operate in secret for the most part.
Imagineering also developed the SNES version of Family Feud. Remember when the A family whooped the Hall family by bathing Keanu Reeves and not stealing pornography?
I'm pretty sure Ocean designed Barts Vs the Space Mutants for British computers and the Amiga. Acclaim handled the console versions.
i remember reading magazines back when, and they always made note of the publisher ("from the publisher that brought you XYZ") and next to never mention the developer. i found this immensely frustrating as even then i knew what developer made more sense. glad to see you address the difference between publisher and developer in this production.
8:17 Home Alone 2 also uses the same sound effects
Imagineering had a composer on their team known as Mark Van Hecke & his particular kind of music is easily identifiable as being from him when it came to NES & SNES games.
*RARE made a lot of games too like Battle Toads & Wizards and Warriors btw!* 💡
I've never heard of "Bartman vs Radioactive Man", but the art design is very impressive. The gradients and the tile work looks great. Too bad about the poor choice of controls.
It is also worth mentioning that Imagineering later developed several Japanese exclusive games, namely the Hello Kitty franchise for Game Boy and Game Boy Color.
Hardly a lie. Publishing and Development are different things.
Honestly, the idea that a publisher with the logo on the box not being the developer wasn't even a new concept by the time of Atari, Activision and Absolute - this feels like a stretch.
Settle down, nerd
probably not as stretched as your butthole
@hectorg5809 You're here too nerdy big-brain...
@@xxnoxx-xp5bl shut up, nerd
@hectorg5809 Okay, Hector G. What does that stand for, "Gas from my a*s"?
Publisher are the ones with money paying devs enabling them to make a game they wouldnt afford to create otherwise. Thats how publishers have a say in devs deadlines and what they can and cannot have in their games.
So in a way, a publishers name on the box art can tell how a game is.. see: EA lol
Why cant i edit? Anyway, ea used to publish great games, nowadays they influence games into shit
with these bad licenced games its hard to tell who is to blame sometimes the developer just wasn't good any if they made original ip's it would have just failed .but often the publisher made insane demands when it comes to deadlines and budget .and sometimes you even had the licence holders coming in and making demands about what the game should look like and the game play. but since this was the early 90s most of these guys had never played video games or used a computer so they demanded things like there being voice acting or very big sprites or other things that were hard or impossible on the nes. so they had to cut content and rush things out to meet these demands .i know this is why the super man games have been so bad over the years.
I honestly thought ocean made these for some reason.. no idea why maybe I assumed imagine and imagineering was same thing? Because then you have the ljn confusion too.
I'm going to name my game company AAAAAAAA Games so it shows up first alphabetically.
And that's why home alone 2 and simpsons games on NES had the same sound effect.
AVGN: But that was Acclaim and this is THQ. Damn robber.
Of all the things the AVGN should be held accountable for it's not knowing the difference between a developer and a publisher (prior the Beetlejuice review)
"held accountable" 😂
I know at least LJN didn't develop a lot of their own games, and I know Rareware was responsible for some LJN games (A Nightmare on Elm Street, Beetlejuice, Roger Rabbit). But let's hear about Acclaim's devs.
(Watches video) Oh, this is mainly about one development company. Not what I expected, but okay. Although, I had thought Hi-Tech Expressions (a horribly misnomer, btw) was a developer, since their name is also on that terrible Muppet Adventure game. If Imagineering developed Barbie, then who made Muppet Adventure?
(Googles it) Mind's Eye? Never heard of them, but apparently that game was on other systems like the Apple II and the Commodore. Oh, no. I may have research to do. ;~;
Atlus (The Shin Megami Tensei and Persona guys) did games for LJN.
@chavotoons Off the top of my head, I know they did Friday the 13th. Do you know what else?
Wait it's Acclaim and not Aklaim?
It looks like Aklaim in the logo, but it's actually Acclaim
5:02 the funniest part is that that track, along with a bunch of others like it are literally just taken from the theme song of the game. i guess it was to save on rom space? still pretty lazy though lmao
I feel like you forgot home alone 2 on NES because the game actually uses the same sound effects from Bart vs the space mutants in fact, Avgn mentioned it
These are the best videos. Thanks you for teaching me about this topic I didnt know I wanted to know about:)
Boy and his Blob is awesome
You can see the DNA of ABAHB in his Crane's previous game, Pitfall 2 for Atari, and the subsequent Casper game.
@WilliamBurns-ip9bn 100%, i still own and play Pitfall!, Pitfall 2, for both 2600 and 5200
I got Bart VS Space Mutants as a kid for the Master System, i never understood why the run was mappped to the jump button, so strange
I know you gotta clickbait to get views, but I feel like the way you've presented this is kinda backwards? While sometimes publishers have internal developers, pointing out that developers make games and that publishers publish them is not a huge revelation or lie or a trick. That's just how the industry works. Also, calling a game that uses the same code as an older game doesn't make it a "romhack." The vast majority of developers don't have the money or ability to publish a game to a cartridge. This is just how things have been done for a long time. Ultimately the publisher decides when a game is ready to go to market and the publisher is responsible for low quality or unfinished titles arriving on the shelves.
The romhack idea was so stupid i thought it was a joke
They meant that people need to learn that infamous publishers like LJN and Akklaim aren't the ones who developed them in house because many people assume the publishers are the devs. You won't believe how many people think publishing company = the creators. But yeah, the romhack comment was pretty dumb ngl. It's a reuse of sound effects and assets, it doesn't mean they built it over Bart vs the world.
@@Dawntje_ ultimately though when a bad product is released it's the publishers responsibility. It's their job to either fix the issue or cancel the game. There are bad developers, but the publishers put their names on the game. It doesn't matter who develops it.
@@gswanson Very true but my point was that people need to look to the devs more than they do the publisher. Yeah, the publishers are dumb for choosing bad devs and were likely thinking that it didn't matter if the game was crap because big ip means a whole stack of cash. They also likely got shitty devs bc they were cheap and gave them a strict deadline. It's not "Don't think publisher and devs are the same" it's more to understand it's not a black and white thing and there's so much more to say and to not oversimplify. Sorry, I'm just passionate about these things.
Settle down, nerd
You know what's weird? The only game I know Absolute Entertainment for is the computer version of Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, which was on this 5-in-1 _"Classic Collections"_ CD with a couple other great games. I dunno. Weird.
Nintendo had a rule about how many titles a publisher could produce a year per thier license from Nintendo, so publishers would create secondary publisher compy names to aquire a 2nd license so that they could come out with more titles than thier license would permit. More titles equalled more money.
Rare developed A Nightmare on Elm St on the NES and LJN was the publisher. I figured that Accliam wasn't the developer of the Simpsons games on the NES they were just the publisher. Also I think Rare developed Who framed Roger Rabbit as well on the NES.
Let's Go Awesome Video POJR have Happy Thanksgiving
I'm prob wrong but it seems like these games are made with a software and the controls are implemented later. The n64 game Glover is a good example, the dreamcast version works so much better
A Boy and his Blob was a fun game, I just wish there was more to it. It's super easy if you know what you are doing
Can you really say you've been lied to when the very first thing you see when you boot up the game is the copyright screen, where Imagineering's developer information is there front and center?
I remember when i rented Bart Vs the Space Mutants and i got to the end. I couldn't figure it out before i had to return it. I bought it and finally figured it out. The way to beat it was complete ass.
I had Bart vs the Space Mutants and remember how irritating the first level was, but I played the game a lot anyway.
Bart vs Space Mutants was so frustrating! The show was so popular and the graphics looked a lot like the show.So I wanted it to be good, but it was just terrible.
This was the first time I ever saw level three😂😂
One of the things I like about steam is they list both developer and publisher.
I was totally hoping Swamp Thing was going to say "Ay Carumba!"
The Simpsons and Baribie games were all awful in the 8-bit and 16-bit days. It's a shame Konami didn't have the licence to make Simpsons console games instead. They did a great job of the arcade version and their console games were nearly all great.
yeah if they have console license then simpsons would get a must play nes classic 😋
not going to lie, Pojr, you have a creepy smile bro. but that is also a part of your brand and I would not change it . we love that creepy smile and this is why we all subscribe. to get a glimpse of it in all of its glory
Imagine if Konami was able to get the home console rights as well
I could never beat the dinosaur in the first Simpson game no matter how hard I tried
There's invisible platforms you have to jump on to reach the dinosaur. Really stupid that you have to utilize invisible platforms.
So AVGN was also likely lying to everyone about LJN this whole time? He seemed like such a trustworthy source.🙄
I think in earlier videos, he used to confuse developers and publishers. In his later ones though, he's aware of the difference.
@@pojr Sorry, I was being a bit glib here. AVGN never was really one for details -- he was always just going for laughs. I do appreciate your attention to detail.
The problem just associated that brand with bad games almost all of their games were sub par .i used to boycott thq because i found out all their games were bad and then i found out thq was founded by the same people who worked for ljn
spelling aklaim wrong in thumbnail? whas it on purpose?
It looks like Aklaim in the logo, but it's actually Acclaim
i had bart v the world as a kid. it was infuriating. i never did finish it, though, that was a time when half the games in your collection would never be finished. one of the most maddening was the original final fantasy. the difference between the NES version and the recent remasters is night and day. the NES version was at least 10 times harder. i did managed to finished that though.
'You've been lied to'.. No. Publishers are publishers, and developers are developers. Someone not understanding the difference in those roles doesn't mean they're being lied to.
I had Bart vs. The Space Mutants as a kid. I could never figure out what to do. I did like that you could put on glasses to see which people were mutants a la They Live.
Hey i remember imagineering.... they made quest 64 but thq published it
Kinda like the TAXAN GI Joe game; which is awesome was made by KID.
I thought the first level of space mutants was best one, I liked the puzzle solving. I hated the later platforming
yeah i remember back in the snes era when square enix na making games
Bart vs the Space Mutants is my all time least favorite game
Aklaim was based in Glenn cove not too far from my childhood home
I just played ferrari grand prix challenge and burnout 2, both are gems
Bro I believe your missing out on button mechanics. If I remember one button jumped the other used items both together super jumped I think but if u mix em up running it changed mechanics. Not sure if u know or not but id gamefaq it for control descriptions. Be safe
Imagineering was mostly trash on the 8-bit and 16-bit platforms, with only the occasional playable release.
I have never assumed the publisher was the developer.
That smile you done at the start made me subscribe
the blob reminds me of The Schmoo
oh, that's the publisher of re-volt
Some of these graphics are true AAA quality and the music cool 😎 👌
i just want to know what the deal was with ljn
Amiga before apple write that down
Bart vs The Space Mutants was absolute garbage.
Crazy to think we got this game when the arcade had something much better lol.
The arcade game was soooo good! A shame Konami wasn't able to secure the console rights for Simpsons games.
I never liked it as a kid, and felt so validated when the AVGN expressed how bad it was, haha. The Radioactive Man one was alright though.
There’s my Pojr. Just in time for work…
glad I can accommodate!
I admire Crane's work ethic in crapping out so many licensed Simpsons titles while the NES remained relevant, but he REALLY should have just sublicensed the work to Konami. They were able to produce 4 TMNT NES games in the same time frame, all of which were superior to any Simpsons console release at the time. Crane would have made more money and 90's kids wouldn't have had to deal with his dogshit Simpsons games.
That's not how it works. What most likely happened is that Konami obtained the rights to the Simpsons for arcades, but Acclaim had a separate license to make Simpsons home console games. David Crane in this period was doing work for hire, most likely. So Acclaim hired his company to make these Simpsons games. Since Konami and Acclaim are separate competing companies, they needed to make unique games for NES, and were not allowed to use the beat-em-up formula from the arcade game. It's just how business works.
There are plenty of examples of developers subcontracting their work to other developers, especially on the NES . Nintendo themselves did it all the time. Konami would have probably jumped at the chance to launder one of their games to circumvent Nintendo's yearly limits.
A direct example of something like this would be Capcom publishing Micky Mouscapades, which was developed and published by Hudson in Japan. Capcom acquired the Disney license in the USA, so they were able to license and publish Hudson's game over here.
@@WilliamBurns-ip9bn You're thinking about this backwards. You're talking like developer and publisher are interchangable. David Crane didn't have the Simpsons license. Acclaim did. Why would Acclaim go to their Japanese competitor and hand them a game and a license? They paid good money to make Simpsons games.
You spent some time bitching about Bart Simpson games
I just wanna say... UGH LJN SMH
I thought this was going to be about TOSE
Another good video
jesus, you can really see they just rehashed the same crappy stiff as a board engine for all these games
These games are dreadful regardless of who is behind them.
very interesting
Hey hey! The braces are off! 😄
Yep, about time!
Thanks
you may read every comment but you sure don't reply when asking a question on were you got the music in the other videos.
Is it about where the outro music comes from? It's from Pac-Man arrangement, stage 1
HE SAID HES PRETTY GOOD AT REPLYING
Same thing with Sega! They published a lot of games, but most of their own were Sonic games
Not true. Sega made a LOT more.
@@AxelStone oh, yeah. I just forgot lol
jesus christ no wonder ljn or acclaim whatever are framed it's imagineering all along main shitty. yikes!.
This is kinda duh for me
p