Video game titles and box art should work in unison to provide potential consumers some insight into what they may be buying.
Sometimes, however, they do entirely the opposite.
Look alive. 1971 Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year Lee Trevino is lumbering towards you winding a sand wedge in lazy circles over his body like a medieval mace. You hear his battle cry grow louder as bursts through the loose shrub behind the bunker on the tenth, and he’s close enough now that you can see his balled fists and murderous expression.
It certainly looks like he’s spoiling for a fight. But this can’t be, you think. It’s Lee Trevino! The Merry Mex, famous PGA Tour jokester. This is the man who threw a rubber snake at Jack Nicklaus and popped up in Happy Gilmore to remind Shooter McGavin that Grizzly Adams did have a beard.
But your moment of hesitation is all the time Supermex needed. BAM! The golf club glances the top of your skull, taking with it a small chunk of scalp. You get time to clutch your head before BAM! Trevino follows up his first strike with a crashing fist to your face. You’re on the ground now and Trevino is looking down at you. Golf has changed.
Trevino, pictured celebrating another knockout victory.
Only it hasn’t because, despite the title, Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf actually contains no fighting whatsoever. Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf was just a regular old golf game, released for NES and arcade by SNK in 1988. It wasn’t even a bad game at the time; it just had a hopelessly misleading name.
It’s just about vanished from memory now, although it will live on in parody form forever. Lee Trevino’s Fighting Golf is regarded as the inspiration behind Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge, from back when The Simpsons was still funny.
Would you like to play again? You have selected, "No".
The TOCA racing game series began on PSone but really began to hit its stride on PS2 with TOCA Race Driver. If you don’t recognise the title, perhaps it’s because it was only known as TOCA Race Driver in the UK; it was also known as DTM Race Driver in Germany, V8 Supercars Race Driver in Australia and Pro Race Driver in North America.
TOCA are the organisers and administrators of the British Touring Car Championship, the BTCC. The BTCC was one of the real-world championships featured in TOCA Race Driver, alongside the Deutsche Tourenwagen Masters (DTM) and Australia’s V8 Supercars touring car category.
Stay with us.
Come the release of TOCA Race Driver 2, however, UK fans were pretty incensed to discover that despite the fact the franchise continued to license the TOCA name in the title, the actual British Touring Car Championship was not included. It didn’t return in TOCA Race Driver 3, either.
As far as titles go, Mobile Light Force makes about as much sense something like Metal Gear Solid. That is, somewhere between none and two fifths of not much. But who cares, right? XS Games certainly didn’t.
In 2002/2003 XS Games released Mobile Light Force, a game that (based on the title and cover) appeared to be about a trio of off-brand Charlie’s Angels battling robots around a ruined city. But it wasn’t. It wasn’t that at all.
It really, really wasn't.
It was actually a vertically scrolling shoot 'em up featuring a robot, a young witch on a broomstick and an elderly homosexual man in a pedal-powered helicopter. You see, what XS Games had done was take the 1994 game Gunbird by Japanese company Psikyo and remove the plot, the ending, and all the character names.
It got stupider than this, however. XS released Mobile Light Force 2 on PS2 shortly after. The first one was actually Gunbird, so this one was Gunbird 2, right?
Nope. Granted, people probably should've been suspicious from the outset. When the answer to the question, "Can this publisher afford new cover art?" is a resounding, "No", alarm bells should start ringing.
Wow.
Mobile Light Force 2 was actually another Japanese top-down scrolling shooter. A different one: Shikigami no Shiro.
The whole thing became a farce, like one of those snowballing lies it’s impossible to keep track of. You know, like when you tell your wife and your boss slightly different stories as to your whereabouts and eventually everybody finds out you just got drunk and watched The Avengers that day instead of going to work.
The real sequel to Mobile Light Force, which was really Gunbird, was released on Dreamcast in Japan and the US under its proper title: Gunbird 2.
Phoenix Games was a European publisher known for its line of “Value Priced” titles for the PS2, Wii, DS, and PC. They didn’t describe themselves as a budget publisher. They described themselves as a super budget publisher. If budget games are like one-ply toilet paper, super budget games are like wiping your arse with your hand.
Phoenix specialised exclusively in games so lame that horses with broken legs would shoot them. The sheer awfulness of Phoenix’s entire catalogue is the stuff of legend. Air Raid 3 was no exception.
The much-anticipated sequel to nothing!
Air Raid 3 wasn’t a sequel to Air Raid 2. There was no Air Raid 2. There wasn’t even an Air Raid 1, as far as Phoenix is concerned.
There have been two games called Air Raid in the past. Air Raid for the Atari 2600 is actually widely considered to be the rarest game released for the console (back in 2010 the only complete game, cartridge and box, known to still exist reportedly sold for $31,600). There was also a PC game no-one has ever heard of called Air Raid: This is Not a Drill released back in 2003 by a company no-one has ever heard of either.
Air Raid 3 is a complete lie. You can’t manufacture credibility by making your brand new, super budget game a sequel to nothing, Phoenix Games.
Although you really did try, didn't you?
The story of how the US sequel to Super Mario Bros. wasn’t actually Super Mario Bros. 2, and how Super Mario Bros.: The Lost Levels is Super Mario Bros. 2, is a well-documented one. You can read about it here on this website, in fact.
The problem with the title is that it implies that this super secret sequel was literally lost, like a Hot Wheels that had vanished under the fridge until your mum found it while vacuuming.
"I dunno; it was here and then it wasn't."
Of course, if Nintendo of America was being honest it would’ve been called Super Mario Bros.: The Version We Figured Was Way Too Hard for You. It probably wouldn’t have looked quite as good on a packshot but how many copies would’ve been sold on spite alone?
What does Project Gotham Racing have to do with Batman? About as much as its spiritual precursor, Metropolis Street Racer, has to do with Superman.
"Wait, what?"
That is, precisely nothing.
Luke is Games Editor at IGN AU. You can chat to him about games, cars and other stuff on IGN here or find him and the rest of the Australian team by joining the IGN Australia Facebook community.
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