Jan 3, 2007

To get into an R-rated movie, you have to be at least 17 years old or accompanied by an adult. We know a few ways around this rule, but we choose to shelter the children we know from intense violence, gore and sexuality and will not mention them in this article. There are occasional R-rated movies that end up becoming games, and out of those, there are some that are actually designed for kids. We don't care if kids play those. We're ironic that way.

That these games exist means that someone saw each of these adult-themed films and thought to turn them into videogames. Good thinking - that is, until they thought to market them to kids. To celebrate this misguided trend, we've dredged up some of the weirder examples of adult movies that got turned into kid games. Decide for yourself if they were on target or not.

Game: Blues Brothers (1993) - SNES
Movie: Blues Brothers (1980)

The Movie: The first things we think of when we hear "Blues Brothers" are car chases, beer and blues. Aside from the blues, those aren't really the kinds of things that make good kid games. What people tend to forget is that the brothers, Elwood and Jake, are on a mission to reunite the Blues Brothers band and raise $5,000 to save their old Roman Catholic orphanage. Without all the beer bottles being thrown at the band, the movie has a fairly PG premise.

The Game: Rather than traveling through seedy bars playing music and getting into fights, the Blues Brothers for SNES ditches most of the movie's plot and has the brothers running through lovely pastoral levels throwing records - presumably blues records - at stumpy-looking animated foes. There are mushrooms to bounce on, snails to eviscerate with vinyl and, if the brothers take damage, their jackets fall off. Under their shirts are enormously muscled physiques that Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi could only have had if they'd replaced beer with steroids. What does any of this have to do with the movie? At the end of the game, they do actually reach the big concert. That's the only connection.