Fun fact: the guy who made the doom Aliens wad was actually offered a job in several game companies, but he turned them all down to pursue his career in culinary arts. The more you know!
Actually it was a decision from higher up in bioware to stop development on kotor 2 because they wanted all projects from there on to be solely owned by themselves so they didn't have to share the profits with Lucasfilm.
If the original mass effect trilogy were labeled as star wars in universe, the characters, species, technologies, and effects (and weapons) would all be star wars... I liked the unigueness of the first 2-3 games. If it WAS star wars, it would lose a lot of what made it different and slightly unique... And just be another star wars game. I love a good star wars game, but not every star wars game was a winner...
I love your work GmanLives! For me, you, along side Flume, Chet Faker, Men at Work, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Blinyk Bill, Mad Max ect. are among best cultural exports of Australia! :)
Donkey Kong even was quite a well into development before Nintendo lost the licence. The Popeye game would have been entirely identical to the final one.
Mortal Kombat was originally going to be a licensed game for Universal Soldier with Jean-Claude Van Damme playing the lead character. The licensing deal fell through and Jean-Claude was renamed Johnny Cage.
That's quite meta, considering that Universal Soldier was itself apparently a cancelled licence - it supposedly started life as a movie adaptation of Marvel's Deathlok the Demolisher...
I mean, realistically, if the mafia WAS still around at that point in humanity's history, they almost definitely would try setting up shop on any of Earth's colonies out in space. They'd be stupid not to try.
"Glorzax, imma make a offer that you can't refuse. I offer you the protection of the Xaxian Family in exchange of a cut of the berrylium mining profits, capiche?"
Fun fact: Starcraft was supposed to be another warhammer game based on warhammer 40k but I think negotiations fell through again that’s why the Zergs look like tyranids and the soldiers look like space marines
Fallout was going to be a GURPS (a roleplaying system) licensed game. The developers of GURPS, SJG, pulled out at some point during development and Black Isles had to improvise: which led to the SPECIAL system.
Steve Jackson also didn't like the violence depicted in the game, apparently, if the Fallout Wiki is to be trusted. But you're right. Both parties agreed to split.
I've met SJ, and that does not sound right at all. Most of his games, from OGRE to Munchkin, have involved combat and violence. Also, re-reading the old Daily Illuminator makes it sound like the "agreement" was Interplay dropped GURPS and SJ Games saw no point in fighting it.
Interesting. Well, we can all agree that GURPS would have been more popular had it had the Fallout name attached to it. Maybe a Fallout 3 by Black Isles would exist?
You missed some things 1. The original arcade game Donkey Kong was almost Popeye The Sailor Man 2. Splinter Cell was almost James Bond 3. Splatoon was almost a Mario spinoff Yes, that last one I also didn't see coming
Agreed, he's slowly become one of my favorite TH-camrs as well- he always has such interesting topics, and manages to weave some hints of humor into them too. A good balance not everyone can pull off
I used to work at Games Workshop in the late 90s. The reason why they didn't work with Blizzard as it was explained to me was the fact that if a video game was produced on Games Workshops IP if it was successful then nobody would want to play any Games Workshops products unless it was a video game. This was in the early days when video games were still a new medium and they didn't really understand the impact that it would have which is now white games workshop will quite easily give its IP to anybody that's willing to pay look at the shit that's available on App Store. Though I still say that Fire Warrior which GW did support heavily and was critically panned does actually have the best representation of an imperial bolter in any video game. It's a weapon system that fires self-propelled rockets and it's not a machine gun as represented in other video games. I'm looking at you Space Marine.
Commander keen was originally pitched as a full scale dos port of super mario bros. 3. Karmak had even implemented the first level in a tec demo using his dangerous dave character.
And then he contacted Nintendo and was given a hard, flat 'no.' They weren't interested in porting games to the PC back then and still aren't now. Heck, I can pretty much guarantee that any game that's initially on Nintendo (aside from Final Fantasy) is *never* going to get an official port to *anything.*
5:23 The real reason is that, unusually for a licensed game, Sunsoft completed the game before showing it to Hemdale, who then pulled the Terminator license because they didn't like that the entire game was based on the future war scenes and not the actual plot of the movie
I would think that it's kind of difficult to trademark or copyright things like elves and ogres, since they've been around well before the ideas of trademark or copyright existed.
Man... The lost vikings :/ Brings back such wonderful memories. Me and my grandpa would play it ALL THE TIME when I was little. He recently passed of pancreatic cancer :/. But that game gave me so many enjoyable memorirs of him.
Shin Megami Tensei, started out as a licensed adaptation of a novel before going off and becoming it's own franchise from the second game onward's. Another is Mushihimesama that was meant as a licence for Nausicaa Valley of the Wind.
the first thing I thought about was Mario because the original donkey Kong arcade was originally going to be a Popeye game but Nintendo never got the right so Popeye was replaced with Mario or at the time Jumpman, olive oil was replaced with pauline, and bluto was replaced with donkey kong. but perhaps a lot of people already knew this anyway. it's a good thing Nintendo never got the rights to Popeye and they made their own thing because Mario is well, Mario
Amazing that, after an Aliens game turned into Doom, Doom would then serve as the basis for Alien Trilogy years later. Life comes full circle I guess :D
I read that doom was installed more times than windows 95. I know to some that were teens back then it might not've been that shocking. But still pretty cool
Larry, I used to be a big fan back when you went as ScrewAttackEurope. I lost the ability to see your videos once you stopped using the handle, and had the pleasure of rediscovering you a few months back. It's been really great to see one of my favorite content creators of that time still blasting out high quality content. You always had a calm, introspective and professional style that other creators don't match. I've thoroughly enjoyed what you've put out since I rediscovered you, and I just appreciate your work so much. Thank you for producing superb content!
Warcraft is dead these days (since Blizzard is dead, Activision is wearing their corpse like a suit, like the bug guy in MIB). So it looks like Warhammer outlived Warcraft after all.
@@stevenschnepp576 I was briefly into 40k... Then they made a massive codex change and nerfed my Tau army not only significantly, but into unplayability. Seeing how they'd done that to other popular factions before... I went "fuck this shit and the shit company that makes it" and sold all my 40k stuff to expand my BattleTech collection. All of which is still valid in modern renditions of the game. With how shit acti-bliz has been, you'd think them and GW would get on like a house on fire... But the blood sucking eploitative parasites of late stage capitalism again show they can't successfully coexist. Snubbing each other for short term gain at long term expense.
@@natsume-hime2473 It really is a pity they're such shit at rules design and business. GW's sins go farther than just the poorly-balanced new codices, though. They like to copyright troll 3d printers for "violations" that they've already lost court cases for... because they've spent decades trying to "protect their IP" by being such magnificent assholes that people have created wargames out of spite. My favorite, though, is that they tried to sue an author for use of the term "space marine"... even though said term had been in existence long before Games Workshop, and the space marines in question bore no resemblance to 40k's astartes. Oh, and the reason they're attacking other people who make minis resembling theirs? Other people make minis of similar or higher quality for a fraction of the cost. I can literally print out armies all but indistinguishable from GW product in quality for something like fifty to seventy-five dollars per army - which compares well to the cost of hundreds of dollars to get something barely playable.
Now that I think about it GoldenEye 007 basically did what id originally wanted to do. But did it save the way we see licensed games? No. Most are still shit, but at least we get some classics.
The flood are so similar to xenomorphs, in halo 3 there are eggs you can break (Like the alien eggs) that will spawn infection flood (Like facehuggers) and the combat forms are like the adult aliens, being similarly agile and having claws... Not to mention the marines and sergeant johnson being like the sergeant from aliens.
As a Warhammer and Warcraft player i can say that the IPs did NOT have much in common, except for there being Orcs and Humans. Warhammer is completely squad based, while Warcraft always focused on single units. The lore is also completely different and Warcraft really has more in common with Lord of the Rings than with Warhammer. At least that was the case in the beginning. Ever since Warcraft 2 this is changing, more and more aspects leak from Warhammer to Warcraft, i.e. tech dwarves etc. Though this is also VERY vague. And by now Blizzard is huge and I guess GW does not want to lose money in a maybe pointless lawsuit with another giant. Also in the past their own licensed games did not that bad, and since they only license it away they do not really take any risks. Not like they would need to take any risks. Just imagine, they sell 200 g of pure plastic in a box with a paper manual for ~40€. Everyone who just starts the game needs to buy models which are FAR more expensive than two major games by Blizzard. And then they only have the most basic of basic armies to play with. Money wise, GW gets far more money per loyal customer than Blizzard ever will.
Legends say that Blizzard and Games Workshop don't lawsuit each others because they prefer to keep "taking inspiration" from each others, which end up improving both their respective franchises. The most iconic example is the Tyranids/Zerg. GW came up with the idea, but the design was horrible. Blizzard took the idea and improved the design tenfold, which then GW copied. Now they both have a very popular race of nightmarish space insects which neither would have without each other.
Jeddaven the Canadian I'm more of a fan of Fantasy then 40k, but they made a ton of great figures at the time and before. Their overall output was way better than the zerg.... err, original Tyranids. Those figures are so goofy looking.
15:55 That joke made me chuckle, and then suddenly made me feel very depressed when I realized 6-7 years from now, Diablo will be remembered as a phone game was lost amongst all the other similar 'meh' games.
There's also Donkey Kong which was originally going to be a Popeye game (not to be confused with the Popeye game Nintendo released later) and Mortal Kombat which was going to be a Jean Claude Vann Damme fighting game.
From what I saw of the Æon Flux game that did come out the people in charge of development did actually have a lot of respect for the series, but were required to tie it into the movie. There's a lot of nice nods to the series, and the CG trailer plays out like one of the old shorts, complete with Æon dying
To the best of my knowledge, StarCraft wasn't just inspired by Warhammer 40K, it was being developed as a 40K RTS. GW pulled the license during production; and rather than drop everything they'd done, they reworked the assets to become a new IP. And thus StarCraft was created, and 40K would get its own RTS in the for of Dawn of War. GW were very strict with their 40K license for a very long time, hence a very limited number of titles. But then in the last six years or so they've suddenly changed their minds and started handing licenses out like confetti, leading to a high quantity of mixed quality releases for mobile and console: at one point there were 27 releases in 24 months! Most of the more successful titles were within the Fantasy setting, but at least one Space Hulk game has been well received to represent 40K, and the makers of the popular Vermintide games will be releasing the 40K equivalent Darktide soon.
As soon as I saw the footage of Pax Corpus, I immediately recognized it as Aeon Flux. I had totally forgotten the Aeon Flux game got cancelled, I was thinking that it had been released! I also forgot that the Aeon Flux game that I actually played came WAY later. I had seen so much footage of this old game when it was being hyped that I thought I had actually played it. I always thought that game looked really cool. I'm glad to know that it actually got a release. I never watched the show because I didn't have cable when it aired, but the character always interested me quite a bit, and from the promos I saw, the game looked like it did a good job of capturing that world in all the glory of the original PSX graphics.
Honestly I'd like to see that concept for Flashback realized. The premise is pretty interesting, especially with the scope a modern game could provide. It'd be like a sci-fi cyberpunk film noir.
Huh, I vaguely remember Aeon Flux. I think I gave up on it when I waited 15 minutes for the damn thing to start, only to find that the listed schedule was wrong.
Alien TC for Doom is legendary! I mean Justin Fischer made the TC without any accessible or existing moding tools. Thanks to him and many early moders, Doom mods became a genre itself, that is fruitful and endless till to this day.
ID actually released technical stuff and encouraged people to mod the game (the main reason they didn't release their map editor is that DOOM players almost certainly didn't have the thousands of dollars worth of NeXT hardware needed to run it) so whilst it took time to get going, it wasn't as though they were starting from scratch and doing all the reverse engineering themselves.
@@jfwfreo Yeah, years after it's release, John Carmack himself published the source code of Doom. He was genius and humble at the same time, when he realized the capabilities of the community.
donkey Kong was originally a Popeye game. the gorilla was Bluto, and Pauline was Olive. You played as Popeye. kinda funny to imagine how Nintendo would be if the licensing went through
I agree, Clint from LGR has one of the most smooth, therapeutic voices around. Also, a few of the guys from WhatCulture have very beautiful (and very British) voices.
IIRC, Chris Roberts wanted to get a Star Wars license but couldn't and we get the classic Wing Commander series, complete later on with our own Luke Skywalker. ;)
The Diablo franchise is "the" point&click hack&slash rpg series. It spawned a lot of other games that used the Diablo series as a template. Games like Sacred or Titan Fall. So this series is basically video game history. Maybe people who don't play much pc games or don't have any interest in this genre are likely to not be aware that this series exists.
@@iaincowell9747 That was the best of them. Weird, dark, sexy... Aeon flux was a true gem, while pax corpus though not flawlessly executed was still pretty good in my opinion
Funny thing is that the main writer for 40K 3rd Edition later went on to work as a creative at Blizzard, so it wouldn't surprise me if they have a hush hush deal.
I don't remember hearing that about the game. What I remember hearing is Johnny Cage was based on Van Damme in Bloodsport and they wanted him to be Johnny Cage but he was already hired for another game, which ironically was never released as I recall. I don't think they would decide not to use a license just because an actor wasn't available, especially for a video game, licenses are too expensive usually to just buy then not use.
Doom made me think of Dungeons & Dragons due to a common enemy featured in both games. A floating 1 - eyed bodiless monster. Journey to Silius made me think of Robocop. Flashback made me think of Broken Sword & Flash Gordon. Pax Corpus does have a touch of Space Equivalent to Tomb Raider with a hint of Hitman (with a feminine touch) to it. World of Warcraft & Warhammer? Yes there does seem to be quite a bit in common with both of those.
The Starcraft/Warhammer 20000 parallels are even more extreme. I subscribe to the secret agreement theory. Though since the shitload of money required to pay off those greedy litigious bastards would hardly be possible to hide on the budget, I wonder what serious blackmail Blizzard must have.
A little on the obscure side, but Werewolf: The Last Warrior on NES was originally going to be a Wolverine game. Data East was making games based off of Marvel superhero licenses at the time, but LJN held the home console rights to X-Men. Juggernaut and Magneto are still in the game. They're just given different names.
@@Larry I haven't seen any screenshots of coding confirming it. Data East were unable to acquire the rights to Hulk and Spider-Man, so they instead made Captain America and the Avengers (in which Hulk is absent from the team). Werewolf has a protagonist with retractable blade arms, a leaping adversary resembling the Brood, bosses that are dead ringers for Juggernaut and Magneto, and an overall art design reminiscent of Jim Lee. If it didn't start out as a Wolverine game, it almost certainly came about in response to not getting the rights to the character.
I think the one that sounded the strangest before you explained it was Flashback almost being The Godfather. I never in a million years would have made that connection. Great video as usual, Larry. :D
Donkey Kong was originally meant to be a Popeye game. Donkey Kong and Mario were originally Bluto and Popeye respectively. The change gave birth to two of the most iconic video game characters in history.
Starcraft was explicitly designed to be a Warhammer 40k game, but negotiations didn’t work out, and they just slightly changed the races to avoid lawsuits.
There's absolutely no evidence for that. Starcraft took some visual inspiration from Warhammer 40K for sure, but the rumors that it was ever going to be a 40K game have no basis in fact. For one thing, the Protoss are completely original to Starcraft and have no analog in 40K (they have a few things in common with the Craftworld Eldar, like psychic powers and living for a long time, but they're completely different in terms of appearance, military doctrine, culture, religion, history, and the role they play in the story)
I'm also curious why Games Workshop never sued Blizzard. There are Warcraft history books now called Chronicle Vol 1-3 and the demonic forces are called "Disorder." I laughed out loud when I saw that, but what should they have called it? Chaos was already taken.
"Holy crap" about Flashback. Grew up with that frustrating little gem. One of the few games I spent countless hours in and never managed to beat. Mad props for the original idea behind it, that's some real creativity.
Seeing Valis at the beginning makes me feel old. I remember my aunt giving me her copy when she gave my brother & I her Genesis (I still have the cart to this day)
Seriously, Larry, you need to make a (new) episode devoted to the latest exploits of Peter Molyneux, already. A lot can (and has) happened in the time since 2010. You ought to give an update!
Also, Mass Effect was originally going to be a Star Wars title, but BioWare decided against it to maintain creative freedom. That one's actually kind of fitting, given the recent release of Mass Effect: Andromeda, for better or worse.
Well I do know that everyone knows about this, but I am going to mention it anyways. Donkey Kong (the arcade game) was originally supposed to be a game about Popeye the sailor man, but because of licensing issues it was changed. Olive became Pauline, Brutus became Donkey Kong and Popeye became the most famous video game character of all time, Mario (or jumpman in the original arcade.)
I was half expecting Carmageddon, which started out as a Death Race 2000 game. It's quite obvious still although I didn't know it back in the day, so consider my pleasant surprise when I first watched the movie, thinking "hey, wait a minute, that looks familiar..."
My thoughts on GW not suing Blizzard over warcraft and starcraft... I assume they are too big fans of the games after the releases, simple as that, guys at GW were bloody geeks as well. Well I imagine if blizzard had made a miniature game right after talking about acquiring the warhammer license, there would have been a copyright lawsuit. Now GW had new CEO later on... I think He might have looked at a lawsuit. But at that time, 10 years in on blizzards games and no lawsuit... I assume they thought they couldn't build a case.
I remember there being an actual lawsuit, but they settled out of court. Unless this is just another Mandela Effect. Next you'll try to tell me White Wolf Studios never sued the creators of Underworld...
1:10 I remember back in a seminar with John Romero, he talked about Doom's development and how Fox offered him and his group the rights to the "Alien" franchise
One of the biggest reasons that GW doesn't get too litigious over the tyrannid and imperial forces (compared with space marines) is that they clearly ripped off Aliens and Starship Troopers (the books). They did try and Sue over the ST movies... u til it was pointed out that, yes, the IP were remarkably similar... but that the ST came first by decades.
You know, Fallout is actually the child of two separate licenses... They originally wanted to make A Wasteland game... But EA did their own thing... So they made their own Lore, got a Steve Jackson GURPS license, but when he saw the gore, he said no. The SPECIAL system followed, and Fallout was born.
The reason why GW has never sued Blizzard is because apart from trying to get the licence for warhammer they never actually borrowed that much from GW's world or lore, choosing however to life things from Dungeons and Dragons instead most notiably the Forgotten Realms IP, the races, monsters, gods have more in common with TSR/WOTC's dungeons and dragons then GW's body of work, and WOTC were never going to sue considering they had an early licence for the Warcraft tabletop RPG and had a Diablo tabletop RPG in the works that never came through, not to mention Blizzard was paying hefty sums of money to advertise in WOTC's Dragon Magzine for WoW and for reviews of the World of Warcraft board game
people forgot about the early 80s arcade and console game it was supposed to be based on StarTrek but the lost the license at the last minute and had to change the story ... and i knew of the warcraft/warhammer connection ...
You missed a big one Larry. Donkey Kong was originally going to be Popeye. If that license hadn't fallen through, we would have missed out on two of the most iconic video game characters of all time.
One show that I'd like to see you do, Larry, is all the ridiculous attempts publishers tried to sue because they thought they had a copyright/trade mark on a common name. For example, Bethesda's lawyers attempted to sue Mojang over the word 'scrolls'. When you mentioned 'space marine' that got to think about some of the stories I heard in the past.
Fun fact: the guy who made the doom Aliens wad was actually offered a job in several game companies, but he turned them all down to pursue his career in culinary arts.
The more you know!
He dodged a bullet. With how scummy publishers have become hes better off
Big mistake for him to do that.
Bet that decision tastes pretty bitter now
And don't forget that we got the Mass Effect franchise because Bioware lost the Star Wars licence
Wow. Source?
Anyway. I wonder what could been if they not screwed up tga fresh saga
Though they were able to do more with Mass Effect when they had no limitations due to licensing.
Lol just think of it.star wars Andromeda
Actually it was a decision from higher up in bioware to stop development on kotor 2 because they wanted all projects from there on to be solely owned by themselves so they didn't have to share the profits with Lucasfilm.
If the original mass effect trilogy were labeled as star wars in universe, the characters, species, technologies, and effects (and weapons) would all be star wars... I liked the unigueness of the first 2-3 games. If it WAS star wars, it would lose a lot of what made it different and slightly unique... And just be another star wars game. I love a good star wars game, but not every star wars game was a winner...
An Aeon Flux game would've been awesome. I always felt Mirror's Edge had an Aeon Flux vibe, just without the combat.
I love your work GmanLives! For me, you, along side Flume, Chet Faker, Men at Work, Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, Blinyk Bill, Mad Max ect. are among best cultural exports of Australia! :)
and the massive mammaries
Donkey Kong was originally intended to be a Popeye game. Same for Megaman, which was intended to be an Astro Boy game.
Donkey Kong even was quite a well into development before Nintendo lost the licence. The Popeye game would have been entirely identical to the final one.
@@MrMarinus18 Popeye with a mustache?
5 Famous TH-cam Channels That Were Originally About Peter Molyneux
Mortal Kombat was originally going to be a licensed game for Universal Soldier with Jean-Claude Van Damme playing the lead character. The licensing deal fell through and Jean-Claude was renamed Johnny Cage.
That's quite meta, considering that Universal Soldier was itself apparently a cancelled licence - it supposedly started life as a movie adaptation of Marvel's Deathlok the Demolisher...
God, I can't believe *"Space* *Godfather* *-* *The* *Video* *Game"* actually almost happened.
I mean, realistically, if the mafia WAS still around at that point in humanity's history, they almost definitely would try setting up shop on any of Earth's colonies out in space. They'd be stupid not to try.
"Glorzax, imma make a offer that you can't refuse. I offer you the protection of the Xaxian Family in exchange of a cut of the berrylium mining profits, capiche?"
i can see why Wizardy 8 had a version of the Italian mafia in it. it fits really well.
Fun fact: Starcraft was supposed to be another warhammer game based on warhammer 40k but I think negotiations fell through again that’s why the Zergs look like tyranids and the soldiers look like space marines
That’s why the Zergs do the Zerg rush.
Fallout was going to be a GURPS (a roleplaying system) licensed game. The developers of GURPS, SJG, pulled out at some point during development and Black Isles had to improvise: which led to the SPECIAL system.
Wasn't it also supposed to be about time travel? So as to make use of GURPS being setting-agnostic?
Other way around. Interplay dropped the GURPS system. Edit: found the link! www.sjgames.com/ill/1997/ill-mar97.html and scroll down to March 14th.
Steve Jackson also didn't like the violence depicted in the game, apparently, if the Fallout Wiki is to be trusted. But you're right. Both parties agreed to split.
I've met SJ, and that does not sound right at all. Most of his games, from OGRE to Munchkin, have involved combat and violence. Also, re-reading the old Daily Illuminator makes it sound like the "agreement" was Interplay dropped GURPS and SJ Games saw no point in fighting it.
Interesting. Well, we can all agree that GURPS would have been more popular had it had the Fallout name attached to it. Maybe a Fallout 3 by Black Isles would exist?
Doom almost being a Aliens game? The irony is that there is Alien Trilogy, a Doom clone with the Alien film licence
I can't tell if #2 or #2 is better.
Glad I'm not the only one who noticed
Windows U
I was curious about that. Thought Larry had mislabeled his video for a moment.
I got real excited and prepared myself for another, only to be disappointed :(
Really? I'mma go and do my research on that, I had thought there was something familiar about the arm canon!
It would have been interesting, that's for sure.
You missed some things
1. The original arcade game Donkey Kong was almost Popeye The Sailor Man
2. Splinter Cell was almost James Bond
3. Splatoon was almost a Mario spinoff
Yes, that last one I also didn't see coming
Assassin Creed was almost a Prince of Persia game
Devil May Cry was ALSO ALMOST Resident Evil 4
Larry is my favorite TH-camr. Always provides great insight on some interesting games
Agreed.
Hear hear!
You might note from the description that Kim had a lot of input on this episode.
Agreed!
Agreed, he's slowly become one of my favorite TH-camrs as well- he always has such interesting topics, and manages to weave some hints of humor into them too. A good balance not everyone can pull off
I used to work at Games Workshop in the late 90s. The reason why they didn't work with Blizzard as it was explained to me was the fact that if a video game was produced on Games Workshops IP if it was successful then nobody would want to play any Games Workshops products unless it was a video game. This was in the early days when video games were still a new medium and they didn't really understand the impact that it would have which is now white games workshop will quite easily give its IP to anybody that's willing to pay look at the shit that's available on App Store. Though I still say that Fire Warrior which GW did support heavily and was critically panned does actually have the best representation of an imperial bolter in any video game. It's a weapon system that fires self-propelled rockets and it's not a machine gun as represented in other video games. I'm looking at you Space Marine.
The door sounds in Doom are from Alien as well as Paxtons classic line:
"Game over, man"
_"Starring the titular assassin of the same name."_ ...I see what you did there, and I appreciate you.
Fun Fact: Mega Man was supposed to be an Astro Boy game.
GameAndWatcher96 Surprised it wasnt part of episode.
That is as common knowledge as Donkey Kong supposed to be a Popeye game.
I wish I could have a crossover game with Mega Man, Astro Boy, and XJ9 (from my life as teenage robot)
Kyle Raccoon Would've been interesting.
+Igorcastrochure I knew about Donkey Kong, but not Mega Man.
Commander keen was originally pitched as a full scale dos port of super mario bros. 3. Karmak had even implemented the first level in a tec demo using his dangerous dave character.
And then he contacted Nintendo and was given a hard, flat 'no.' They weren't interested in porting games to the PC back then and still aren't now. Heck, I can pretty much guarantee that any game that's initially on Nintendo (aside from Final Fantasy) is *never* going to get an official port to *anything.*
Games Workshop actually sent Blizzard a citation for a quote in Warcraft III.
What quote?
+Lewis Evans
This Warhammer cost 40K
5:23 The real reason is that, unusually for a licensed game, Sunsoft completed the game before showing it to Hemdale, who then pulled the Terminator license because they didn't like that the entire game was based on the future war scenes and not the actual plot of the movie
Strange isn't it? It would have been cool if it was a spinoff taking place there. Thanksfully we eventually got a good enough game in 2019.
Another Fact Hunt Larry? You are one generous son of a bitch. I will be enjoying it big time.
MegamanNG Agreed
I would think that it's kind of difficult to trademark or copyright things like elves and ogres, since they've been around well before the ideas of trademark or copyright existed.
Larry is the absolute madman. I don't know how he manages to provide such good content every single time.
Man... The lost vikings :/
Brings back such wonderful memories.
Me and my grandpa would play it ALL THE TIME when I was little.
He recently passed of pancreatic cancer :/. But that game gave me so many enjoyable memorirs of him.
Lost Vikings needs a gritty reboot.
Shin Megami Tensei, started out as a licensed adaptation of a novel before going off and becoming it's own franchise from the second game onward's. Another is Mushihimesama that was meant as a licence for Nausicaa Valley of the Wind.
Journey to Silius is now in NES Nintendo Switch Online collection
the first thing I thought about was Mario because the original donkey Kong arcade was originally going to be a Popeye game but Nintendo never got the right so Popeye was replaced with Mario or at the time Jumpman, olive oil was replaced with pauline, and bluto was replaced with donkey kong. but perhaps a lot of people already knew this anyway. it's a good thing Nintendo never got the rights to Popeye and they made their own thing because Mario is well, Mario
Amazing that, after an Aliens game turned into Doom, Doom would then serve as the basis for Alien Trilogy years later. Life comes full circle I guess :D
License holders should just let go of most of the control and just make sure the game doesn't destroy the license, like super man 64
I read that doom was installed more times than windows 95. I know to some that were teens back then it might not've been that shocking. But still pretty cool
Larry,
I used to be a big fan back when you went as ScrewAttackEurope. I lost
the ability to see your videos once you stopped using the handle, and
had the pleasure of rediscovering you a few months back. It's been
really great to see one of my favorite content creators of that time
still blasting out high quality content. You always had a calm,
introspective and professional style that other creators don't match.
I've thoroughly enjoyed what you've put out since I rediscovered you,
and I just appreciate your work so much.
Thank you for producing superb content!
Warcraft is dead these days (since Blizzard is dead, Activision is wearing their corpse like a suit, like the bug guy in MIB). So it looks like Warhammer outlived Warcraft after all.
Which is really remarkable, as Games Workshop has been shitting on its fanbase for something like twenty years now.
@@stevenschnepp576 I was briefly into 40k... Then they made a massive codex change and nerfed my Tau army not only significantly, but into unplayability. Seeing how they'd done that to other popular factions before... I went "fuck this shit and the shit company that makes it" and sold all my 40k stuff to expand my BattleTech collection. All of which is still valid in modern renditions of the game. With how shit acti-bliz has been, you'd think them and GW would get on like a house on fire... But the blood sucking eploitative parasites of late stage capitalism again show they can't successfully coexist. Snubbing each other for short term gain at long term expense.
@@natsume-hime2473 It really is a pity they're such shit at rules design and business.
GW's sins go farther than just the poorly-balanced new codices, though. They like to copyright troll 3d printers for "violations" that they've already lost court cases for... because they've spent decades trying to "protect their IP" by being such magnificent assholes that people have created wargames out of spite.
My favorite, though, is that they tried to sue an author for use of the term "space marine"... even though said term had been in existence long before Games Workshop, and the space marines in question bore no resemblance to 40k's astartes.
Oh, and the reason they're attacking other people who make minis resembling theirs? Other people make minis of similar or higher quality for a fraction of the cost. I can literally print out armies all but indistinguishable from GW product in quality for something like fifty to seventy-five dollars per army - which compares well to the cost of hundreds of dollars to get something barely playable.
Imagine if DOOM had ended up being an ALIENS game, it could've changed the way we look at Licensed Games.
I mean Goldeneye revolutionized the fps genre and that was licensed.
Now that I think about it GoldenEye 007 basically did what id originally wanted to do. But did it save the way we see licensed games? No. Most are still shit, but at least we get some classics.
FullmetalNinja25
Doom DID end up as an Aliens game...check out Alien Trilogy. It's just Doom. With Aliens.
Halo done the alien FPS really well, then 343 had to ruin it with pay to play type game.
The flood are so similar to xenomorphs, in halo 3 there are eggs you can break (Like the alien eggs) that will spawn infection flood (Like facehuggers) and the combat forms are like the adult aliens, being similarly agile and having claws... Not to mention the marines and sergeant johnson being like the sergeant from aliens.
"Leave the blaster, take the cannoli"
I'm fucking done! xD
As a Warhammer and Warcraft player i can say that the IPs did NOT have much in common, except for there being Orcs and Humans.
Warhammer is completely squad based, while Warcraft always focused on single units.
The lore is also completely different and Warcraft really has more in common with Lord of the Rings than with Warhammer.
At least that was the case in the beginning.
Ever since Warcraft 2 this is changing, more and more aspects leak from Warhammer to Warcraft, i.e. tech dwarves etc.
Though this is also VERY vague. And by now Blizzard is huge and I guess GW does not want to lose money in a maybe pointless lawsuit with another giant.
Also in the past their own licensed games did not that bad, and since they only license it away they do not really take any risks.
Not like they would need to take any risks. Just imagine, they sell 200 g of pure plastic in a box with a paper manual for ~40€.
Everyone who just starts the game needs to buy models which are FAR more expensive than two major games by Blizzard.
And then they only have the most basic of basic armies to play with.
Money wise, GW gets far more money per loyal customer than Blizzard ever will.
Blizzards is good enough at fucking their own IPs as it is...so t hey dont need to be sued.
Legends say that Blizzard and Games Workshop don't lawsuit each others because they prefer to keep "taking inspiration" from each others, which end up improving both their respective franchises. The most iconic example is the Tyranids/Zerg. GW came up with the idea, but the design was horrible. Blizzard took the idea and improved the design tenfold, which then GW copied. Now they both have a very popular race of nightmarish space insects which neither would have without each other.
Horrible? Okay, sure, but most of the models looked fuckign terrible back then.
I'm a vintage collector and I disagree completely. Most of the models from back then still hold on. Tyranids instead were just bad.
Jeddaven the Canadian I'm more of a fan of Fantasy then 40k, but they made a ton of great figures at the time and before. Their overall output was way better than the zerg.... err, original Tyranids. Those figures are so goofy looking.
I remember the Mr. T heads running around WOW. Very funny for a little bit.
Warcraft was almost Warhammer... Jeez, they dodged a bullet there. I love 40K, but GW is crazy possessive of their IP
I don't believe that is true anymore, there are a metric fuck-ton of 40K games out now.
15:55 That joke made me chuckle, and then suddenly made me feel very depressed when I realized 6-7 years from now, Diablo will be remembered as a phone game was lost amongst all the other similar 'meh' games.
Not really, just like people remember the first C&C titles even though there was some mobile (or browser?) game some time ago.
There's also Donkey Kong which was originally going to be a Popeye game (not to be confused with the Popeye game Nintendo released later) and Mortal Kombat which was going to be a Jean Claude Vann Damme fighting game.
From what I saw of the Æon Flux game that did come out the people in charge of development did actually have a lot of respect for the series, but were required to tie it into the movie. There's a lot of nice nods to the series, and the CG trailer plays out like one of the old shorts, complete with Æon dying
Why are so many of us suddenly here when this was posted three years ago?
Cuz someone paid somebody
Google algorithm felt like it.
TH-cam recommendation
The algorithm really is unpredictable sometimes. I'm glad I did give it a look, though, this is one I missed before.
6:07 SUN MAN, AAAAAAAH FIGHTER OF THE MOON MAN AAAAH!
HE'S A MASTER OF... JUJITSU AND COMPANIONSHIP
flashback is absolutely one of the best games ever made. still go back to it once every couple of years
Have you played Flashback 2 yet?
@@Larry not yet, been waiting for it to go on sale. the reviews have been...not good lol
That Top Gear music... One of the best racing game soundtracks ever!
Good call. I knew that intro sounded familiar!
I didn't know that about Doom. But to be honest I wouldn't prefer any other way. Doom was perfect and without it we wouldn't have Doom Eternal.
Metroid was also going to be an "Alien" game before Nintendo lost the license.
To the best of my knowledge, StarCraft wasn't just inspired by Warhammer 40K, it was being developed as a 40K RTS.
GW pulled the license during production; and rather than drop everything they'd done, they reworked the assets to become a new IP. And thus StarCraft was created, and 40K would get its own RTS in the for of Dawn of War.
GW were very strict with their 40K license for a very long time, hence a very limited number of titles. But then in the last six years or so they've suddenly changed their minds and started handing licenses out like confetti, leading to a high quantity of mixed quality releases for mobile and console: at one point there were 27 releases in 24 months! Most of the more successful titles were within the Fantasy setting, but at least one Space Hulk game has been well received to represent 40K, and the makers of the popular Vermintide games will be releasing the 40K equivalent Darktide soon.
As soon as I saw the footage of Pax Corpus, I immediately recognized it as Aeon Flux. I had totally forgotten the Aeon Flux game got cancelled, I was thinking that it had been released! I also forgot that the Aeon Flux game that I actually played came WAY later. I had seen so much footage of this old game when it was being hyped that I thought I had actually played it.
I always thought that game looked really cool. I'm glad to know that it actually got a release. I never watched the show because I didn't have cable when it aired, but the character always interested me quite a bit, and from the promos I saw, the game looked like it did a good job of capturing that world in all the glory of the original PSX graphics.
Honestly I'd like to see that concept for Flashback realized. The premise is pretty interesting, especially with the scope a modern game could provide. It'd be like a sci-fi cyberpunk film noir.
Huh, I vaguely remember Aeon Flux. I think I gave up on it when I waited 15 minutes for the damn thing to start, only to find that the listed schedule was wrong.
Alien TC for Doom is legendary! I mean Justin Fischer made the TC without any accessible or existing moding tools. Thanks to him and many early moders, Doom mods became a genre itself, that is fruitful and endless till to this day.
ID actually released technical stuff and encouraged people to mod the game (the main reason they didn't release their map editor is that DOOM players almost certainly didn't have the thousands of dollars worth of NeXT hardware needed to run it) so whilst it took time to get going, it wasn't as though they were starting from scratch and doing all the reverse engineering themselves.
@@jfwfreo Yeah, years after it's release, John Carmack himself published the source code of Doom. He was genius and humble at the same time, when he realized the capabilities of the community.
donkey Kong was originally a Popeye game. the gorilla was Bluto, and Pauline was Olive. You played as Popeye. kinda funny to imagine how Nintendo would be if the licensing went through
Nintendo? Gaming in general.
Is it possible to fall in love with someone voice?
TheNintendochannel64 guru larry and blunty have the best voices on the net
And Ashens
Larry Bundy Jr and LGR team up when
did you watch the programmer rant American Edition video?
I agree, Clint from LGR has one of the most smooth, therapeutic voices around. Also, a few of the guys from WhatCulture have very beautiful (and very British) voices.
IIRC, Chris Roberts wanted to get a Star Wars license but couldn't and we get the classic Wing Commander series, complete later on with our own Luke Skywalker. ;)
My favorite part is where he said "an obscure dungeon crawler called Diablo don't know if you heard of it" I almost busted out laughing.
Not everybody has heard of the game y'know.
Yea I've never heard of it either lol
The Diablo franchise is "the" point&click hack&slash rpg series. It spawned a lot of other games that used the Diablo series as a template. Games like Sacred or Titan Fall. So this series is basically video game history.
Maybe people who don't play much pc games or don't have any interest in this genre are likely to not be aware that this series exists.
I think in the more grand scheme of things it's not THAT well known.
I loved the aeon flux show... now I understand why I kinda liked pax corpus on my good old ps1!
It was a bit weird
@@iaincowell9747 That was the best of them. Weird, dark, sexy... Aeon flux was a true gem, while pax corpus though not flawlessly executed was still pretty good in my opinion
Funny thing is that the main writer for 40K 3rd Edition later went on to work as a creative at Blizzard, so it wouldn't surprise me if they have a hush hush deal.
Maybe that's why the appearance of the Tyranids and Zerg became more and more similar around the time StarCraft was released.
I remember Flashback. I enjoyed it. Had it become Godfather I wouldn't have played it.
Wasn't Mortal Kombat going to be Bloodsport or something but they couldn't get Van Damme?
Universal Soldier wasnt it?
I don't remember hearing that about the game. What I remember hearing is Johnny Cage was based on Van Damme in Bloodsport and they wanted him to be Johnny Cage but he was already hired for another game, which ironically was never released as I recall. I don't think they would decide not to use a license just because an actor wasn't available, especially for a video game, licenses are too expensive usually to just buy then not use.
Doom made me think of Dungeons & Dragons due to a common enemy featured in both games. A floating 1 - eyed bodiless monster. Journey to Silius made me think of Robocop. Flashback made me think of Broken Sword & Flash Gordon. Pax Corpus does have a touch of Space Equivalent to Tomb Raider with a hint of Hitman (with a feminine touch) to it. World of Warcraft & Warhammer? Yes there does seem to be quite a bit in common with both of those.
Well, the ID guys were big fans of DnD. Quake was actually meant to be more of a fantasy game originally, with even stronger ties to DnD.
@@RailedRobin And the Cacodemon is all but a copy-paste of a monster's head on one of the D&D supplement books.
I was expecting Warcraft and Warhammer, I'm not disappointed
Same, lmao. I had an eye cocked right until it popped up.
The Starcraft/Warhammer 20000 parallels are even more extreme. I subscribe to the secret agreement theory. Though since the shitload of money required to pay off those greedy litigious bastards would hardly be possible to hide on the budget, I wonder what serious blackmail Blizzard must have.
*Warhammer 40000
A little on the obscure side, but Werewolf: The Last Warrior on NES was originally going to be a Wolverine game. Data East was making games based off of Marvel superhero licenses at the time, but LJN held the home console rights to X-Men. Juggernaut and Magneto are still in the game. They're just given different names.
I did not know that. Are there any screenshots or code of it's original guise?
@@Larry I haven't seen any screenshots of coding confirming it. Data East were unable to acquire the rights to Hulk and Spider-Man, so they instead made Captain America and the Avengers (in which Hulk is absent from the team). Werewolf has a protagonist with retractable blade arms, a leaping adversary resembling the Brood, bosses that are dead ringers for Juggernaut and Magneto, and an overall art design reminiscent of Jim Lee. If it didn't start out as a Wolverine game, it almost certainly came about in response to not getting the rights to the character.
I think the one that sounded the strangest before you explained it was Flashback almost being The Godfather. I never in a million years would have made that connection. Great video as usual, Larry. :D
Anyone asking about the intro music, the link is in the video description!
Now, thanks to nintendo switch online, Journey to Silius has become a hell of a lot more accessible
Donkey Kong was originally going to be a Popeye game
Wow dude.
Donkey Kong was originally meant to be a Popeye game. Donkey Kong and Mario were originally Bluto and Popeye respectively. The change gave birth to two of the most iconic video game characters in history.
Starcraft was explicitly designed to be a Warhammer 40k game, but negotiations didn’t work out, and they just slightly changed the races to avoid lawsuits.
Funny now how GW gives the license to anyone who can pay for it
There's absolutely no evidence for that. Starcraft took some visual inspiration from Warhammer 40K for sure, but the rumors that it was ever going to be a 40K game have no basis in fact. For one thing, the Protoss are completely original to Starcraft and have no analog in 40K (they have a few things in common with the Craftworld Eldar, like psychic powers and living for a long time, but they're completely different in terms of appearance, military doctrine, culture, religion, history, and the role they play in the story)
I'm also curious why Games Workshop never sued Blizzard. There are Warcraft history books now called Chronicle Vol 1-3 and the demonic forces are called "Disorder." I laughed out loud when I saw that, but what should they have called it? Chaos was already taken.
What about Mega Man originally going to be Astro Boy?
Mortal Kombat was going to be a Van Damme game based on Bloodsport.
Sex!
@THE ONE YOU ONLY NEED TO WORRY ABOUT when you realise your wrong. I didn't know
"Holy crap" about Flashback. Grew up with that frustrating little gem. One of the few games I spent countless hours in and never managed to beat. Mad props for the original idea behind it, that's some real creativity.
Did you ever play the Ubisoft remake a few years ago?
Keep out this output and you will be king of youtube
Cheers, I try my best :)
Seeing Valis at the beginning makes me feel old. I remember my aunt giving me her copy when she gave my brother & I her Genesis (I still have the cart to this day)
“Leave the blaster, take the cannoli…”
warhamer can be said to be inspired by LOTR so it's lawsuits all the way down
Seriously, Larry, you need to make a (new) episode devoted to the latest exploits of Peter Molyneux, already. A lot can (and has) happened in the time since 2010. You ought to give an update!
We need a fact hunt explaining your fascination with Peter Molyneux Larry!
Also, Mass Effect was originally going to be a Star Wars title, but BioWare decided against it to maintain creative freedom.
That one's actually kind of fitting, given the recent release of Mass Effect: Andromeda, for better or worse.
Damn, that would've been cool if it was an SW game.
Discoh so it would of been the next knights of the old Republic?! I'm a bit sad inside...
Well I do know that everyone knows about this, but I am going to mention it anyways. Donkey Kong (the arcade game) was originally supposed to be a game about Popeye the sailor man, but because of licensing issues it was changed. Olive became Pauline, Brutus became Donkey Kong and Popeye became the most famous video game character of all time, Mario (or jumpman in the original arcade.)
I was half expecting Carmageddon, which started out as a Death Race 2000 game. It's quite obvious still although I didn't know it back in the day, so consider my pleasant surprise when I first watched the movie, thinking "hey, wait a minute, that looks familiar..."
Ha ha ha! You included the Viz strip that lampoons Games Workshop, that's a gem of a read!
Aliens still got an official FPS even before Alien Vs. Predator with Alien Trilogy for PS1 and Saturn.
Which itself was originally planned for the SEGA Mega CD, then 32X
Fun fact: Blizzard doesn't have a happy ending now.
My thoughts on GW not suing Blizzard over warcraft and starcraft... I assume they are too big fans of the games after the releases, simple as that, guys at GW were bloody geeks as well. Well I imagine if blizzard had made a miniature game right after talking about acquiring the warhammer license, there would have been a copyright lawsuit.
Now GW had new CEO later on... I think He might have looked at a lawsuit. But at that time, 10 years in on blizzards games and no lawsuit... I assume they thought they couldn't build a case.
I remember there being an actual lawsuit, but they settled out of court. Unless this is just another Mandela Effect. Next you'll try to tell me White Wolf Studios never sued the creators of Underworld...
1:10 I remember back in a seminar with John Romero, he talked about Doom's development and how Fox offered him and his group the rights to the "Alien" franchise
The suggested video keeps showing me these older videos which I've already seen. Im enjoying them 2nd or even 3rd time round still.
That one about Flashback blew me away, that game is amazing.
One of the biggest reasons that GW doesn't get too litigious over the tyrannid and imperial forces (compared with space marines) is that they clearly ripped off Aliens and Starship Troopers (the books). They did try and Sue over the ST movies... u til it was pointed out that, yes, the IP were remarkably similar... but that the ST came first by decades.
Larry puts so much effort into his videos. The amount of research and editing these things require is super underappreciated. Thank you Larry!
You know, Fallout is actually the child of two separate licenses... They originally wanted to make A Wasteland game... But EA did their own thing... So they made their own Lore, got a Steve Jackson GURPS license, but when he saw the gore, he said no. The SPECIAL system followed, and Fallout was born.
Nice... shame about the actual state of that
Flashback is one of my all-time favourite games!
The reason why GW has never sued Blizzard is because apart from trying to get the licence for warhammer they never actually borrowed that much from GW's world or lore, choosing however to life things from Dungeons and Dragons instead most notiably the Forgotten Realms IP, the races, monsters, gods have more in common with TSR/WOTC's dungeons and dragons then GW's body of work, and WOTC were never going to sue considering they had an early licence for the Warcraft tabletop RPG and had a Diablo tabletop RPG in the works that never came through, not to mention Blizzard was paying hefty sums of money to advertise in WOTC's Dragon Magzine for WoW and for reviews of the World of Warcraft board game
people forgot about the early 80s arcade and console game it was supposed to be based on StarTrek but the lost the license at the last minute and had to change the story ... and i knew of the warcraft/warhammer connection ...
16:41 The card that says, "Warcraft was almost Warhammer," has a #2 at the top, even though it's in the #1 spot.
I noticed that as well. Was expecting another entry!
Weren't Mario and Donkey Kong supposed to be Popeye and Brutus at one point?
That is true!
Autumnal Gloom yep
I thought the original Donkey Kong game was meant to be based on King Kong.
@@entropy-cat It was styled after King Kong after they didn't get the license.
I will always remember the Charlese Theron Aeon Flux movie. Almost died in a car wreck coming home from seeing it in the theater.
After seeing it, I almost wish I had died on the way to it :P
You missed a big one Larry. Donkey Kong was originally going to be Popeye. If that license hadn't fallen through, we would have missed out on two of the most iconic video game characters of all time.
I didn't do that one as it's a bit more well known, I try to go for lesser known ones :)
One show that I'd like to see you do, Larry, is all the ridiculous attempts publishers tried to sue because they thought they had a copyright/trade mark on a common name. For example, Bethesda's lawyers attempted to sue Mojang over the word 'scrolls'. When you mentioned 'space marine' that got to think about some of the stories I heard in the past.
man, your videos are always so interesting
thank you :)
+Sharnal Jifan
It's not anime if it's not made in Japan. That's what anime is by definition, and Aeon Flux is an MTV show.