10 Video Game Crossovers That Went Too Far

In 1993, the worlds of Double Dragon and Battletoads came together to release one of the earliest examples of video game franchises intersecting with each other. It was an exciting moment that showed young gamers that developers were just as keen as players to see wild, dream scenarios play out on screen.

Crossovers must be handled with care which is a pretty big determining factor in whether they happen at all. With multiple license holders in the mix, all very protective of their property and it's image, it can be hard to come to decisions that make everyone happy. More than just slapping one thing against another and presenting it to an audience, there has to be measure and restraint.

Some things aren't meant to crossover and, if they are, it needs to be done with some degree subtlety to make sure the value of combining the two (or more) IPs isn't diminished.

Perhaps they were just the wrong collaborations entirely or perhaps they simply didn't click together in a satisfying way, be they crossovers with other game franchises or outside parties, the titles on this list lost their way somewhere along the way.

Out of all Star Wars media, there is only one place to find the fight between Yoda and Darth Vader and it’s, bizarrely, in Soul Calibur IV. That’s a big deal. So big in fact, does anyone remember anything else about the game?

Of course, the Star Wars collaboration was a huge get and clearly Namco Bandai wanted to make a big deal out of it as they so should. However, it became a gigantic shadow over the rest of the title. Seriously, ask most casual viewers of Soul Calibur as a franchise about the fourth entry and they’ll remark that it was “the Star Wars one” and little else.

Yoda and Vader were on all the posters, on the box in fact and they were huge selling points for the game in the sense that the Jedi master was originally exclusive to Xbox and the Sith lord was only on PS3 (until later DLC). Almost every other major Soul Calibur character faded into the background and the game became essentially marketed as the place for a unique Star Wars showdown… and that wasn’t really fair at all to the complete package.

Soul Calibur IV was not marketed as the upcoming sequel in the franchise, it was now a Star Wars vehicle.