10 Video Game Tie-Ins That Missed The Point Of The Movie
6. Rocky
Rocky is the quintessential little-film-that-could, scripted and starring a young Sylvester Stallone and eventually taking home the 1976 Oscar for Best Picture. It's fitting, given that the film is a rags-to-riches American Dream story about a young boxer getting a shot at a title fight with The Champ, Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers, clearly based on the likes of Muhammed Ali and Joe Frazier).
But at heart, what drew audiences in weren't the montages of Stallone beating up slabs of meat or giving hammy lectures about the Cold War (that wouldn't happen until the fourth film). It was a simple love story between a working-class fighter who won the heart of his love interest (Talia Shire), but ultimately lost the fight.
In the end, the fight didn't matter as much as the humanity Stallone managed to wrench from a tried-and-true sports film.
In 1987, however, NES was riding high on the success of Mike Tyson's Punch-Out! It got the underdog part right, with you as Little Mac, going up against a variety of fighters with specific handicaps you could exploit.
The Sega Master System wanted its own Punch Out! So why not Rocky? The perspective was different, but the concept was the same. Take out all that nonsense about romance and the American Dream and just switch out Little Mac with Stallone. The only way to disrespect the classic more would be to include the alternate ending where Rocky throws the fight for the mob.