10 Video Games Everyone Wanted (But Hated)

Brand tie-ins are the bread and butter of contemporary consumer culture, allowing a kind of unfettered synergy between otherwise disparate product areas, such as action movies and crisps, or adult TV shows and Christmas socks. But few of these are as frequently appalling as the video game tie-in, which is, often as not, sold on the title alone.

Back before video games were considered artistic endeavours, or video gaming was a possible career choice, the market was rife with this kind of tosh – and, sometimes, everyone fell for it.

That was certainly the case when EA went full tilt on The Simpsons in 2001/2, releasing a triplet of terrible games – Skateboarding, Wrestling and Road Rage – that found steady footing thanks to their big, yellow brand marketing.

Where Wrestling and Skateboarding were just poorly made cash-ins, Road Rage was a grievous blend of The Simpsons and Crazy Taxi, with shallow graphics, shallow gameplay and barely a passing connection to anything meaningful in The Simpsons canon. A struggling frame rate, slow and frequent loading, and basic objectives rendered it all but unplayable.

While Wrestling and Skateboarding received somewhat limited exposure thanks to being single-console releases (PS1 and PS2, respectively), Road Rage was put out across the three major 6th-gen home system consoles as well as the Game Boy Advance. So everybody bought it, but nobody loved it, not least because it was a massive waste of money for anyone who owned Crazy Taxi, the original arcade classic.