Blues Brothers - 1994
It’s hard to bash the Blues Brothers games for being unfaithful, since the real band packed arenas by covering songs by black musicians and stripping them of their soul and emotion, like some inauthentic, white version of The Chipmunks. But it doesn’t excuse the game’s soundtrack for pumping out pappy corpo-rap usually reserved for Jello commercials, instead of “Rubber Biscuit”. Whatever - playing as Jake or Elwood, you generally collected records, instruments or some other object of vague musical relevance. It depended on the million or so consoles you were playing it on.
And if you thought the mid ‘90’s was too late to capitalize on a trend your parents had already forgotten about, the band got back together again at the end of the decade with Blues Brothers 2000. It was just one of those special exclusives that made it infuriating to own a Nintendo 64.
Above: “You ever get the blues so bad baby, you just wanna steal novelty coins from an oversized crocodile?” *duh-duh-nuh-na*
Canceled Metallica Vehicular Combat game - Never
Sad but true: Metallica and Vivendi announced a car combat title way back in 2003, and it was set to feature the band’s music, likeness, and presumably, a character creator for whoever their bassist is that day as well as automobiles in some degree of peril.
Master of Pontiacs, or whatever they were going to call it, was not to be... and this wasn’t the first time. Apparently, thedevs at Naughty Dog were on the verge of creating a Metallica game using - obviously - the Crash Bandicoot engine, but the deal fell through over issues of control. And it’s also likely Lars Ulrich stormed out of the meeting room and loudly proclaimed he’d develop the game himself in between suing fans for sharing his music over the internet.
