I'm a classic cartoon fan as you can tell from this thread.

The Classic Cartoon thread: You can still watch them today!

In the past year or so, there have been games to two franchises I love. What struck me was the missed opportunity in relation to the Wii version or lack thereof.

I was wondering, if there was a Wii version of Arkham Asylum done really well i.e the same game but with the cel-shaded animated look of the early 90s cartoon. Which version would you choose?

The same for Ghostbusters. This is the wii version which didn't do the right thing and make it based on the toon.

It's been noted that Wii versions of multiplatform games don't sell as well. I can see why, they don't do enough, or add enough incentive for you to get that version. These 80s and 90s cartoons were watched by people who are my age, late twenties, early 30s and hold a special place in our hearts.

If the PS3 and 360 get realistic transformers then do a Wii one based on the 80s cartoon styling.

So of these series and any others you can think of, would you consider going with realism or cartoon licences? I think with batman I would go with realism, with the other two, cartoon.

Agnates said:

The animated series wins over AA imo.

Ghostbusters wins as it is, though actually cel shading it would have been nice. Hated the toon's looks.

Transformers, dunno. Don't really care for either.

It would have been great to see how the artstyle of the animated batman would work in arkham asylum. I'm thinking of the use of shadow, perhaps something like Madworld's high contrast, only with colour. It would have to be some great celshading though, like Punchout or Red Steel 2 quality.

robio said:

Oooh so much to address here, and yet most of it doesn't have anything to do with the thread topic.  Okay well I'll address that first.

1.  Any Transformers game should just be stopped. It's going to suck. I don't care which style they go for I won't touch it.

WTF? There was a PS2 Transformers game by an aussie team that was great, or so I hear.

Ghostbusters the cartoon wasn't a cash in. If you watch the making of documentaries on the Time Life set, they used some of the same talent who did the movies, they made clear that they wanted to make it their way and the writing never talked down to you.

It was great. On the whole.

gamingeek said:

robio said:

Oooh so much to address here, and yet most of it doesn't have anything to do with the thread topic.  Okay well I'll address that first.

1.  Any Transformers game should just be stopped. It's going to suck. I don't care which style they go for I won't touch it.

WTF? There was a PS2 Transformers game by an aussie team that was great, or so I hear.

Ghostbusters the cartoon wasn't a cash in. If you watch the making of documentaries on the Time Life set, they used some of the same talent who did the movies, they made clear that they wanted to make it their way and the writing never talked down to you.

It was great. On the whole.

Really?  What talent was it? Or rather, what were they doing? I know the voice cast was not the same as the original actors and Harold Ramis and Dan Akryod clearly weren't doing the writing for it. I dunno, I just don't see it as a timeless cartoon. I do know that the first season did inspire me to buy a lot of Ghostbusters toys as a kid though.

As for the Transformers game on the PS2, I never played it. Truthfully most of the things I liked as a child don't interest me anymore.  Whether it's M.A.S.K., GI Joe, Transformers or whatever. Maybe I'm just a jaded old fart like Raven.

robio said:

gamingeek said:

robio said:

Oooh so much to address here, and yet most of it doesn't have anything to do with the thread topic.  Okay well I'll address that first.

1.  Any Transformers game should just be stopped. It's going to suck. I don't care which style they go for I won't touch it.

WTF? There was a PS2 Transformers game by an aussie team that was great, or so I hear.

Ghostbusters the cartoon wasn't a cash in. If you watch the making of documentaries on the Time Life set, they used some of the same talent who did the movies, they made clear that they wanted to make it their way and the writing never talked down to you.

It was great. On the whole.

Really?  What talent was it? Or rather, what were they doing? I know the voice cast was not the same as the original actors and Harold Ramis and Dan Akryod clearly weren't doing the writing for it. I dunno, I just don't see it as a timeless cartoon. I do know that the first season did inspire me to buy a lot of Ghostbusters toys as a kid though.

Click here and watch a few interviews

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+real+ghostbusters+interview&aq=f

I think one of the producers was Raymis' brother. Ernie Hudson actually auditioned for his own character, but the role was given to Arsenio Hall. J.Michael Strazynski was the story editor of Babylon 5 fame.

A couple of the movie producers worked on the show.

Michael C Gross, Bernie Brillstein and Joe Medjuck were the executive producers of the Ghostbusters 2 movie and the executive producers on the Real Ghostbusters.

The whole premise was that each episode was written as if it was the next sequel movie. Akyroyd and Raymis had their own idea of what the show would be and had the people they wanted to work and do justice to the cartoon.

Unfortunately after season 3 they f-ed up some things, which I talked about recentely in the cartoon thread. At the end of the day it was still a show done for kids of our era, so it was light and entertaining. It wasn't trash. Compared to quite a few episodes of TMNT it was a fucking masterpiece.

ASK_Story said:

I think the Transformers and Batman idea as a cel-shaded cartoon look would be pretty cool. But not Ghostbusters because the characters are so unique and based on the actors, I don't see it done any other way. The kiddie version for the Wii and PS2 didn't work too well, IMO.

Transformers generation 1 with cel-shading would be a fan's dream come true! If only the developers took it seriously. Since Activision is behind it, it'll turn out like crap.

This was the original set of character designs done for the series.

The almost super deformed look reminds me of the Genesis game.

Photorealistic Ghostbusters

gamingeek said:

Lorenzo Music first supplied the voice for Peter Venkman who was played by Bill Murray in the films. Reportedly, Murray did not like that his character sounded like Garfield and the producers replaced Music with Dave Coulier. Music did provide the voice of Garfield until his death. Bill Murray later supplied the voice for Garfield in Garfield (2004).

WTF? Art imitating life imitating...

Yeah I always knew that Garfield was Venkman. When the Garfield movie annouced it was going to use Murray I thought it was perfect.

robio said:

Really?  What talent was it? Or rather, what were they doing? I know the voice cast was not the same as the original actors and Harold Ramis and Dan Akryod clearly weren't doing the writing for it. I dunno, I just don't see it as a timeless cartoon. I do know that the first season did inspire me to buy a lot of Ghostbusters toys as a kid though.

Toys that for whatever reason had nothing to do with the show, almost all the ghosts were different. Like toilet monster guy. Thing with an eye in its belly. Or the classic hollywood movie monsters. What a weird toy line.

Dave Coulier was a terrible replacement. He sounds like one of the American Football jocks in King Arthur and the Knights of Justice.

Worse still was that Slimer became so popular, Peter Venkmen suddenly started being nice to him. The whole point of their relationship before was that Venkmen barely tolerated Slimer.