8 Worst Video Games Based on TV Shows, Ranked
Writing from the Chicagoland area in Illinois, Robert is an avid movie watcher and will take just about any excuse to find time to go to his local movie theaters. Robert graduated from Bradley University with degrees in Journalism and Game Design with a minor in Film Studies. Robert tries his best to keep up with all the latest movie releases, from those released in theaters to those released on streaming. While he doesn't always keep up with the latest TV shows, he makes it a goal to watch nearly every major new release possible. He has been honing his craft and following any and all movie news all his life, leading up to now, where he has a vast knowledge of film and film history. He also logs every movie that he watches on his Letterboxd page, and has hosted a weekly online movie night with his closest friends for over 6 years.
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Ever since the beginning of the video game industry, there have been attempts to capitalize on the built-in audience for television's most iconic shows with an array of tie-in video games for some of the most celebrated shows on television. While this has resulted in several legendary games over the years, including DuckTales on NES and South Park: The Stick of Truth, the vast majority of these tie-in games don't come close to the quality of the shows they are adapting.
These range from good ideas that were botched by a lack of development time or funding to fully realize their concepts to outright bad ideas that never needed to exist in the first place. Many of these games have been largely forgotten over time, only remembered as painfully ineffective attempts at brand synergy. At their worst, these TV show video games manage to be not just terrible games for their respective era of gaming, but some of the worst video games of all time.
8 'Lost: Via Domus' (2008)
Considering how big of a cultural phenomenon Lost was during the 2000s as the must-watch adventure drama, it seemed only inevitable that there would be a video game adaptation of the epic TV show. However, Lost: Via Domus doesn't have any of the intrigue or mysterious elements that made the show such a hit, as it didn't do a whole lot to hide the glaring truth that it's just a poorly made licensed game only loosely based on the show.
It tried to position itself as a true companion piece to the show, featuring several original cast members providing the voice of their characters and even having its score done by series composer Michael Giacchino. However, these attempts only served to make the game feel like that much more of a disappointment, feeling like a generic action game set on an island instead of something that truly cut to the heart of what made Lost such a great show. It also didn't help that the game was incredibly short, able to be beaten in a single afternoon and not leaving much of an impression afterwards.
7 'The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct' (2013)
Video game adaptations of The Walking Dead were all the rage in the 2010s, although not inherently because of the show, as Telltale's adaptation of the comics is considered one of the best zombie games ever made. However, released only a year after Telltale's masterpiece, the AMC series had its own adaptation in The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct, an FPS prequel to the TV show focusing on the adventures of Daryl and Merle Dixon in the early days of the zombie apocalypse.
Taking inspiration from the other popular first-person shooters of the 2010s, Survival Instinct is incredibly generic and by-the-numbers as far as execution is concerned, made worse by its limited scope of only focusing on the Dixon brothers cuts down on the storytelling potential of this game. It was all the more embarrassing when compared to the Telltale games that were so groundbreaking in their approach to the material, while Survival Instinct was forgotten within months of its release.
6 'Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit!' (1994)
It may seem absolutely absurd that Tim Allen-centric TV sitcom Home Improvement was the source of its own video game adaptation in the 90s, yet even more absurd is that this game is an action platformer where Tim fights a bunch of special effects robots from various TV studio-themed worlds. It might be the only 90s sitcom to have a video game adaptation, with the lack of quality of this platformer showing exactly why there weren't many video game adaptations of these cheesy sitcoms.
The SNES game certainly isn't lacking in terms of creativity, but its gameplay makes the game feel severely lacking in an era where 2D platformers were constantly innovating and evolving. The gameplay loop gets incredibly boring very quickly, with its appeal dwindling quickly thanks to its awkward controls and jarring level design. Its only lasting legacy is that of a strange novelty game, as the very concept of playing as Tim Allen and using power tools to take down dinosaurs and robots feels like a strange 90s fever dream instead of an actual game that exists.
5 'Duck Dynasty' (2014)
Duck Dynasty wasn't exactly a critically acclaimed reality show when it was airing during the 2010s, yet it was popular enough to justify the creation of a video game adaptation. The hunting game proves to be little more than a collection of minigames, asking players to partake in various short games themed around hunting and puzzles, all themed around the Robertson family and their duck hunting escapades. It has only a few hours of gameplay before you've seen all that the game has to offer, being entirely forgettable all the while.
It's the type of game where it calls into question exactly who this was made for, as it's difficult to imagine the type of person who was such a big fan of Duck Dynasty that they were willing to purchase a full-price minigame collection themed around the show. Much like the show itself, the game has not had any staying power in the cultural zeitgeist, being a symbolic relic and one of the last big rallying cries for this type of low-budget TV show game adaptation.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Iconic Fandom Should You Join? Harry Potter · Lord of the Rings · Star Wars · Star Trek
Eight honest questions about how you actually are: what you put on when you need cheering up, how deep you go into the things you love, what you argue about, what you keep on your shelf. Answer them and we will tell you where you belong. Four of the biggest fandoms on earth are taking new members, and they could not be more different from one another.
⚡Harry Potter(Wizarding World)
💍Lord of the Rings(Middle-earth)
⚔️Star Wars(A Galaxy Far Away)
🖖Star Trek(The Final Frontier)
01
What do you put on when you need cheering up? Nobody is brave about this one.
02
How deep do you go into something you love? There is no shallow end here, only different deep ends.
03
What do you and your friends actually argue about? Every fandom has one argument it has been having for years.
04
How do you feel about a room full of strangers? Every one of these comes with a very big room.
05
Where would you rather spend a week? Pick on instinct rather than on budget.
06
What do you believe about people, mostly? All four of these stories have an answer, and they disagree.
07
What is actually on your shelf? Look over at it before you answer.
08
What do you actually want from a story? Eight questions in, this is the one that picks your fandom.
Membership Confirmed Your Fandom Is…
Four of the largest communities on the planet, and four completely different reasons to belong to one. Here is yours, what it would give you, and the argument you would be having within a week.
Harry Potter
You belong to the fandom that is really about comfort. Hogwarts works on people because it is a place rather than a plot, and the pull is not the wizard war so much as the corridors, the food, the weather and the sense that somebody is expecting you.
- You are drawn to belonging, which is why this fandom sorted itself into houses within about five minutes and has never stopped.
- This is the most social of the four, and the one most likely to know which type every single person in your life would be.
- The books are built to be reread rather than analysed, and rereading is exactly what you do with things you love.
- The new HBO series is bringing the whole thing back one book at a time, which means the arguments are about to start all over again.
Lord of the Rings
You belong to the deepest fandom on this list, the one where somebody has always read further than you and is quietly delighted to say so. Middle-earth rewards patience more than any other world in popular culture.
- You like the sense that the story you are reading is only the visible part of something enormous, which is precisely how Tolkien built it.
- This fandom takes adaptation seriously to a degree that other fandoms find slightly alarming, and it has good reasons for that.
- Your favourite thing about the books is probably the bit that is not action at all, which is the walking, the songs and the long goodbyes.
- Nobody here thinks heroism belongs to the powerful, and the whole story exists to make that argument.
Star Wars
You belong to the loudest and largest tent of the four, the one where three generations are all watching the same thing and none of them agree about any of it. That disagreement is not a flaw in this fandom, it is the main activity.
- You want something you can share with absolutely everybody, from a six year old to a grandparent, and this is the only one on the list that really does that.
- Nobody argues like Star Wars fans argue, and the argument has been running since roughly 1980 with no sign of resolution.
- The pull here is sensory before it is narrative, since it is the sound design, the score and the look of a used and dented galaxy.
- You would be first in the queue, in costume, with strong opinions and a genuinely good time.
Star Trek
You belong to the thinking fandom, the one that turns up for the argument rather than the explosion. Trek has always been a series of ethical problems in space, and the people who love it love being asked what they would have done.
- You are an optimist in a way that is currently unfashionable, and this is the only major franchise still willing to say the future might be better.
- The best episodes are the ones where nobody fires anything, which is a sentence that makes perfect sense to this fandom and to nobody else.
- Starfleet Academy brought the franchise back to a classroom in 2026, which is appropriate, because Trek has always been a bit of a seminar.
- You would want the conversation afterwards more than the episode itself, and here you will always find somebody willing to have it.
4 'The Sopranos: Road to Respect' (2006)
While The Sopranos may have a reputation as one of the most highly acclaimed drama series of all time, it isn't exactly the type of show one would expect to receive a video game adaptation. The Sopranos: Road to Respect largely followed up on the success of crime games like Grand Theft Auto, but its gameplay style is not an open-world game, but instead a linear, story-driven action beat-em-up with gameplay more similar to something like Yakuza.
With awkward graphics that only loosely resemble the actors from the show and an incredibly simplistic gameplay loop, the game has minimal appeal even to those who are big fans of the award-winning show. At least other beloved crime stories that were adapted to video games in the 2000s, like The Godfather and Reservoir Dogs, attempted to replicate the feel of Grand Theft Auto, while Road to Respect is this weird amalgamation of an uninteresting original story and jarring combo-based action.
3 'The Simpsons Wrestling' (2001)
No singular TV show has had as many video game adaptations as The Simpsons, with a wide range of quality in the different Simpsons games that have been released on just about every console ever released. There are many viable choices for what could be considered the worst Simpsons video game, yet The Simpsons Wrestling stands out especially as an unbalanced mess that is considered one of the worst fighting games of all time.
With especially bad graphics for the time and a gameplay loop that feels more like mashing buttons instead of anything close to cohesive strategy, The Simpsons Wrestling is an archaic failure of the fighting game genre that has only grown more infamous in the years since its release. One specific icon of the game that speaks to all of its failure is how Ned Flanders has become infamous as one of the most broken and unbalanced fighting game characters of all time, as he single-handedly destroys the balancing of the entire game.
2 'Pimp My Ride (2006)
While it wasn't on the air for a particularly long time, Pimp My Ride certainly had an impact on audiences of the 2000s, with its distinct blend of goofy customized cars and the charm of host Xzibit making it an icon of the era as a whole. Even still, there was no real desire for a Pimp My Ride video game, let alone one that took the formula of the show and transformed it into an incredibly generic simulation racing game.
In an era of gaming defined by top-notch racing experiences that were honing in on realism and satisfying physics engines, the extremely repetitive gameplay of Pimp My Ride combined with its terrible physics made the game a genuine test of patience to play. Outside of the standard races, there are also an array of minigames that aren't much fun to play either, with the game as a whole being in contention for one of the worst racing games ever made. Of the various consoles it was released on, the PlayStation Portable version was widely considered the worst, with terrible performance issues further plaguing an absolutely terrible game.
1 'Superman: The New Superman Adventures' (1999)
Often referred to as "Superman 64", Superman: The New Superman Adventures is infamous as one of the worst video games of all time, yet many people don't even realize that the game is based on Superman: The Animated Series. It's a game whose flaws are constant and overwhelming in every aspect of the game, from invasive draw distance and fog that gets in the way of gameplay to the controls being some of the worst of any game built with 3D in mind.
The infamy of the game has massively grown in the time since its release, with its repeating levels of flying through rings becoming one of the defining examples of terrible gameplay in an action game. It's so poorly constructed that many players won't even make it past the first few levels, as the game fails to function on a basic level and is incredibly restrictive and precise in what it requires the player to do. It simply goes without saying that the game fails at recapturing the appeal of the legendary animated series that it is adapting.
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