Beetlejuice: One of the Worst NES Games

Beetlejuice was a huge deal for a short period of time, much like other fads that entered pop culture. I remember the movie, the cartoon, and some of the merchandise surrounding it. Heck, my school picture from kindergarten has me wearing a Beetlejuice t-shirt.

I vaguely remember playing the NES game. My friend Joey rented it once, as far as I can remember. Most of my memories weren’t related to the video games. I remember the movie and cartoon much more. The movie was great, even if I didn’t get all of the jokes when I was a kid.

This is one of the many games that I totally forgot about. It wasn’t memorable enough for me to want to play again when I started collecting games, and it just faded from my mind. I know that I played it, but I couldn’t tell you what I thought about it at that time.

After watching the AVGN episode on the NES game, I went back to play this one. I must’ve bought the game in the 2010s, but I’m not really sure. There are quite a few games in my NES collection that I have no memory of buying. I bought a lot in bulk, and just tested them before tossing them on a shelf. That is where this game is going once I’m done with this.

TLDR: Creepy graphics aren’t enough to distract from the awful gameplay.

Narrative

This game is a version of the movie’s plot. It isn’t exact, but there is the same overall goal. The way it is described in the game’s manual (Link), it sounds like this is a training session for the events of the movie.

Beetlejuice is trying to get to the “real afterlife,” and you’re trying to get your house back. This is all fine, but why is the game so freaking odd about things? It isn’t exactly the movie, but it feels like the developers tried to include things from the source material.

If you didn’t read the few paragraphs in the manual, then you might not know this. For an NES game, I don’t have a problem with this, especially when it comes to an LJN published game. I don’t remember ever reading the manual too closely when I was a kid. Mostly because I couldn’t read them at first, and just looked at the pictures.

Gameplay

I don’t like the gameplay at all. There are a few things that are decent, but the controls are what really kills it. While there are power ups, they don’t all work as well as they should. The overall difficulty of this game is also something that holds it back.

There are several power ups in this game. It feels like this is something that is in most side scrolling action games, but here they’re bought at a shop. Here is the list:

• Birdman
• Skeleton
• Two-Headed Man
• Ogre
• Ghost
• Medusa Head
• Umbrella Head
• Snakeman

To buy these, you need to build up vouchers, which is just this game’s version of money. You do this by beating specific enemies. The number of points varies depending on the enemies.

The controls are slippery. Nothing really feels all that satisfying to do, and your power ups don’t last that long. There is some variety in the stages which is nice to see. It doesn’t do much to improve the game, though.

There are several difficulty spikes in the game. Cryptic isn’t exactly the right word to use with this game. The manual is not all that helpful, and I don’t remember if Nintendo Power stepped in to help. At the end of the day, this was just a cash grab to capitalize on kids liking Beetlejuice. I guess you could say that about a bunch of licensed games, though.

Overall, the gameplay is what really kills any enjoyment in this. An NES game shouldn’t be as cryptic as this game is. This is one of the games that felt like a proof of concept to me. The developer had some ideas they wanted to try out, and used this licensed property as a chance to mess around.

Visuals

The graphics are the best part of this game. The enemies look creepy, the levels look decent, and the artwork is pretty good. There are a few issues with level design, which can result in cheap deaths.

Beetlejuice and the enemies look pretty good. The animations on them are fairly good. Some of the enemies are a little on the small side, but they still look good. A few feel like they could’ve fit into the movie, and some of them are taken from it.

The stages are odd at times. It can be hard to tell where you can go, where you’re able to jump, and it is easy to die in some places. The graphics look decent, but there are too many spots where things work against the player. This is something you never want to see in any video game.

Overall, the graphics are creepy and look good for an NES game. When I look at the other NES games that I’ve played, Beetlejuice falls in the middle as far as graphics are concerned. It does deliver on the creepy side, but it isn’t able to elevate itself above being average.

Reviews at the Time

The only review from the time this game came out that I could find was from Nintendo Power. I’m sure there were more, but those were either poorly archived or buried somewhere. MobyGames has a review from a German language magazine.

Nintendo Power gave the game a 3.9/5. It’s not a great review, but it is at least positive. They praised the game for having things from the movie.

I wish I could read German. Video Games gave the game a 56/100. They mentioned the TV show, and that is about it. From what I can read, they didn’t like the game.

Obviously, the scores took a nose dive in the 2000s, and only got worse as more people played the game. This isn’t a case where I think this game was unfairly treated by the reviewers in the 2000s. Beetlejuice is a bad game. While it is playable, I’m struggling to think of a reason to play this.

4/10. You can play this game, but I wouldn’t recommend it. This is one of those games that is more of a curiosity than anything else. LJN published a lot of these. There are few redeemable things about the game, and it is more of a “you have to play it to see how bad it is.”

Pros

• Creepy graphics
• Fun Story
• Varied Gameplay

Cons

• Overly difficult
• Tedious
• Simply not fun

Conclusion

Coming back to play this game was odd. Normally, I have some fond memories of these games, especially since my friends would rent them and we’d play them together. With Beetlejuice, I remember playing it, but that is it. This must’ve been one of the games that we quickly moved on from.

Many of the LJN published games feel like proof-of-concept games. The developers were just trying things out to see if they worked, and then refined them in better games. At least this is how it felt with the earlier LJN games, before they were bought by Acclaim and started using that company’s development studios.

Beetlejuice is one of the many cash grabs released by LJN. As a publisher, they didn’t really care about the game’s quality, aside from it working. Their games all work, but most aren’t really worth playing compared to other NES games. They did make some good games, but this isn’t one of them.

There are more LJN games that I’m planning on getting to at some point. Most of them are on the SNES, as I think I’ve run out of games on the NES. Many of the SNES games are better because the graphics and gameplay make the game more fun. They didn’t publish too many awful games at that time.

If you liked this post, check out some of my other posts about LJN games. Such as X-Men or Spider-Man.