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After Chuck Norris invented video games, he decided to star in one
When Kevin Spacey’s face popped up in the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare trailer, a lot of us did a double take. He’s playing a character named Jonathan Irons, but most of us responded with “holy crap! That’s Kevin Spacey! In a video game!” Years from now, when Advanced Warfare has given birth to five sequels and three spin-offs, I suspect we’ll mostly remember the first entry in the series as “The Kevin Spacey one,” which is almost certainly Activision’s intention.
Celebrities have been popping up in games for decades, sometimes to add publicity to what might otherwise be an obscure release, sometimes as vehicles to push a personally-branded product. Below are some of the most famous faces who became headliners in their own narcissistic gaming epics. We’ve skipped cameos and bypassed the licensed commonplace use of musicians starring in music games, dancers in dancing games, and athletes representing their own leagues. Shaq playing basketball doesn’t count. Shaq laying down the Shaq-Fu? Oh yes, it counts.
Before he was the punchline for a thousand internet memes, Chuck Norris was a competition martial artist turned action movie star. Charles was one of the earliest celebrities to appear in a video game, headlining the 1983 Chuck Norris Superkicks for the Atari 2600. Low-res digital Chuck isn’t very recognizable, and the game is kind of a mess. The fighting segments are broken up by weird autoscrolling dodge-the-terrain areas, Chuck’s moveset constantly changes, and the controls respond like elevator buttons.
Pop supergroup Journey licensed their catalogue for use in two early 80s video games: Journey Escape for the Atari 2600, and Journey, a Bally Midway arcade cabinet. The arcade release featured black and white digital photographic renderings of the band’s heads stapled atop colorful pixelated bodies, a technology invented by none other than Ralph Baer. It’s a strange, trippy game with a palette and feel reminiscent of a Ralph Bakshi fever dream. A physical tape deck inside the cabinet blasted out Journey songs as players progressed through a surrealistic spacescape.
If 50 Cent loses, the terrorists win. Such is the message of 50 Cent: Blood on the Sand. Musicians make unlikely action heroes, but there’s something ludicrously fascinating in guiding 50 Cent as he screams across the desert in an armored humvee, battling hooded paramilitary enemies with grenades, heavy weapons, and his superior hand-to-hand combat skills. Blood on the Sand is a self-parodying melange of straight-faced stereotypes so ridiculous that it’s actually kind of hypnotic. It’s also mechanically sound. Stay away from the agonizing prequel, 50 Cent: Bulletproof, though.
The King of Pop was one of the earlier celebrity proponents of video games. Jackson coordinated with Sega to star in two distinct game adaptations of his feature film, Moonwalker: a three-player isometric arcade brawler, and a side-scrolling home console game for Genesis and Master System. The arcade game granted players the singular pleasure of coordinating the destructive efforts no less than three giant robotic Michael Jacksons. It was a mindless quarter-muncher dressed up with neat synth versions of Jackson songs and, like most competent brawlers, benefitted immensely from multiplayer co-op.
The Genesis game was technically impressive for the time and the musical adaptations are rad, but dull search mechanics make it boring pretty quickly. Michael's smart bomb attack was epic, forcing all enemies on screen to join you in a dance routine.
Bruce Lee’s likeness has appeared in a handful of video games, none of which were created within his lifetime. He’s most recently been digitally resurrected to make an appearance in EA Sports UFC. While his pragmatic philosophies on martial arts encouraged an embrasure of any technique that worked regardless of cultural origin, it’s a bit difficult to picture Lee bursting into an arena to the thump of heavy metal as pyrotechnics explode around him. On the other hand, Lee enjoyed the spotlight, so maybe this is exactly what he’d be doing if he were still alive today
Once, long ago in the future, Charles Barkley destroyed New York with a basketball. So begins Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, the unlicensed, unofficial, and totally amazing PC RPG. Featuring Michael Jordan as leader of the secret police and Barkley as a fallen hero searching for redemption, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden is pixelated celebrity parody at its best, wittily mocking both sports personalities and gaming culture. It’s also a surprisingly meaty and mechanically-sound role-playing game.
In addition to his appearance in Gaiden, MJ got an officially licensed side-scrolling platformer of his own in 1994’s SNES Michael Jordan: Chaos in the Windy City. The stale and abominable platformer tried to cash in on Jordan’s near-limitless popularity, but instead caused thousands of children to forever renounce their love for anything involving sportsball. Curiously, this stinky abomination was designed by future Uncharted mastermind Amy Hennig.
“Music is the weapon” was the tagline for Revolution X, a forgettable arcade light-gun shooter. The incomprehensible plot had something to do with destroying a totalitarian menace with the power of rock and roll and guns. Digitized versions of Aerosmith band members performed in the game. The loud, garish cabinet was a mainstay of mid-90s arcades, but the blatant quarter-sucking design didn’t do much for Revolution X’s reputation.
Once upon a time, Fred Durst was kind of a big deal. For some reason people kept trying to put him into video games. He was slated to star alongside Korn and Marilyn Manson in Jonathan Davis’ tournament fighter Pop Scars, but the project never got up the ground. Instead, he popped up as a selectable character in the odious Fight Club video game adaptation. If you’ve really wanted to stage a stiff, ugly bare knuckle match between the Limp Bizkit lead man and Abraham Lincoln, well, go pull the PS2 out of the closet. But we advise against it.
The superstar NBA center takes to the tournament fighting circuit in Shaq Fu, a bizarre home console game from the early 90s. While unresponsive and repetitive, the game has gained something of a cult following thanks to its surrealism. The sweeping, stupid plot carried Shaq through a mystical alternate dimension where his physical powers were used to pummel zombies. An authorized sequel developed in coordination with Shaq recently reached its funding goal on Indiegogo.
Ryuta Kawashima was already a best-selling author when Nintendo adapted his research into the popular Brain Age line of handheld games. A simple polygonal rendering of the doctor’s head became the face of one of Nintendo’s first breakout DS franchises. Kawashima and Nintendo used the icon to give the spartan homework sim a dose of humanity. The doctor encourages, chides, and occasionally even derides the player. Many an undisciplined player opened their DS after a couple of idle weeks only to find Kawashima’s disapproving glare waiting for them.
The Def Jam trilogy introduced a huge roster of real-world artists into the strange world of 3D fighting games. Characters included (but were hardly limited to) DMX, Keith Murray, Method Man, Redman, Christina Milian, Funkmaster Flex, Lil' Kim, Fat Joe, Joe Budden, Ice-T, Xzibit, N.O.R.E, D-Mob, Ludacris, Busta Rhymes, Sticky Fingaz, and Snoop Dogg. The extensive collection of likenesses is easily the largest gathering of real-world personalities in a single game series outside of league sports titles. Pretty weird when you think about it, right?
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