14 Pop-Culture Tie-In Video Games You Didn’t Know Existed

Created (of course) by George Lucas' video game company LucasArts, beloved adventurer Indiana Jones actually had two games: one based off of The Last Crusade, and this one, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. Point-and-click adventures released in 1989 and 1992 respectively, both games more on puzzle-solving skills than beat-'em-up ones; furthermore Atlantis, notably, offered several different "paths" you could take at the half-way point in the game: the Wits path, the Fists path, and the Team path. Each path had different puzzles and sometimes even different plot points, giving the game a lot of replay value.

One of the most recent games on this list, Back the the Future: The Game is made by Telltale, the company that took up LucasArts' point-and-click adventure game mantle (they've also been releasing games from classic LucasArts series Monkey Island and Sam and Max). Released online in monthly installments on Steam, this game has a unique story separate from the films, but has a lot of great continuity jokes with their source material. Each installment takes about two to three hours to play, and they're a lot of fun-- although admittedly, it's a little weird to hear Christopher Lloyd voicing a teenage version of Doc Brown.

Bone was one of the first comics I picked up as a wee little nerd, so I was pretty psyched when I discovered Telltale had released two games based on the series: Out from Boneville and The Great Cow Race. Once again made by Telltale, they're point-and-clicks, which means they're not always terribly difficult; but there are some fun puzzles to solve as you run around controlling the three adorable little Bone brothers.

This is the BEST. GAME. EVER. Seriously. Viacom released this PC adventure game based off of the Nickelodeon series in 1994, and it was my absolute favorite when I was a kid. In it, you play as brother and sister team Terry and Alex. Legend has it that the great magician Orpheo, owner of vaudeville theatre Orpheo's Palace, went mad after one performance where a trick gone wrong caused his assistant and daughter, Elizabeth, to be banished to limbo for all time. The stories say that Orpheo still haunts the place, so naturally Terry decides it would be a great idea to break into it. Little did she know that the stories are true, and she and Alex soon find themselves fighting for their lives as they try to escape. For a play-through video of the part that used to scare the bejeesus out of me when I was a kid, go here.

Terry Pratchett's Discworld series has actually spawned three games, Discworld,Discworld II:Missing Presumed...!?, and Discworld Noir. The voice casts for these games were pretty spectacular, featuring British comedy favorites Eric Idle and Rob Brydon, as well as third Doctor Who Jon Pertwee. Here, Death stalks failed wizard Rincewind atop a terrifying flagpole. Classic.

In 1997, the now-defunct Westwood Studios released a pretty spectacular PC game set in the universe of classic sci-fi filmBlade Runner. Although you don't play as Harrison Ford's character Rick Deckard, your character, Ray McCoy, is a Blade Runner like Deckard who must hunt down a group of renegade replicants. The environments of this detective game are gorgeous, and did I mention that you get to Voight-Kampff people? 'Cos you do. And it's pretty cool. Check out a play-through of the entire game here.

Sadly, this point-and-click adventure game based off of Duncan Jones' magnificent little sci-fi film Moon does not actually exist. But this is what it would look like if it did (and if it was made by our good buddies at LucasArts).

THIS one, however, DOES exist, and though it's fan-made rather than official, boy is it a trip. You're tearing me APART, Lisa! Play it here.

Jim Henson weird-o 1980s movies The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth both had games released. I would have given you some screenshots, but given that they were released in 1983 and 1986 respectively, the screenshots didn't really look like much. Interestingly, the Labyrinth game begins as a text adventure similar to Infocom favorite Zork; then, once you find your way into the labyrinth by watching the movie Labyrinth, it becomes a graphic adventure. How meta.

I know, I know: The Blair Witch Project had a game? Yes. Yes it did. Even more incredibly, it had THREE games. Using the mythology from the film as inspiration, each of the games followed a different tale from the Blair Witch legend: child murderer Rustin Parr, the Coffin Rock incident, and accused witch Elly Kedward. They were published by the company Gathering of Developers, and the three survival horror third-person shooters made use of the Nocturne engine for gameplay. Although they were critically panned (not unlike the second movie of the series), they were still enjoyably creepy, and they had some amusing Easter eggs scattered throughout-- keep your eyes peeled for an appearance by Twin Peaks FBI Agent Dale Cooper in Volume I: Rustin Parr.

Wonderfully irreverent, this game was quite literally a complete waste of time. Part large selection of mini-games and part desktop personalizer, there WAS an actual game embedded deep, DEEP within it-- I think my brother and I managed to find it once (it involved having an intimate knowledge of Monty Python quotations and also the Spanish Inquisition), but once we found it, we couldn't figure out what we were supposed to be doing in it. So we just went back to playing Whack-A-Mole with Terry Gilliam-style animations instead.

First released on PC and later ported to Xbox Live Arcade, the Wallace and Gromit games give us more episodic point-and-click fun from Telltale. The four episodes each follow their own original Wallace and Gromit stories, with suitably madcap adventures ensuing. Play them on Steam here.

I played this one on the Wii, and while it was sort of a neat idea to port a point-and-click to the Wii, in practice it was a really bad idea (YOU try holding the Wii-mote steady enough for it. I dare you. I DOUBLE dare you.). That said, though, it's kind of hard to be mad at Strong Bad, especially when he's such a wonderfully bumbling little detective. Another fun installment from Telltale.

Another fan-made game (because, y'know, Samuel Beckett is sort of dead and all that), Waiting for Godot is full of waiting. For Godot. Who may or may not be God. And who never arrives. It's HILARIOUS. Play it here.