The Best Radical Entertainment Games

Key Takeaways

• Radical Entertainment developed licensed games for iconic IPs like
  The Simpsons
  and
  Mario
  with unique mechanics.
• They faced challenges but created gems like
  The Simpsons: Hit & Run
  &
  The Incredible Hulk
  with love for source material.
• Despite ups & downs, Radical Entertainment’s impressive roster included titles like
  Crash Tag Team Racing
  and
  Scarface: The World Is Yours.

Few developers can boast a roster of licensed tie-ins to rival Radical Entertainment, the plucky Canadian studio that was once all over the map. Just take a look at some of these colossal entertainment properties that have committed their IPs to Radical Entertainment titles over the years: Super Mario, Crash Bandicoot, Pixar, Marvel, Scarface, The Simpsons, and even CSI for some reason (and more than once).

With a record spanning all the way back to the Nintendo Entertainment System, Radical often go underappreciated as seasoned veterans of the video game industry. Sadly, the studio is all but dissolved into the large conglomeration that is Activision these days, with little more than ports of their older titles put out under the Radical Entertainment name in the past decade. So let’s take this moment to appreciate ten of the most thrilling, iconic, and often wacky titles that Radical Entertainment ever developed.

10 Crash Tag Team Racing

Backseat Driving

It would be easy to look at Crash Tag Team Racing, coming in hot on the coattails of Mario Kart: Double Dash adding a fresh twist on the Karting genre, and assume it was a shameless clone, but that’s not the case. There will be plenty of time for that later. There’s actually a surprising amount of platforming in this installment of the popular racing series.

What racing is present adds a very novel mechanic of Clashing, where any two racers can combine their cars on the track to form a powerful dual-action car for a burst of speed. All the combinations are unique, even if they share some similarities, and it adds a layer of strategic depth far above simply selecting two characters per Kart. Sadly, this comes at the expense of the series’ steep learning curve, meaning the game struggled to satisfy fans.

9 The Simpsons: Road Rage

Hot Stuff Coming Through

The time has come. The Simpsons: Road Rage bore more than a passing resemblance to the popular arcade game Crazy Taxi, so much so that parent company Sega sued for patent infringement. Yikes. To be fair, it was a pretty blatant example of homework copying, right down to the HUD elements.

That said, what game wouldn’t be improved by the iconic TV family slapping their endless quotable references all over it? This game is full of clever nods to the source material, like Seymour Skinner wanting to be dropped off at the box factory. On top of that, there is a fun, arcade-style driving game to be found here, all about racing across town to deliver various Springfield residents to their destinations within the allotted time limit.

8 Mario’s Time Machine

Where In The World Is Super Mario?

• Platforms: NES, Super NES, MS-DOS, Microsoft Windows
• Released: 1993
• Publisher: The Software Toolworks
• Genre: Educational

We’re cheating a little here because finding reliable reviews for any of the bonkers spin-offs Nintendo commissioned in the earlier days of console gaming is a tricky task. It’s strange how they’re a lot more protective of their properties these days, but in defence of Radical Entertainment, their Mario spin-offs were intended to provide educational value, which was bound to limit their appeal.

Mario’s Time Machine sees Bowser stealing famous artifacts from across history to display in his castle. With the timeline in jeopardy, Mario requisitions the ‘Timulator’ (Time Machine) and sets out on a voyage to return them all to their proper time. The gameplay features a combination of mild side-scrolling action and answering questions about historical places and figures to guide Mario on his quest.

7 Jackie Chan Stuntmaster

Rumble In The Bronx

• Platforms: PlayStation
• Released: 2000
• Publisher: Midway Home Entertainment
• Genre: Beat ‘Em Up

This is right up there with Dark Angel for the strangest licenses acquired by the company: Jackie Chan. A brand that somehow spawned multiple games and an excellent animated series, completely unconnected in canon but all starring the iconic Kung Fu star as himself in fantastical scenarios reminiscent of his movies.

Jackie Chan Stuntmaster is a 3D beat ’em up game with platforming elements that follows Jackie kicking his way across New York to save his uncle. It delivers exactly what that premise promises and is still worth booting up if for nothing more than to hear Jackie Chan quipping Mario’s famous catchphrase ‘here we go’ when starting a new level.

6 MTV Sports: Pure Ride

Shredding The Slopes

• Platforms: PlayStation, Game Boy Color
• Released: 2000
• Publisher: THQ
• Genre: Sports

For anyone who wasn’t a gamer in the 90s, it’s hard to explain the significance of the snowboarding/skateboarding genre. For a good while, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater titles were lauded as the absolute pinnacle of gaming on Metacritic with near-perfect reviews across the board. Pun intended.

MTV Sports series was Radical Entertainment’s bid to get a bite of that cherry, with MTV Sports: Pure Ride narrowly edging out the competition as the best in that series. The game featured an impressive assortment of modes typical of the genre with a split focus on speed and tricks. Plus, it featured a decent mountain builder mode where players could place an assortment of obstacles to pull sick tricks off of to impress their friends.

5 NHL Championship 2000

One For The Road

• Platforms: PlayStation, Windows
• Released: 1999
• Publisher: Fox Sports Interactive
• Genre: Sports

Sports titles were a cash cow for Radical Entertainment throughout the 90s, with the developer releasing 12 licensed sports games in 7 years, and NHL Championship 2000 was the pick of the bunch. Ice hockey was the most recurring sport in the catalog, so it’s no surprise that the system was refined over time to the best it could be.

It was also the last entry in the Fox Sports-backed series, as NHL video games soon became consumed by the twin powers of the more arcade-style NHL Hitz series and the all-encompassing EA Sports umbrella. Like most sports games, there’s little motivation to return to it today unless fans have a particular affinity for retro titles.

4 Scarface: The World Is Yours

The World Chico, And Everything In It

This game was released as a sequel to Brian De Palma’s gangster masterpiece by changing the ending of the movie to see Tony Montana survive. Having lost everything, Tony must rebuild his empire from scratch and take revenge on Alejandro Sosa. It sounds like it should be awful, but the narrative carries itself well, fleshing out characters who weren’t given much dedicated screen time in the film.

There’s an added emphasis on viscera compared to open-world gangster contemporaries of the time, giving combat a little more kick, and the pumping 80s soundtrack that’s playable on demand just makes Scarface: The World is Yours a barrel of fun. It’s Grand Theft Auto with the added flair of Al Pacino’s cult performance, portrayed in a recognizably rendered likeness, cussing and blasting his way to the top. What’s not to love?

3 Prototype

Sticking The Landing

Sadly, ambition that falls just short of execution was a recurring theme for Radical Entertainment, and none of their games better typify that than Prototype and its subsequent sequel. The Prototype games throw the player into the shoes of a super-powered protagonist who can unlock a huge array of new powers and abilities in an impressive skill tree that offers complete freedom of choice.

However, it’s that same variety that ultimately underpins the experience with an overwhelming number of combos to memorize and cookie-cutter mission design ensuring no upgrades are essential for progression, making most abilities feel superfluous and interchangeable. Plus, the game frequently bombards players with so many enemies that an average playthrough results in as much spent time face down as there is flying through the air and firing off combos. When it does come together, though, it’s a great power fantasy to tear through.

2 The Simpsons: Hit & Run

Chilling With Some Homies

The Simpsons: Hit & Run represents the dichotomy of Radical Entertainment in contrast to any of the shortcomings of the aforementioned titles, showcasing everything that made the developer so special. Sure, the game could use a coat of polish, and sure, there might be more driving in this open-world action-adventure game than in Crash Tag Team Racing, but who else could take a concept like The Simpsons meets Grand Theft Auto and deliver this generational gem?

Hit & Run is the defining Simpsons game, and arguably the most requested remaster in the history of gaming. Developers are leaving money on the table at this point. The game was full of charm and character, and it perfectly inhabited the source material’s world like all great adaptations.

1 The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction

Hulk Smash

The most critically acclaimed game in Radical Entertainment’s catalogue makes full use of the two things the developer excelled at the most: Love for the source material and unadulterated fun. In many ways, The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction was the blueprint for the Prototype series, but even next-gen hardware fell short of generating the chaos of a rampaging Hulk.

So much of the environment is not just destructible but capable of being weaponized, and even hours into a playthrough, players will still be discovering new cool weapons and combos to wreak havoc on the Hulkbusters. Boss fights are suitably grand in scale and challenging, borrowing cues from hack-and-slash titles of the era. Put simply, no game before or since has delivered the power fantasy of embodying the iconic Marvel monster quite like this.