Wasted opportunities or: Why wasn't this a video game??

[Rob2600]

I grew up in the 1980s and was heavily into the NES from 1988 to 1991. I always wondered back then why extremely popular things were never turned into video games, at least here in North America. What a wasted opportunity for publishers to cash in! A couple examples:

The Transformers
Voltron
The New Kids on the Block

Not that I wanted an NKOTB video game, but it always confused me why something as huge as NKOTB was never turned into a video game, but things like 7 Up's Spot and Where's Waldo were.

What other bits of pop culture should've been turned into video games, but never were? (Keep in mind, I'm not saying the games would've been good or even made sense. I'm talking publishers cashing-in.)

[SpaceFlea]

Ronin Warriors deserved a game... or two... or three...

[Mayhem]

There were two Transformers games made for the C64, by Activision and Ocean, although neither are spectacular.

[Aussie2B]

There is a Transformers game on NES, but it's Japan-only. It was published by Takara, and I'm guessing they didn't have a US presence at that point. Maybe they wouldn't allow another publisher to do a localization, or maybe nobody wanted it because it's supposedly an awful game.

[Rob2600]

There is a Transformers game on NES, but it's Japan-only. It was published by Takara, and I'm guessing they didn't have a US presence at that point. Maybe they wouldn't allow another publisher to do a localization, or maybe nobody wanted it because it's supposedly an awful game.

Judging from this video, North Americans didn't miss out:

http://www.youtube.com/embed/dKwA066rNn0

I don't understand why a decent Transformers game wasn't made for the NES. We got two G.I. Joe games and two Golgo 13 games (nobody had even heard of that back then!), but no Transformers.

We got Predator and Total Recall NES games, but no Running Man or Conan

[Aussie2B]

I think we would've been better off without Predator and Total Recall, haha. We did get a Conan game, by the way, which also sucks.