Limited Run Games, the company behind many a retro reissue, had a lot of people scratching their heads yesterday after announcing it was going to rerelease a set of licensed Three Stooges for the NES and Game Boy Advance.
The Three Stooges, in case you've never heard of them, were a vaudeville comedy act that starred in countless shorts for Columbia Pictures in the 20th century. The lineup changed several times throughout its almost 50-year run, with Moe, Howard, and Curly arguably being the most famous Stooges trio.
In 1987, the video game company Cinemaware (known for Defender Of The Crown) developed and published a title based on the iconic trio for the Commodore Amiga, which was focused on the Stooges doing odd jobs to earn money to save an orphanage from an evil banker. The title was then ported to a range of other computers and consoles, including NES (by Beam Software), PlayStation 1 (Flying Tiger), and Game Boy Advance (Crawfish Interactive).
Limited Run Games plans to reissue the Game Boy Advance and NES versions of the game early next month. As detailed on the website, it will sell the Game Boy Advance version for $49.99 and the NES version for $59.99.
What's interesting is the response to this news online hasn't been as enthusiastic as other rereleases from the company. Many have noted that the cartridges for both games are still readily available to buy on reseller sites for less than $10 and aren't particularly that rare. As a result, we kind of wonder who the audience is here, except for those that really really need to have a boxed edition of The Three Stooges and don't mind repros. We have to imagine that's a pretty small market though.
If for some reason, you still fancy picking up these reissues after what we've just said, you can do so on Limited Run Games website from Tuesday, June 2nd at 12pm EDT. They will only be on sale for one month until July 2nd. You can find out more about the games in this amazing video from Stooges expert Joe Ramoni: