Back before Metallica wrung out the last of their fans accumulated goodwill with the release of KSP’s boyfriend, St. Anger, there was an idea to do something that would have either mitigated the backlash or increased it ten fold. An unnamed racing/battle game was to be released, inspired by the band, their music and, well, they already sell bibs so why not this.
There are scant details, but a bunch of concept art (including Lars driving around a postapocalyptic golf cart) seems to have just surfaced and… well some of it is kind of cool. Or at least it looks like it would have been cool for a video game. And while I usually cherish every bad idea that Metallica chooses not to do, I feel wistful that this didn’t end up on the market, packed with an exclusive song, unresponsive controls and James Hetfield being forced to quote endlessly from “Fuel.”
While I wanted to list off some similar games that actually came to fruition, Chris Dick led me to an incredibly thorough article that points out many of the metal band video games, including a trailer for this Metallica title:
(Though I’d like to point out that there is no mention of the CD-shooting, Aerosmith-starring Revolution X.)
Surprisingly, a decent video game based on a metal band has yet to be released. And I think it is really a damn shame. I mean, if developers were able to create Rapjam, inspired by artists such as Coolio and Queen Latifah, you think there’d be a Deicide side-scroller by now.
