LJN

LJN's logo.

LJN was an American toy company based in New York and founded in 1970. They initially became popular producing action figures. In 1985, MCA, wanting more control over toys made from their movie licenses, bought LJN. Shortly after that, they got into the video game market. MCA pushed LJN to publish games for their wide array of film and television licenses, but, lacking a development company, LJN had to hire third-party video game developers, but they often had such short deadlines the games tended to be particularly awful. After receiving bad press due to selling realistic looking toy guns, MCA sold LJN to Acclaim Entertainment in 1989, who used the company to publish more second-rate games on the NES. Acclaim dissolved the brand in 1995. Despite going out of business, LJN's reputation for horrible games has caused their name to outlive the company by decades, especially to fans of the third and fourth generation platforms who continue to use LJN as a punchline, like the Angry Video Game Nerd.

Personal

As a child, I never paid attention to the companies that made my toys, I just bought what I thought looked fun. I never bought any of LJNs action figures, and I, thankfully, never purchased an LJN game, but I did rent or borrow my fair share of them, only to be hugely disappointed. Now that I'm older, I remind myself of LJN before ever buying a game, especially a licensed video game.

Toys

LJN produced toys for many popular movies, television shows, and various other forms of media. Some of their licensees include Dune, the World Wrestling Federation, Advanced Dungeon and Dragons, E.T., Indiana Jones, ThunderCats, Gremlins, Voltron, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Michael Jackson, Nightmare on Elm Street, Bionic Six, and many others.

Games

LJN published games on the NES, Game Boy, and SNES. All of them are terrible. There is one Dreamcast game which bears their logo published in 2000, but the company, which had been closed for years by that time, had nothing to do with it.

Hardware

LJN also sold video game hardware including the Roll & Rocker and a cartridge-based system called Video Art, both of which flopped because they were horrible.