Believe it or Not, There Was a Goonies Sequel

Despite annual reminders, Hollywood has never made good on its threat to release a sequel to classic 1985 adventure flick The Goonies

That didn’t stop video games from coming up with their own Goonies II, though.

In 1987, Konami released The Goonies II on the Famicom/Nintendo Entertainment System. And proceeded to confuse the shit out of a generation of impressionable young children.

Let’s be clear, this game had nothing to do with the movie. It had a different plot entirely, one in which all of Mikey’s friends are captured by the Fratellis, and in which aside from busting them out you also had to free a mermaid. Called Annie.

But coming two years after the film, and with box art featuring the illustrated likenesses of most of The Goonies’ stars, it got kids hopes up! Without the internet to keep them informed of what was going on, it was perfectly reasonable for kids to see this game, see the cover and figure, wow, there’s a new Goonies movie coming! And this is the game of it!

Compounding the confusion was the fact that the game based on the first film, The Goonies (also developed by Konami, for the Famicom), was never released on console outside of Japan, only briefly making an appearance in the US as an arcade title.

Sadly, it wasn’t to be. There wasn’t, and still isn’t, a second Goonies movie. But man, if there’d been one based on this game, it would have been awesome

The Goonies II didn’t just have kids, dungeons and evil Italian-Americans. It had dragons. Ghost Knights. Fish-men. Eskimos. Giant snakes. Wizards. Teleportation. And a bonus, all-new member of the Fratelli family, Pipsqueak, a cousin of the first film’s hapless brothers.

For an adaptation of a movie that didn’t exist, it wasn’t too bad! It’s biggest draw was that it broke up standard platforming action with first-person sections reminiscent of an 80’s PC adventure game. It also had a badass soundtrack, which kicked off with an 8-bit rendition of Cyndi Lauper’s The Goonies ‘R’ Good Enough, which you may also know as not just the theme to the movie, but also perhaps the greatest music video of all time

Sadly, the game isn’t available on the Virtual Console, so in lieu of that if you want to check it out you can play a Java-based version here

Total Recall is a look back at the history of video games through their characters, franchises, developers and trends.

You can contact Luke Plunkett, the author of this post, at [email protected]. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.