Warner Bros may finally be getting around to making a sequel to The Goonies, but NES gamers got a follow-up back in 1987…
One of those sequels that has been talked about for years, The Goonies 2 is reportedly showing signs of life at Warner Bros, with a treatment ā essentially a story outline ā reportedly doing the rounds at the studio. In other words, it’s 35 years since the release of the original The Goonies, and a sequel to director Richard Donner’s effervescent pirate adventure doesn’t even have a finished script.
It’s doubly odd when you consider that The Goonies was one of the biggest films of 1985. Bolstered by Donner’s fast-paced direction, imaginative production design and a catchy soundtrack, it became one of the most quotable and fondly-remembered films in Amblin’s cycle of kid-friendly 80s yarns. And while film and TV sequels and spin-offs were talked about but refused to happen, a piece of entertainment called The Goonies II did emerge in 1987 ā albeit as a videogame for the Nintendo Entertainment System.
In a quirk of 1980s licencing, more than one videogame tie-in for the original The Goonies emerged shortly after the film’s release. The better known one in the west, called The Goonies, was developed in 1986 by Datasoft for 8-bit computers including the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum.
The graphics were basic even by the era’s standards, but its platform-based puzzles were niftily designed and it all looked, felt and sounded recognisably The Goonies, with locations and traps from the movie re-created in glorious 2D. A chiptune rendition of Cyndi Lauperās theme song, The Goonies āRā Good Enough, also played in the background.
Around the same time, Japanese developer Konami made its own tie-in, also called The Goonies. Akin to one of the company’s more famous 1980s games, Castlevania, it was a platform adventure that involved bashing enemies ā rats, skeletons, fish and the like ā while hunting for keys which could be used to free captured Goonies. Like Datasoft’s game, Konami’s The Goonies based its levels on scenes from the movie, with a tiny 8-bit Mikey roaming the Fratelli gang’s restaurant hideout and assorted underground caverns. (Cyndi Lauperās infectiously catchy song also features here.)
Why Konami didn’t officially release The Goonies outside Japan is a mystery (it appeared in arcades as one of the titles in PlayChoice 10 cabinets, but that was it). What’s even more curious is that The Goonies II, a sequel developed in 1987, did make it to North America and Europe.
It’s possible that Konami simply thought that, by releasing a game called The Goonies II in the west, kids would think it was an interactive sequel to the movie. Or (more likely) some sort of licencing deal blocked Konami from releasing its original Goonies tie-in and competing with the version released by Datasoft.
At any rate, The Goonies II ā subtitled The Fratellis’ Last Stand in Japan ā is another side-scrolling adventure like its (Konami) predecessor, albeit with more items, weapons and a larger map. What makes The Goonies II so oddly fascinating is its plot, which is far more outlandish than anything seen in the 1985 film. We can only imagine what audiences would have made of it had it been used as the basis of a live-action sequel rather than a videogame. Which, thinking about it, is quite a good idea. So here’s the basic plot of The Goonies II (videogame) imagined as a brief film synopsis:
Two years after the events of The Goonies, the Fratellis are back. The cantankerous Ma Fratelli (Anne Ramsey) and her wayward sons Jake (Robert Davi), Francis (Joe Pantoliano) have again broken out of jail, this time thanks to their long-lost cousin Pipsqueak (Danny DeVito).
Meanwhile, the Goonies ā among them a returning Sean Astin, Josh Brolin, Jeff Cohen, Corey Feldman and Ke Huy Quan ā have befriended a mermaid named Annie (Molly Ringwald), whom they found trapped in a fishing net off the coast of Astoria. It isn’t long, however, before the Fratellis swoop in and kidnap Annie and most of the Goonies ā only Mikey (Astin) is quick-thinking enough to escape their clutches.
Returning to the steps of the Fratellis’ hideout at the abandoned restaurant, Mikey goes on a hunt for his captured friends. As he again journeys through underground passages, he’ll encounter traps, sharks, and murderous penguins.
Quite why Konami decided to throw a mermaid into the mix isn’t known; it’s possible that the developers were influenced by another hit US film, Splash. Whatever the reason, The Goonies II was an enjoyable game, even if it did suffer from an affliction often seen in 1980s adventures ā some of its puzzles were so wilfully obscure that they seemed calculatedly designed to force players into buying a guidebook to solve them.
Despite this, The Goonies II at least allowed fans of the film to enjoy one further adventure with Astoria, Oregon’s most famous gang of scruffy youths. Thirty-five years on, and Warner Bros may finally get around to making a live-action sequel, perhaps bolstered by the renewed stardom of Ke Huy Quan, who played Data in the first film.
If it does finally happen, though, we’d be highly surprised if the plot revolves around a mermaid named Annie…