Robert De Niro Once Produced a Wild Video Game Starring Christopher Reeve and Aerosmith

The Big Picture

• Some classic video games are timeless and endlessly replayable, while others, like
  9: The Last Resort
  , almost disappear from memory.
• Robert De Niro, a legendary actor, also ventured into game development with Tribeca Interactive, creating unique games like 9.
• Despite being obscure,
  9: The Last Resort
  stands out with a star-studded voice cast, surreal visuals, and innovative music-based gameplay.

A truly great video game will never fall out of style. Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Metal Gear Solid, you get the idea. The classics are and always will be endlessly replayable. Meanwhile, modern video game developers will continuously return to and revamp fan favorites in an attempt to educate modern audiences on their greatness. While it can be an easy thing to grow cynical over the constant repackaging of the same old franchises again and again, it’s hard to imagine how far video games might have come without the occasional innovative Grand Theft Auto or Pokémon releases. Some games will never die.

Meanwhile, there are some games that, occasionally, die on arrival. Some releases come along and feel like they never even happened. In this case, 9: The Last Resort would be that game. Now, in theory, this game sounds like one hell of a ride. Whether that is a good ride or not, though, is to be determined. It’s produced by Robert De Niro, of all people, and features the voice talents of Christopher Reeve, James Belushi, Cher, Tress McNeille, and even Steven Tyler and Joe Perry. If you’re like us and dying to play that game, the catch is that 9 is difficult to track down. Even a used copy doesn’t tend to go for very cheap. If you are lucky enough to get your hands on a playable copy of 9, get fired up for a super musical, incredibly ’90s, point-and-click adventure game.

Robert De Niro Is an Incredible Actor and… Game Developer?

Robert De Niro is one of the greatest actors of all time. He’s currently up for Best Supporting Actor for his work on Killers of the Flower Moon, but his career stretches back much further than this recent performance. How many other performers can claim to have done as much significant work as De Niro, across just as many decades? He’s worked with many of the greatest filmmakers of the last 50 years (his collaborations with Martin Scorsese being the chief among them), has been nominated for nine Academy Awards, and even faced off against Greg Focker. I mean, what else does a man need to have accomplished in his career to prove to people that he’s a legend? De Niro is just the greatest!

Apparently, being one of the greatest actors of all time just wasn’t enough for Mr. De Niro. Instead of leaving things at that, the screen legend went on to found Tribeca Interactive. Okay, so he kick-started another Tribeca-related endeavor. What gives? Well, this wing in particular was created with the intention of developing video games. These video games weren’t just going to be mindless, top-down button mashers, though. These games, like 9, were going to immerse you into their worlds.

‘9: The Last Resort’ is One of the Strangest Video Games of the 1990s

In a 1990s news interview, De Niro explained what Tribeca Interactive’s method of storytelling would be able to bring to the table, saying, “Now, see, a movie, that’s all backstory that’s behind what’s going on. And you show some things in the film, of course, but… this, you show so many different sides of one situation, one character, one… whatever.” De Niro seemed eager to explore the possibilities in character depth that video games could provide. His enthusiasm and ambition are admirable, but 9: The Last Resort‘s story isn’t exactly the richest text.

The story centers around a character who has inherited an uninhabitable hotel from their deceased uncle, Thurston Last (voiced by Christopher Reeve). The establishment is supposedly inhabited by nine (count ’em!) muses and is only made to be more of a shady environment due to the presence of threatening squatters that are known as the Toxic Twins. Thankfully, a very small man, Salty (modeled after and voiced by James Belushi), in an impressively small airplane, flies around with you as you walk around the hotel with the mission of restoring a machine called “The Muse Machine” so that the Toxic Twins may be banished.

‘9: The Last Resort’ is Better Than You Might Expect It to Be

So, while it’s not exactly one of the works of William Shakespeare, I’d be lying if I said 9 doesn’t sound like a decently fun point-and-click adventure game. These were a dime-a-dozen by the mid-’90s, so obviously not every one of them could be massively popular, but at least it doesn’t look like the point-and-click equivalent of a torture device or anything. Three major things help 9 stand out, though. One quickly becomes incredibly apparent after firing the game up. The voice cast in this game is massive, and it isn’t trying to hide things either. Aside from James Belushi, Steven Tyler and Joe Perry from Aerosmith are featured the most prominently out of everyone. That doesn’t stop other big names like Cher, Tress McNeille, and Ellen DeGeneres from joining the show.

Another huge plus about playing 9 is getting to soak up the visuals that its world provides. For the most part, The Last Resort takes its visual style and overall artwork from the famous pop-surrealist Mark Ryden. This game is an eccentric trip. Ryden’s designs bring a warped, almost nightmarish feeling to the world, even though this isn’t a horror game. The now primitive video game graphics also add to this bizarre look, and give it the kind of charm that can unfortunately only come with hindsight. People in the 90s may have been turned off by this game’s aesthetic, but these days, it’s fun to look back on how 90s-core 9: The Last Resort is.

This game also comes with a pretty fun approach to gameplay. Many approaches to gameplay mechanics often get interchanged between various games, which can sometimes get repetitive, and is often the case with first-person shooters. However, 9is a puzzle-based gamethat subverts its genre by incorporating music into its challenges. Most of this comes from Aerosmith, and centers around particular instruments. You then use an organ to play musical codes, which are learned from pieces of paper found on different floors of the hotel and become progressively more challenging. The musical codes must be jointly played by the end of the game, but by then, the player should be fairly familiar with the various parts. 9: The Last Resort might not have the most engrossing narrative that you’ll ever play, but not many games have the distinct mechanics that Tribeca Interactive brought to the industry.

Unfortunately, 9: The Last Resort didn’t sell well enough for Tribeca Interactive to continue running shop. This was a complete one-off for De Niro, never to return to developing video games again. It can be a bit fun to bag on weird releases like 9 for being so strange and obscure, but honestly, this was an impressive and creative swing by De Niro and his team. These sorts of big swing practices should be attempted more often by artists. Art always has to be somewhat risky to be worth it. Frankly, as strange as 9 may have been, if you’re not getting “out there,” can an artist truly call themselves creative?