LJN Ltd.

Background

LJN was a toy and video game company founded in 1970 by Jack Friedman. The name comes from the initials of its sales representative Lewis J. Norman, the reverse of Norman J. Lewis. In 1985, MCA bought LJN, and began publishing games for the NES in 1987, a majority of which were notoriously low quality, some of them being named the worst video games ever. In 1990, LJN was sold to Acclaim Entertainment, and was eventually dissolved by them in 1994, along with other Acclaim labels (Flying Edge and Arena Entertainment). They made a brief in-name only return in 2000 when Acclaim used the brand to publish the Dreamcast port of Spirit of Speed 1937 (fitting, considering that game's poor reception).

1st Logo (1987-1990)

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Nicknames: "The Rainbow", "LJN Rainbow"

Logo: We see the words "Ljn LTD.", with a weird-looking rainbow behind it. "PRESENTS" is sometimes shown below.

FX/SFX: None.

Music/Sounds: None, or the opening theme of the game.

Availability: Seen on early games made and/or published by LJN.

Editor's Note: Not a bad logo by any means, but it is notorious among the gaming community, mainly for the quality of games that it appears on.

2nd Logo (1991-1995, June 27, 2000)

Nicknames: "The Rainbow II", "LJN Rainbow II", "The Spinning Rainbow"

Logo: We see the LJN logo with just the text on a black background. Then, a rainbow of colors swirls around it once, forming the finished logo.

Variants:

• Sometimes, the logo is still, and sometimes has "PRESENTS" written below.
• The Game Boy version has a much smaller "rainbow" of only 4 segments, "LTD" added near it, and is in black and white on a white background, but when played on the Super Game Boy or any other of Nintendo's color handhelds, the logo is "colorized", with the rainbow in red, orange, and yellow.
• On Terminator 2: Judgement Day and Spider-Man 3 for Game Boy, the logo is inside a black square on a white background.
• On NBA: All Star Challenge for the SNES, the animation is more fluid.
• On Spider-Man: The Animated Series for the SNES, the logo is on a blue spider web background. Plus, the "Ljn" text isn't centered right.
• On Spider-Man & Venom - Maximum Carnage for the SNES, the logo is on a dark red background. The Genesis version has it on a white background.

FX/SFX: The rainbow. Sometimes, none.

Music/Sounds: A mystical chime sound, though sometimes silent or the opening theme of the game.

Availability: Seen on games made and/or published by LJN. A few titles with this include Warlock, Terminator 2: Judgement Day and True Lies for the SNES. Also appears on Spirit of Speed 1937.

Editor's Note: Same as above.