Someone sent me a bunch of new screens for Murder, She Wrote 2 the other day. Some people (including my wife) thought I was joking when I tweeted it. Nope.

Behold! Digital Angela Lansbury!

Hundreds dead. One common denominator. Just sayin'.

And it looks like that's the only art asset developer Legacy Interactive created for dear ol' mystery writer/super-sleuth Jessica Fletcher, unless you also count the smeary orange back of her head. But the real mystery here doesn't revolve around whomever's snuffed it lately in Ms. Fletcher's general vicinity, but rather who might be the audience for this game.

Because I've got to tell you, not every red-hot license is actually worth pursuing. At least, not for video-game purposes. Want examples? Oh man, where to start....

Lost

Or, to put it another way, any serialized drama with a huge cast of characters and an iron-clad continuity. Alias, The Shield, The Sopranos, or Prison Break (all of which also got the forgettable game treatment) might offer some leeway, but setting a side-story in the Lostiverse guarantees you'll never do anything of consequence. Why? Because you'll play as one of the nobody survivors in the background...shmucks who spend their time wandering the beach, drinking sea water, and masturbating while the important people are shot at, chased by polar bears, and semi-solve the important mysteries.

Besides, knowing what we know now, who wouldn't totally blow off any stupid hatch shenanigans and go looking for a stupid glowing river tunnel? Game over in ten minutes flat. Minus the bonus mission where you jump over a DHARMA-branded shark on Kate's motorcycle.

Law & Order

Procedural cops shows are America's comfort food. I've met and talked to Law & Order producers, and if you pick a number between 1 and 60, they can tell you exactly what's happening at that moment in the plot. I'm not exaggerating. They've locked the formula down that tightly. Fans know those rhythms on an instinctive level, and that's exactly the kind of pacing you can't port over to a video game.

Players point and click at their own speed, and inevitably, they click on unnecessary things...i.e. stuff that wastes time. A good procedural doesn't allow any such fat. Law & Order rarely even admits its characters exist outside of their jobs or say anything unrelated to their casework. It skips over the boring stuff. The games can't, because that nitty-gritty detail is the gameplay, red herrings, dead ends, and all. Anyway, ignoring the lack of replayability, you can watch your pick of three L&O repeats on three different channels at any given moment of the day. Just throw one on and pretend you've set the difficulty to "coma victim."

Farscape

I love Farscape (and if you haven't had the pleasure, the complete series is streaming on Netflix), but I hereby forbid humanity to even consider making another Farscape video game. In order to capture the copious sex, drugs, violence, and assorted bodily fluids that permeate every episode, you'd need something on the order of a Mass Effect. Not, as developed by Red Lemon Studios, a cheap, isometric shooter that cut out the majority of the cast and all their snarky dialogue. I don't know who said, "Yeah, we can get away with only using two of the six characters," but we can immediately fire him from his next three jobs in anticipation of similar bonehead moves.

C'mon. Beyond the sex, drugs, violence, and fluids, Farscape's a show where your merry crew all hated each other until a good 18 episodes in, and didn't let anyone's failings slide for the next 70. Without those big personalities clashing into each other, you might as well strap in, Clockwork Orange-style, for a week-long Star Trek: Voyager marathon. Because it ain't Farscape.

Go Diego Go!

Yes, this smacks of using the United States Marines to abuse a handful of pissy 5th graders, but I simply must single out this meth-soaked example from the rancid, kidsploitation pack. Go Diego Go!, a Dora the Explorer spinoff, casts Diego as an animal rescuer in a fantasy world where anything goes -- talking animals, magic drums, morphing clothes -- if it fills two minutes of air time. Picture Alice in Wonderland turned into a squeaky-clean morality tale by writers on the same substance-abusing binge Lewis Caroll employed.

But here's the thing. Diego and his cronies encourage their elementary-school viewers to run, jump, or flap their arms to mimic on-screen action. Go Diego Go! Safari Rescue for the Nintendo Wii incorporates that same running, jumping, and flapping, only your wallet's $20 lighter and your self respect has gone away. No other differences exists. The mere existence of this game makes me not simply want to shoot myself in the head, but to empty the entire clip.

Every sitcom ever made

Remember that episode of Home Improvement where Tim the Tool Guy hunted down his missing tools on Danger Island and shot scores of fire-breathing dinosaurs with a nail gun?

Right there, in one easy sentence, I just prevented anyone with an I.Q. in the double digits from ever using a sitcom as video-game source material. Doing so requires re-wiring the basic genetic structure of half-hour comedy, starting with the complete removal of the comedy. And yet, somebody decided Monty Python, The Addams Family, The Office, even Gilligan's Island could work in digital form. In fairness, developer Bandai nailed Gilligan by making his computer-controlled A.I. dumber than fried tofu, but a sitcom's goals (make you laugh) just can't gibe with a video game's goals (gather/destroy/traverse). Let's not try to reconcile that. Ever.