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Movie-Licensed Games That Might Not Suck
Thanks to GameSpot for their new mini-feature discussing movie licenses that might actually make decent games, as opposed to "every big-budget blockbuster getting a cheap and dirty game that is less a game and more a lackluster piece of promotional material." The suggested movies include Run Lola Run as a game "with hundreds of available outcomes", Battle Royale as a "twisted and sadistic" action title, and Fletch with "a Max Payne style of narration.. to represent Fletch's internal dialogue." But, the big question - do Slashdot Games readers have any better suggestions?
I always thought that the movie 'Blade Runner' (one of my personal all-time favorites played exactly like a video game. It has some normal movie (typical gameplay) that leads up to a boss. Then it has more typical gameplay, which goes to another boss. I dunno, just a thought. Good movie though.
You could try to prevent your character from ending up as the butt of many jokes, choose not to be in a TMNT movie, something..
"Windows Me offers tremendous reliability and stability improvements..." -- Paul Thurott
Making movies from licenses from good movies isn't necessarily hard. I think the main factor in explaining why almost all movie licenses suck is that most movie-licensed games must be released, ready or not, at the same time as their respective movies. Add to that the fact that the production cycle of a typical movie is shorter than that of the average game, and you have a recipe for disaster that smells vaguely like most of what Acclaim releases.
There's no reason that licensed games have to suck. Some don't. (Goldeneye was released years after its movie counterpart, and didn't really have a strict deadline to meet.) It's just that rushed games tend to suck.
Producing a good game nowadays requires more time and money than most licensors realize. When licensed games are treated less as a marketing tie-in and more as separate entities, their quality will improve dramatically.
and its called /.
I can see it now. Irwin falls over with catastrophic results during random points in the game.
This sig no verb.
That Two Towers game was a blast. I'm looking forward to the Return of the King game with two player play, more characters and whatever else they pack into it. Fun.
I'd like to see a Fight Club or Big Trouble In Little China game. Just to see what they'd do with them.
After reading the english translation of the original book, I've had wet dreams about making a Battle Royale mod. Plenty of weapons (guns and melee, but limited ammo and disarm abilities), 10 seconds between each characters spawn, 3 minutes without a kill = death for everyone (mirroring the book instead of the movie). Sounds like a fun game for LAN parties... Too bad I don't have any coding skills.
Star Wars Episode I: Racer was more fun than the movie - while it lasted (which was not very long, especially if you weren't on a good LAN to play multiplayer on). In fact, Racer was the game which finally convinced me to get a video card with 3d acceleration.
Just set a ground rule: don't start development of the game until the movie is already done its theatre run, gone to rental, gone to Wal-Mart purchase, and been shown on normal broadcast TV.
By then, the biggest factors that work to make a movie game SUCK are gone:
1) the movie is finished, and the game cannot increase hype for the movie, therefore there is no reason to rush or cut corners. There is no pressure to get the thing out the door before the movie is out.
2) the movie is finished, and therefore the movie's name on the box won't be enough to sell the game. Thus the game will actually have to be good on its own merits.
It isn't a guarantee of success, but it sure helps avoid failure.
Why no, I don't know what I'm talking about. Why do you ask?
Co-founder of GerbilMechs
I think The Ass Collector would make a great game. Just imagine being Rocco, running around and collecting ass. They could even make it a MMORPG.
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Personally, i feel the the tomb raider video game has really lived up to the standards set by the movie......
I hate my sig
A game based on "The Bad Lieutenant" ?
Brrrr
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
If you include all licensed franchises, Golden Eye was great, the various X-Wing/Tie Fighter series games were golden. TMNT/GI Joe in the arcade as well.
To completely buck the CW, on a lark I rented Enter The Matrix the other day. I avoided it because of the bad reviews. I shouldn't have. Quite frankly, it is one of the best pure action games I've played in a long time. The good action game has pretty much died in the 3d era..it's good to have a fun one to play. The camera does suck sometimes, but it's not the worst I've seen. The driving stages are somewhat cheap, but they as well are fun. The game on hard is somewhat short, but provides a refreshing skill based challenge...something I havn't had in a long time.
I get the feeling people just expected more from it. I expected a simple beat-em-up with some cool cutscenes. I got what I was looking for. (And more, to be honest.)
How about Repoman? think about it...
GTA style controls, you go around and reposses cars, people shoot at you, you get a 1-up for every 100 pine air freshners you grab.
They wouldn't even have to make the game good, all they need to do is include a few hits of acid with it and nobody will know the difference...
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
I hope the new Terminator-franchise game will be as good as the classic Terminator: Future Shock (which was one of the few games that actually gave me the creeps while playing, btw).
// fixxxer
Screenshots look promising. It's a good thing the movie is already out, so there's no pressure on the development team. This may help them accomplish most of what's in the press release, at least...
I guess only time will tell, but I actually set my hopes high on this one.
This signature is only a product of your imagination. It is not real.
Maybe it has and I missed it.
A strategy one player game where you are the
President of the USA. I shouldn't have to go
into to much more detail. You can imagine how
cool it could be made. Imagine an online version
where you have to compete with others and run
a full campaign. It would be the same type of deal
where college kids and unemployed people would have
a lot more time to campaign, but it could still
be made very cool. Taking your country to the
brink of war and back. Consulting with FBI and
other sources on threat issues. Handling the
media and the spin and the lobbyists and
vetoing things. People like a game where they play
a powerful character. How about the most powerful
man in the free world?
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Bzzzt, sorry try again. The game is being made to capitalize on the hype surrounding the movie. The amount of money spent on developing the game gets a miniscule return (if any) in advertising for the movie, and any company that is investing the money with that expectation is bound for disapointment.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
Apparently it's "abandonware" and can be downloaded
for free from HERE.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.
Drunken Master. Learn Kung-fu. Get money and hire a master. Fight battles. Master drunken fighting and other forms. It seems to really lend itself to a good game.
Spaceballs, the Video Game. Play the game as Lone Star, dodging Dark Helmet.
Yellow Submarine. Avoid the Blue Meanies. Get the Beatles. Save Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Highlander. Battle through the ages taking the heads of immortals.
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. A game has already been made, but a totally cool game could be made with lots of cool graphics.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
If you include all licensed franchises, Golden Eye was great, the various X-Wing/Tie Fighter series games were golden. TMNT/GI Joe in the arcade as well.
To pick a nit, I'd submit there's a major difference between movie license and franchise license. Of the games you list, the only one that might be considered truly movie licensed is Golden Eye, and given the enduring popularity of the James Bond franchise, even that is stretching it.
X-Wing and Tie Fighter were emphatically not movie licensed; there isn't a Star Wars movie five years either side of the original X-Wing (maybe more, I'm being conservative). GI Joe was popular for decades. I don't recall if TMNT had any movie-specific games, but it did have a lot of non-movie specific games.
Now, this is a Star Wars movie-licensed game. It is not immune to licensing crapiness.
Actually, Star Wars does have one of the few truly movie-based games that I did not read uniformly bad things about, and that was the Pod Racer games. Still, an exception does not a trend make.
Anyways, just a little nit, but when seen this way, the movie license sucks trend holds very strongly, whereas franchise licenses sometimes work out OK. (The best Star Trek games were set in the Original Series universe, 20-25+ years after the show went off the air, for instance.)
Does anybody think of a movie based on a game that doesn't suck? At the moment the only game adaptations I can think of are Wing Commander, Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat, and, well, none of those qualify :)
I'm a sucker for movies about smooth gangster types. I think they would make some wicked games too (obviously, kind of what GTA is). There need to be games loosely based on Reservoir Dogs, or The Usual Suspects, or even Killing Zoe (anyone else see that movie? Tarantino did a good job, I think). Heck, maybe I'll get lucky and they'll make a new movie for Tarantino's new movie, Kill Bill. Sorry, almost a shameless plug!
http://goldysmom.blogspot.com
They make you install nasty spyware that modifies your hosts file to display ads.
The Running Man..
If you've lost your faith in movie-game ports go BUY Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic RIGHT NOW. This is literally one of the greatest games that I have ever played. How many games have made you yearn to play through it a second and third time before you're even half-finished with your first?
My advice: Don't rent. Buy! Now! Go!
Although... funny story... I didn't get my name from the movie. It's stil good though, and I gotta stick up for my name.
It's not stupid. It's advanced.
We say this only because everyone we know that plays EverQuest, etc.. is a pot smoking, drunk, unemployed loser. It's so perfect. People online bickering over rare creedence bootlegs and attacking with +5 ferrets. Ahhhh.
Play the "ARE YOU LOOKIN AT MY EYE?!?!" mini-game!
Get help from the Eeeeeeeedians!
Fight ze Trappers!
Consume Human Flesh!
But who reading games.slashdot.org wouldn't like to see a decent Matrix video game? If ETM didn't suck so horribly it would've been great (yeah, that last sentence sounds real intelligent I'm sure). The game concept was there, everything else just wasn't. Numerous graphical problems, engine incapabilities, video playback problems, platform inconsistencies, and stability issues really hurt the game from being a real hit. I enjoyed some parts of the game, but others made me pound my head against the wall. It's a shame that I walked away from this one with an unfavorable opinion because I absolutely loved the movies and really had some high hopes for this game.
Now, there's a real chance the upcoming MMO matrix game will have some potential, but it's still got some issues I'm waiting to see worked out. I really would be interested in seeing how they'd work out the story line; Who would want to be just another mindless drone in the game world? How would they incorporate cool bullet dodging abilities in a multiplayer game (Max Payne surely wasn't only a single player game because it told a cool story)? If Neo was supposedly "the One," how can the game actually play through with only one person truly able to exploit the matrix to it's fullest? If the game more takes place in Zion rather than in the matrix itself, how can they possibly work out an interesting game environment? I'm holding out on this one until I see some actual game-play for myself. I don't want to fall into thinking yet another Matrix game sucks because of technicalities. These guys really have a high standard to try to live up to, but if they can make the technical issues work out and have an interesting story line to it, they'll have an excellent game.
Tron!
Oh wait....
Seems like a natural. Lots of zombies to kill. The players goal could simply be to survive until the virus runs its course.
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
From firearms to facials, aromatherapy to assassinations, Beaches: the First Person Shooter could have it all. Using the Soldier of Fortune II engine with advanced sound features from Undying (to catch not only the hiss of flying lead but also the spirit-lifting cuts from the soundtrack), the game could begin in mid-70's New York, C.C. Bloom and Hillary Whitney having recently moved into a low rent New York apartment and begun to work on their careers.
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
so far based on the MP demo its very good. Cant wait for the Full version on august 27th.
I think we all know that Atari's E.T. pretty much started the whole "movie licensed games are horrible" adage. With over 2 million E.T. games having to be burried underground, it's a wonder the trend continued through the NES all the way up to the 4 generation consoles of today.
In any case, there are some good movie licensed games out there. However, I have yet to play one game that was made especially for a movie that introduced innovative concepts, gameplay, or level design. I think if a developer/ publisher really wants to debunk the myths of movie licensed games, they need to create something a bit more risky than the average platformer/ shooter/ racer.
The heyday of the movie game IMO was the 8-bit era, bleeding slightly into 16-bit. The Spectrum/Timex and C64 saw some great tie-ins (for the time):
...and many more efforts from Ocean and the likes. Wasn't there a Home Alone game on the NES/SNES? I don't see how that could have failed, either.
Short Circuit - where you had to use hacked CCTV cameras to plan your route; a proto-stealth title.
Cobra - the Stallone movie. A simple side-on shooter, very hard without being unfair.
Alien / Aliens - the first was a fairly abstract team-based game using a top-down plan on the Nostromo - like seeing the tracking system used when the captain gets killed in the vents. Motion tracker, flamethrower, the cat - they were all in there. Tension was way high, death was way swift. Don't think I ever finished it, but I kept going back. Aliens was an 8-bit FPS which derived most of its tension from having to slowly turn around and check each room. Single colour graphics on the Spectrum helped no end.
Robocop - a great side-on shooter with multi-angle shooting (forcing you to keep an eye on windows and doors all over the screen), ED-209 showdowns and baby food power-ups.
Goonies - a turly wonderful single-screen puzzle-solving game, like a computerised Mousetrap in some ways - requiring wacky physics-based solutions - or else depending on clever team co-ordination.
Quite a few films could make good games, and it doesn't really matter if the film was good or not, as long as it contained that one good idea.
Pitch Black could make a great survival horror type game, and I would have loved to have seen a point'n'click adventure like Dark City, or maybe any Jackie Chan film being made into an update of the classic scrolling beat'em'up (ala Double Dragon)
City of The Lost Children? Older game based on a surreal french movie which didn't get too much exposure. The game was actually excellent for its time and managed to capture the feel and mood of the movie quite well. One of the few movie based games which was actually like the movie.
Golden Eye is still the best game-movie (movie-game?) made, ever. It's amazing how well Rare Ware hit the nail when it came to fun factor in the game. I've always tried to figure out what made the game so fun, but I've never found out. I mean, by todays standards the game is so limiting! No jumping, small levels, little interaction... What could possibly make the game fun? Was it the "realistic" weapons? I tried Perfect Dark, but it just didn't appeal to me for some reason. I guess much of the fun had to do with James Bond himself... and the music of course!
What's so bad about being lazy? What if there was a war and nobody showed up?
1) Legend
The most underrated fantasy film ever. Great RPG opps.
2) @))!, I mean 2001...maybe. maybe better make it the next one Dave. 3) Ran, by Kurosawa
Everybody loves Samurai. and its Shakespeare too. Lots of political intrigue.
Now the good stuff: books and radio plays:
4) Ruby the Galactic Gumshoe.
A radio play that doesn't suck. at www.zbs.org Listen to Ruby 1. Its a cyberpunkish radio play.
5)Snow Crash
6) Neuromancer
7)Memory,Sorrow, Thorn
8)and of course, the Foundation series.
Logic, macros, and more
I think this might make a good action/RPG style game. It's got unrealistic fighting, magic and powerups built into the movie. The game practically writes itself! And as a bonus, you could probably get all the original actors for the voices, except maybe Kim Cattral.
"The Untouchables" would make a great video game.
It would be sweet to be able to play on either side as Elliott Ness or Al Capone.
I actually loved the home alone NES game. You had to run around and pick up/set traps in a house while two goons chase you for 15 minutes until the police get there. I never beat it though...but it will make you paranoid as all getout from all that running...oh yeah...and you can hide behind furnature and the like.
I've noticed that video games specifically based on a movie usually suck unless they have nothing to do with the movie whatsoever. I like the Alien 3 game for SNES was great because there were so many aliens to slaughter as opposed to the movie having one alien and no guns.
Although can't knock the relationship between movies and games. Movies certainly have had a great impact on gaming. This rarely comes from a game with a movie license but certainly it does happen. The Matrix was undoubtedly the source of bullet-time in Max Payne. Special effects in movies certainly raise the bar for graphics in games. I'd think of more examples but no one reads slashdot anyway. (obvious sarcasm for all you oblivious types)
How about games made from book licenses? I think there's more untapped potential there. It leaves more to the developers' imaginations, gives them more creative license. In particular, a MMORPG based on Terry Pratchett's Discworld would be awesome. I know there is one out there, but with a concurrent user limit of 300, I'm not sure it woudl qualify as an MMORPG. A higher tech commercial offereing would be pretty sweet. That's one I would be willing to plunk down $10 a month for.
While Requiem for a Dream would make for an interesting drug-related game experience, I'd have to argue that Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas would have the greater potential to leave a mark on the video game industry as a unique gaming experience and a well-needed break from the norm.
Why settle for one addiction when you can have twenty? The ideas of drug experimentation and mixing alone would make for a unique gaming experience (with pretty colors and oodles of famous quotes). Graphics designers could go wild, especially when the hallucinations and paranoia start setting in....
As for plot, a straight adaptation of the screenplay wouldn't make for much of a game. However, basing an open-ended exploration/adventure in the weird and wild world of Las Vegas could do it. With at least the movie-featured locations of bars, casinos, and carnivals the possibilities for character-environment interaction would be high.
Potential ESRB Rating? Definitely at least Mature. Exploring the darker side of human emotion and the world as seen through Mescaline-tinted glasses would hardly qualify for a children's game. In fact, checking out the ESRB site I spot at least 12 remarks that would fit including "Use of Drugs", "Strong Language", and "Mature Humor".
Would anyone buy it? I'm not sure. I know I would....
Misery loves company. Online misery loves unsuspecting random strangers.
I always thought this would make a great game. One player takes the role of the humans trapped in the house. The other takes the role of the zombies outside. Set it up like an overhead RTS but without any resources to gather. The only goal is that the humans have to survive until daylight or, if you are the zombies, kill everyone. The humans are quick and armed but can suffer from low moral and can be infected. The zombies are slow and stupid but you get A LOT of them. You would have to spruce it up with different units for both sides so that different tactics could be employeed: fresher zombies are faster, some of the humans are sharpshooters, etc.
REALLY old Stallone movie. Would make a great game.
Oh wait, they did that already in spirit but not name. (Carmageddon).
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I know I'm going back some years...but I'd like to "bop my way all the way back to Coney!"
No...it's okay...I wasn't using my Civil Liberties anyway
I think a cell-style animation game based on Cowboy Bebop universe would be pretty interesting. There are lots of possibilities from running single missions (like the episodes) or the more involved plot lines of the last episodes of the latter DVDs.
Give the player the ability to switch between characters so that while Ed and Ein are hacking, Faye and Spike can be off hunting, while Jet is off getting information from his sources. Maybe a mix of RTS and FPS.
If they can pull off a real-time 2-D cell animated look so it looked like the anime, then I think it wouldn't suck.
well, not memento per se, but the style of storytelling would make a great game.
se7en as detectiv story (ether adenture or as abtion-adventure) same for the bone collector.
and a desperado-fps:P
All depends of what you want about in a video-game inspired movie, especially considering that it is very hard to fit all the "what-if" complexities of a video game in a 2-hour movie.
I only expect one of two things from a videogame movie, e.g. either:
A - the movie is faithful to its origins, even if it sucks if you don't know the game (Wing Commander is a good example, so I don't consider it to be so bad).
B - the movie stands on its own merits but maybe alienates the hard-core fans.
Sometimes you can get both. Resident Evil kind of met both requirements. On the other hand, Street Fighter, Mario, and MK Annihilation completely sucked because they did not even stick to the original story from the game, thereby failing to meet any of the two criteria!
The ENIAC Demo Competition
tango & cash, the cube, the fast and the furious (specially that one) they already look and sound like games without being one.
Anyway here are some movies that will really make cool games.
*The cube. (survival horror using math as puzzles!?)
*The fighting club (that was obvious!)
*Oceans eleven (a team of yours must plan how to do a perfect heist and execute it)
*Mad max (the did it partially as the twisted metal series)
*Braveheart (they did it partially in age of empires)
*Blade runner.
He gets shot at the end by the dumb white sheriff.
...as an MMORPG. You can side with Humungous and his gas-hungry freaks, or protect the innocent, who retain control of the guzzoline refinement plants. The game would include vehicular combat (cars, trucks, trains and gyros) and hand to hand (guns, stabbing weapons and boomerangs). Characters can keep pets, build boobytraps to protect their vehicles and homes and practice fighting in the Thunderdome. Best of all, there will be only one V8 Interceptor.
keep bernie alive!
or dead, but in one piece.
Jet Li's "The One" would make a great game. Seriously, it writes itself. You jump around between alternative realities getting stronger as you kill your counterpart in each universe. It ends with a big fight between you and your last remaining (now fantastically powerful) other-self. Plus character design would be a sinch ;-).
Why is anything anything?
The only movie based games that don't suck ass have to be games that had nothing to do with movies in the first place. Take top gun for the nes: The only thing it had to do with movie was the theam song at the begining of the game. The rest was pure sorta 3d flight sim/fighter jet game that is all about killing planes and blowing up other stuff like russian space shuttles. It was the best flight sim game for the NES hands down.
It could be hard making a figthing game, where you have to fight yourself.
I was thinking about a Battle Royale game myself just last night.
...One of my personal favorite moments in the manga where Mitsuko is embracing a crying Megumi, telling her that they are friends now - and then slicing her throat with a sickle. There would definitely be a capability in the world for moments like this...
The conclusion I reached was that it would work a lot better as a MMOG - and here's how it would work:
Instead of having persistent servers, each server would have a life of three game days or up to an hour after there was only one survivor. (The last hour would be for participants to talk about the game that just happened, swap strategies, congratulate, etc.) Afterwards, the server would return to a "waiting" state until it had another 40 players.
The environments would have to be wide so that games didn't last all of 30 minutes. Of course, new islands would be involved, and maybe even vast indoor complexes (Alcatraz, anyone? Or maybe the island in Battle Royale II?)
The game would keep track of how many BRs your character had won. There would probably be a limit on how many students each user account could have.
Combat would be real-time, and for realism's sake most hits would kill. Wounds would have the capacity to be fixed up or if left unchecked would eventually kill the afflicted. There would be both voice communication and text communication - but only people close enough could hear you. Stealth would probably be important, as would the ability to decieve others
--Moo.