Video Games

Let’s Talk Wii.

By Player 2 ⋅ April 22, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment

I’ve noticed a couple of things over my 23 years on this planet. The first is that video games based off of movies or TV shows usually suck pretty bad. By the time i was old enough to pick up a controller and play my Dad’s NES, I had my choice of Zelda, Mario, American Gladiators, or Goonies…Oh, and Duck Hunt. Well, as much as I loved to watch Goonies and as much as I enjoyed watching a bunch of juiced post-high-school bullies pummel opponents with the latest in Nerf inspired weaponry, I could never quite master the games.

Looking back today, it wasn’t I that was the problem. 

I also remember the day I learned another valuable lesion. The year was 1993 and the Super Mario Brothers movie had just come out. Fast forward about 3 hours to find me dissatisfied, disappointed, and disgusted.

Again and again, bad games came out based on movies and bad movies came out based on games. What was going wrong? Why couldn’t Hollywood get it right?

Well, let’s look at Super Mario Brothers, since it’s pretty much the biggest target. The games were all a giant success, even Super Mario Brothers 2, which wasn’t quite right.  But putting the face of Nintendo on the big screen? Live action?! With John Leguizamo?! Where did the movie go wrong?

Well, the truth is that the movie went wrong where many movies went wrong: It strayed away from the game far too much. The same problem happened with the Ninja Turtles movies and some other comic book movies, where you walk into the movie thinking “Oh man! I can’t wait to see all my favorite characters!” And you leave thinking “WTF?” Just like that. In all caps.

I still haven’t forgiven the Mario movie. It was a horrible piece of garbage. The Goombas were dinosaurs? They didn’t even look cool. And seriously, Daisey as a main character over Peach? And what was going on with that slime? Was there ever any slime in Mario? Was there ever a discussion about evolution? Anything about alternate dimensions and worm holes? No. But it seemed to the producers of the Mario movie that making a movie out of a video game is a free license to do what ever the hell you want.

Now, this might be true with older video games like Pitfall, or Frogger because they don’t have any kind of story-line. But most games have something to go off of.  Even Pac-Man had those awesome little intermissions.  Mario’s story was a little weak. Save the princess doesn’t always translate into an epic blockbuster. But why demolish the entire Mario universe? Why change the Goombas so much? Or why make Bowser a real guy and not at the very least a monster of sorts?

By destroying the foundation provided by the games, the movie makers end up with a jumbled mess of a movie with familiar names of characters and places that look nothing and act nothing like they originally did. Why not look at what is given to the story already and build on top of it?

I don’t know.

Anyway, the movie that I had the highest hopes for, and the movie that I thought would redeem the video game/movie cross over was Resident Evil. Now, I’m not going to get into that here, but it was a massive failure. The worst part is, some people who played the game actually liked it. Farts to them. All of them. They’re wrong. So wrong, in fact, they’re stupid for even bringing up the thought.

Check out my next blog for more details on why the Resident Evil movie blew hard, in case you didn’t know already.

I just want to close this blog by talking a little bit about video games based off movies. These are really insane when you think about it. Often time movie studios will demand the game be released in conjunction with the movie, like a certain amount of days before or after the release in theaters. The problem here is that a game isn’t made like a movie. No one really knows how long it’s going to take. Even the most reliable game developers don’t quite meet their deadlines on a regular basis. So when you go out and pick up a game based off a movie, just remember that it’s been rushed out of the oven and might have some cold spots in there.

That said, this genre of game has moved a long way from Goonies or Rodger Rabbit. I was amazed with the Spider-Man 2 video game. I remember sitting in the theater and turning to my friend Justin about 3 times during the movie and telling him how I “can’t wait to do that in the game.” Well, guess what. I got to do it all in the game. And since there wasn’t enough to make an epic game already in the film, they added some cool stuff. Tons of side missions and extra bosses really added new angles and more bulk to the story.

I’m not saying video games based off movies are all golden. Far from it. Many still have giant problems and horrible issues that make them unplayable. But what I am saying is that there are more fine examples here of how to move from genre to genre than in movies. The Spider-Man 2 game was a prime example.

Imagine if Super Mario built up from the game to make the movie instead of breaking it apart and then gluing in all the pieces they liked with other stuff they just made up out of no where.

God, i hope someone important is reading this.