8 Video Game Movie Adaptations That Were Better Than We Remember
It's almost as good as the movie!
Video game adaptations of movies already face a strange challenge the moment they are released and out on the shelves. On the one hand, they're attached to a possibly successful and entertaining movie and as such, any ancillary connection to the film should be an added bonus. Right?
But on the other hand, development for video games and films don't have the same length of time and as such we get a sense that the video game equivalents are churned and spat out somewhat too hastily, and the end result can often be a distorted offspring of the source material and failed creative improvisation.
A game based on a film with six action sequences sounds like a good idea, but that is fundamentally six levels to pass the time. So developers twist and change the narrative of what they're creating to fill in the blanks and dramatize additional moments. The end result can sometimes be a deformed embarrassment, and with that we feel ashamed to have given the game the benefit of the doubt in the first place.
But there are some games that break through the mold. They are the games that encapsulate the fun and joy we get watching a film and carefully translate it into the video game structure. In this list, we'll take a look at some video games from the past that were based off films. While we don't give them much praise now, they were objectively fun and well-crafted adaptations of their source material.
8. The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Sega Megadrive)
With the exception of the LEGO adaptations, many of the Jurassic Park games haven't exactly snared audience fandom as well as they should have. For a franchise of films as universally applauded (or at least Steven Spielberg's films), the source material was rife with potential to be adapted into an exciting video game.
The Lost World: Jurassic Park on the Sega Mega Drive wouldn't stand out today in terms of creativity, but at the time of its release the game worked well with what it had in terms of the capabilities of SEGA's hardware.
Outside of roaming round the island of Isla Sorna and fending off a varied number of recognisable dinosaurs, the game also asked players to engage in interesting third-person rail-shooter mods against T-Rex' or Mosasaurus' as part of mini boss-battles.
Were this concept re-made today with modern graphics, it could stand a chance at being a standout game to play.