Top 10 Lists: The Top 10 Delayed-Release Movie-Based Games

I went back and forth on titles for this list to try to communicate what I mean and never thought of a good one, so let me explain: I'm not talking about games whose initial release dates were pushed back or that went through other production delays. Instead, I'm talking about games that were based on movies, but were not released (or in most cases, even developed) as a movie tie-in. "Delayed" here means that there is a delay between when the movie was released and when the game was released. What we find looking at this is that the list could viably double as a "Top 10 Movie-Based Games" list in general, and with good reason. Movie tie-in games, for the most part, receive their audience from fans of the movie. They are created explicitly to increase the profit gained from the same audience, and themselves are largely only played by the movie's fans. Quality doesn't play into it -- the games rely on the fact that their audience comes from fans of the movie, and thus the chief focus is on minimizing expense to ensure maximal profit. This is why most movie-based games vary from merely mediocre to downright legendary for their awfulness (I'm looking at you, E.T.). That's the reason why delayed-release movie-based games are largely higher-quality -- they don't come out at the same time as the huge movie release, and thus they have to do a much better job of forging their audience themselves. They might find some players strictly from the movie franchise, but largely they must play by the same rules as completely original games to meet success. That's why we find that for the most part, the best movie-based games see a notable (at least two years, for the purpose of this list) gap between the release of the movie and the release of the game. There's no other stand for inclusion on this list -- some games are based on single movies, others on movie series (and one on two), and for others it's arguable if they're really based on the movie at all. They all share one characteristic: at least two years pass between the release of the nearest movie basis for a game and the game itself.

We'll start this list with the near-exceptions, beginning with Batman: Arkham Asylum. The casual gamer, movie-goer and Batman fan will all see this game as a the video game version of Batman Begins or The Dark Knight. That's not the case, however. Arkham Asylum is not based on the more recent Batman movies, but rather both are based on the same source material, leading to the reasonably shared darker portrayal of Batman, the Joker and other characters and aspects of the series. I feel comfortable including the game, though, due to two features: first of all, the relatively close proximity in which Arkham Asylum was released compared to the movies suggests that the game likely would not have existed with its big-screen predecessors, suggesting a certain level of movie-based inspiration. Secondly and more importantly, the relatively similar nature of the atmosphere, characters and back story between the movies and the game suggest that they all exist, along with their comic book source material, within the same area of the Batman universe. But let's face it: there are two real reasons I wanted to include Arkham Asylum on this list. First of all, its overall quality more than makes up for its relative distance from its film basis, but more importantly Arkham Asylum perfectly leads into an overall point I'd like to make about movie-based games that will come up in the list's conclusion.

The Star Wars games based on the original trilogy are truly some of the best movie-based games around -- and certainly the most common. At least a dozen games have been released rehashing the plots of the original movies, and far too many to count have been released based on the series as a whole. The ones mentioned here are merely two of the most well-received games of the huge franchise, but dozens of great games have been released based on the franchise. So why have I ranked this so low, and bunched them all up into one listing? Two reasons, really. First of all, the vast majority of Star Wars games I don't even want to consider because they're based more on the Star Wars universe than any particular movie -- same reason why Arkham Asylum is ranked #10. But there's a more important element at work here: for most of the games listed here, the delay between the movie and the game was a conscious decision by the developer to create a game despite the time passage, even when they would have been capable of making it earlier. It's the last part that bumps these great games down: the delayed-release aspect of these games was based far more on the technological feasibility of the game than a conscious decision. I believe the games were made as soon as the developers were able, and that had the technology been there in 1977, we would've seen the first video game tie-in then instead of 1982. More importantly, how is it that there's no Top 10 Star Wars games list yet? Get on it!

Our last near-exception on this list is the Lord of the Rings online game, first released in 2007, four years after the release of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. I call the game a "near-exception" because as everyone knows, the Lord of the Rings was, in fact, a book first. Three, actually. I feel comfortable including it here because I don't honestly believe there's an argument that the game would exist had it not been preceded by the Lord of the Rings movie franchise. Trust me, I'd like to believe that, if only to make my forthcoming (if I can even complete it) Top 10 Literature-Based Games easier to write -- but I just don't believe that. That aside, Lord of the Rings Online is a great, if largely under-appreciated, MMORPG. It has unfortunately had to live in the shadow of the more-established World of Warcraft in more ways than one with its similar genre and similar atmosphere, but that should not overshadow its quality on its own. Upon its release in 2007 was given quite a grand reception. It won multiple PC Game of the Year awards, and for a brief time was hailed as the MMO that might replace World of Warcraft (something akin to being called "the next Michael Jordan"). There were nearly no unanimous criticisms of the game, it received several ratings over 90%, and was even hailed by the New York Times as the "the future of online entertainment." Time has shown that the game has not quite reached the popularity that one would expect might come with such high praise, but that should not take away from the immense quality that Lord of the Rings Online possesses, or the unique new perspective it gives on a legendary story.

Our last pseudo-exception really isn't an exception at all, but rather is just a very interesting twist on the movie-based game genre in more ways than one. In case you are unaware, Alien vs. Predator is the only game on this list that is actually based on two film franchises. The Alien movie series and Predator movie series had both seen multiple releases in the late 1980s, and the fictional villains from both are merged together in a 1990 comic book. The crossover series truly took off, however, with the release of several Alien vs. Predator video games, highlighted by 1994's Alien vs. Predator for arcades and Alien vs Predator for the Atari Jaguar. The games were among the earliest examples of a first-person shooter (especially for a home console), and elevated the Alien and Predator franchises to the point of becoming nearly synonymous as one fairly cohesive entity. The other aspect that's notable about the Alien vs. Predator game franchise (which, I should note, also had games for the Game Boy and SNES), though, is the way it, in turn, arguably resulted in a movie. In 2004, after a total of ten Alien vs. Predator games had been released, the series that found its origin in combining two film franchises spawned a film of its own in the 20th Century Fox film Alien vs. Predator. Two movie franchises combine to form a great series of games, which in turn spawns another movie franchise. That's just far too interesting an evolution to go unmentioned. Naturally, it would be unfair to leave out the effect of the Alien vs. Predator comic book series, which preceded the video games and formed the actual basis for the movies -- but the high profile of the game series is largely to be credited for the creation and release of the film.

Finally moving on to the games that unarguably fit within this list's description, we arrive at The Matrix: Path of Neo. If this list were ranked purely in terms of outright quality, this would likely be our #10 game, if it made the list at all. However, the game and its release present several very interesting features that warrant its inclusion here, if only for its relevance to the list's theme as a whole. Released in 2005 almost 2 years to the day after the final Matrix movie, The Matrix: Path of Neo was the third game based on the movie franchise. Typically when you hear "third game", it implies that the first two warranted a third, but here that isn't the case: the original game was largely slammed for being unfinished and rushed, while the second, an MMORPG, never found a substantial-enough audience for a variety of reasons. So why was a third game created? In the words of the developer's President, to give "the game that gamers wanted first time around". Unlike the previous two games, Path of Neo lets the player play through the scenes of the movies themselves. This is significant in multiple ways, but mostly, the delayed release of the game gives a very clear picture of how a strictly movie-based game behaves when released apart from its movie tie-in. Enter the Matrix, released alongside the final Matrix movie, sold drastically better than Path of Neo, despite its incredibly poor reviews. Path of Neo wasn't a gem in itself, but it certainly blew its console predecessor away (though not a difficult feat), but without the movie tie-in it largely fell into anonymity with relatively few sales despite at least decent reviews. I include this here to show how movie-based games really do play by the same rules as original games when released without a recent movie tie-in -- and because, frankly, it was a pretty decent game.

Among all games on this list, the movie behind this one is probably least-known. Released in 1982, The Thing was among the first movies to combine the science fiction and horror genres, to... well, a rather horrifyingly gruesome product. Blasted at the time of release, The Thing has found a progressively more receptive audience as time has gone by, likely due the now-outdated and comical special effects. Fast forward 20 years and we find Computer Artworks developing a sequel to the movie. It might seem a bit strange to wait so long to develop a game for a movie that was not that well-received in the first place, but there is a certain pattern of logic to it -- most notably, the strangely increasing popularity of the movie over time led to the game finding a notable-enough cult audience to at least receive initial consideration. From there, the quality of the game took over -- it met quite favorable ratings as an above-average overall game and an interesting take on the shooter/survival-horror genre. The game didn't revolutionize anything, but it did receive above-average reviews and some favorable scores from several sources. The major count against this game, at least as far as this list is concerned, is that it is only very loosely based on the original movie -- analyzed objectively, the movie references could be completely removed from the game without making any practical difference to the gameplay. So why claim a movie basis in the first place? The Thing video game referred back to its movie basis in a much more subtle, intriguing way -- while the game's plot is not tied to the original so closely that the original must be seen to understand the game, it instead invokes many of themes and nuances from the movie. The characters in both face the same trials and fears, except in the game version, it's the player himself that is in the character's shoes, facing those issues first-hand. It's this type of half-literal, half-spiritual succession that makes The Thing quite an intriguing movie-based game.

Our next game on the list is Tron 2.0, which has some really interesting characteristics. But first, let's recap the movie basis for the game. Released in 1982, Tron is the movie to blame for all those gosh darn "computer program becomes sentient and decides to take over the world" movies that have come out since. But the idea was original back then, so we don't judge too harshly. More importantly here, though, is that Tron featured video games quite heavily, and thus spun off several video game tie-ins, based largely on scenes in the movie that strongly lent themselves to simple mini-game style scenarios. Now, fast-forward 21 years and we finally see a sequel to Tron -- but it's not another movie. Instead, it's a video game, published by Monolith Productions of F.E.A.R. and Condemned fame. The game, a first-person shooter, stars the son of the movie's main character's son on a similar quest as a digitized human battling a corrupt computer program. There are two main points of intrigue in Tron 2.0 that really set it apart from the other games listed here. First of all, a natural affordance made by the game is that several nonsensical aspects of other games(namely, the ability to carry an inordinate amount of items at once) is wholly mitigated by the premise of Tron 2.0 taking place in a computer. But secondly and more notably, the inspiration for the game's development came in an opposite fashion from most games: rather than setting out to create a game and then writing its story, the story was written first. Initially it was intended for theatrical production, but the writers determined the script fit the game medium a bit better.

I don't really know why I'm listing these two games together, but something in me said they both deserve inclusion but they aren't quite different enough to deserve two separate spots. Go figure. Scarface: The World Is Yours and The Godfather: The Game are based on -- you guessed it -- Scarface and The Godfather, respectively. The movies, released in 1983 and 1972, both centered around an overall theme of organized crime. The similarities largely stop there, though -- while The Godfather was immediately praised as one of the greatest films ever made, Scarface was largely criticized as overly-violent, only to find popularity later on. The games, on the other hand, exhibit notable similarities. Both are largely sandbox-style games, featuring large, explorable areas, allowances for non-linear gameplay, and very flexible decision schemes. Both games have been labeled (perhaps unfairly) Grand Theft Auto clones, but in reality all three franchises exist within the same, unique new genre. Equally notable, however, is the way that both Scarface and The Godfather brought back notable portions of the original movie casts to reprise their characters in the video game sequels. Scarface includes a modest selection of the original voice actors (as well as an actor chosen specifically by Al Pacino to reprise his character), but what's interesting is that Pacino's visual appearance in the game prevented him from lending his voice to the otherwise-authentic voice cast of The Godfather: The Game, which featured James Caan, Robert Duvall, Abe Vigoda and John Martino in their original roles. Overall, though, Scarface: The World Is Yours and The Godfather: The Game are both worthy sequels to their movie franchises that waited exactly the right amount of time to be released, biding their time and choosing exactly when the best genre for the games had already begun to find a natural audience.

One of the most anticipated delayed-release movie-based games of all time is the recent release, Ghostbusters: The Video Game. Like Scarface: The World Is Yours and The Godfather: The Game, Ghostbusters: The Video Game debuted more than 25 years after its movie basis. Ghostbusters met with a lot more fanfare and anticipation, however, likely due to the more significant shared audience between the movie and video games in general. Like the two games in the #3 slot, Ghostbusters also retained a large portion of the cast from the original movie, featuring Dan Aykroyd, Harold Ramis, Bill Murray, Ernie Hudson, William Atherton, Brian Doyle-Murray, and Annie Potts. Like most high-quality movie-based games on this list, the game is more of a sequel than a retelling (another common characteristic of delayed-release movie-based games), but it does something different from Scarface and The Godfather. In fact, Ghostbusters: The Video Game perfectly executed what should be the #1 objective of any game based on the narrative in another medium: give the player what they want. For Ghostbusters, that meant understanding that ultra-deep gameplay and an intriguing plot, while nice, weren't the most crucial elements of the game. Instead, the game's chief objective was to make the player really feel like a ghostbuster -- any other elements of complexity, depth or replay value would be little more than icing on the cake if that primary objective could be accomplished. Ghostbusters did this perfectly -- the graphics were a tiny bit outdated, the control scheme could be a tiny bit difficult at times, and there's no questioning that the game was pretty short. But the game did what it needed to: it made the player feel like a ghostbuster, which is why the game was lauded as a faithful and high-quality entry and met with notable commercial success.

I know what you might have been thinking. "Delayed-release movie-based games? Finally, a list that won't end with GoldenEye 007." Well, sorry to disappoint, but GoldenEye 007 is the quintessential example of a delayed-release movie-based game. Its development began shortly before the release of Goldeneye the movie, but all GoldenEye-specific content (portions aside from the engine and enemy AI, mostly) was added more than a year after the movie's release, standing in stark contrast to most movie-based games which are developed alongside the movie. With its distance from the movie's release, GoldenEye 007 relied on quality to take a minor initial selling point (its movie tie-in) and make it into a commercial success -- and as we all know, it delivered. We've read about GoldenEye 007 on over 100 top ten lists (106, actually), but there are a couple interesting things that have not been mentioned. First of all, did you know that the multiplayer mode that made GoldenEye one of the greatest multiplayer games of all time wasn't even a core feature of the game? Did you know it was initially intended to be an on-rails arcade-style shooter? Did you know it garnered a lot of its inspiration from Super Mario 64? One of the greatest games ever created had surprisingly humble origins, with a wildly inexperienced team. Never intended to be released alongside the movie, GoldenEye was not only one of the best delayed-released movie-based games, but it was also one of the first. And I'm sure I don't need to go into how the game revolutionized the industry -- any top ten list on first-person shooters or movie-based games (of which there are several already) can rehash that for you. From my point of view, the critical thing to note about GoldenEye 007 is that it was created as a great game with a movie basis -- not as a movie tie-in -- and thus depended on quality for its popularity, not the brand name. The same could be said for all these games -- while they used a movie name either for inspiration or for a bit of initial attention, they all play by the same rules as standard original games.

Honorable mentions for this list go to From Russia With Love and Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena. Despite GoldenEye 007, a re-telling of the movie, being the top-listed game on this list, most of the games here reflect an additional development with regards to delayed-release movie-based games. Overwhelmingly, movie tie-in games released with their films re-tell the stories of the movie -- nearly every simultaneous release qualifies as a platformer of some sort loosely following the plot line of the movie. But take a look at the games on this list: of the ten, seven are not movie re-tellings. Why the discrepancy? When faced with creating a movie-based game separate from the movie, the developer has to put more focus on quality than they would for a tie-in game, and that focus on quality reveals an important realization: stories that are good for movies are, inherently, not good for games. Movies overwhelmingly rely on a directed plotline and sequences that are far too dynamic to put into a game. Games, on the other hand, are much more adept at showing an open non-linear area or a long, journey-based story, and invariably relies on an element of repetition. The fault in most movie-based games comes in trying to take a linear plotline and put it into a repetitive game. Take a Star Wars game, for example. The natural tendency is to have the movie's characters be the playable characters, with their weapons and equipment mirrored in gameplay. But realistically, there are only couple scenes with Han shooting lots of stormtroopers or Luke pulling out his lightsaber. How does that work itself into a game? Instead, movie-based game developers have begun to realize that the more effective development strategy is to create a game based on the world of the movie, but not rehashing the plot. Scarface and The Godfather are perfectly examples: the movies created a world of organized crime, and put a plot line in it. Instead of rehashing that plot line, why not just recreate the world for the game? That's what great movie-based games do, and that's the overwhelming trend in delayed-release ones -- games that are based on the world created by a movie, either as a sequel or as an abstraction, but that don't rehash the movie's plot itself.

List by DetroitDJ (09/25/2009)