With films getting bigger and bigger it is only natural for companies to want to cash in on the video game version of a film. Future films are already have games in development like Thor, and Captain America. One would think that these video games could live up to magic that the film produces. The problem is that movie video games have not had a great track record. Failures in movie video games goes all the way back to E.T. for the Atari which is one of video games biggest flops. Even today the reviews for more current film video games like Tron Legacy, Iron Man 2, Super Man Returns, and Clash of The Titans are not as flattering as the movie themselves.
Why do most movie based video games fall short? This is due to movies being translated into a video game. Just because you watch Robert Downey Jr. on the big screen does not always mean you want to play him as a video game character. Robert Downey Jr. is an amazing actor but his acting abilities usually does not contribute to the game as a whole. The parts of the film we like Robert Downey Jr. in show off his acting skills not really his skills to be an amazing fighter like Iron Man. When you look at both of the Iron Man films you can also notice that usually their is more dialogue then action. In video games the proportion of action to dialogue is usually higher a lot higher than films. In a film as well you have very little time to get your point across to the public usually between one and a half hours to 2 and a half hours. In video games you have a lot more time since the consumer and pick up and play when they feel like it unlike the movie goer. Usually a good video game length is between 8-12 and can even exceed that time frame. This means you have to take a shorter experience with no breaks and turn it into an experience that will last you at least four times as long.
Though time length does make a video game great but the actual mechanics that drive it. What a lot of these games lack is some good old testing. Is that really the developers fault. Most of these games are rushed to development leaving the people who actually make the game very little time to iron out the bugs. Developers can have as little as one year to develop a working game to be sold to consumers. These games can sell well even with bad development just because of the name brand that is put onto the box. Most hardcore gamers though are not buying into it but mainly parents and adults who are more casual players.
Lets look at the opposite as well do video games make good movies? One runs the opposite problem as turning a eight to ten hour gaming experience into movie magic can be hard. The other problem is that some video games can have very little dialogue to go off of to even make a film to begin with. The classic Super Mario Bros. film from 1993 took a video with very little dialogue and turned it into a feature length film. I would call this film a cult classic for me but does not compare to the experience of super mario as a game. Even Lara Croft which could be considered a more realistic scenario still did not have the same magic as it did as a video game.
Does this mean all movie video games are bad? No one just has to look deep enough to find the true diamonds. For me nothing can live up the magic of the Super Star Wars Series on the super nintendo. These games did follow the movies but it took liberties at parts to give it a little more action. That is the true trick to making a good movie video game is to not follow the movie word for word.
The truth is video games is a different medium than movies. It is a hard challenge for anyone to make a truly great video game out of a movie. For me making a movie into a video game can almost be compared to trying to make a book out of art. Sure it is amazing to see the paintings in your book but nothing can ever truly compare to seeing the piece its true form as panting. As much as I loved laughing at the one liners and rooting for Iron Man that doesn’t mean I could see myself playing the video game version of the film. Iron Man does make a good video game character though (Marvel Vs. Capcom 2) that doesn’t mean his movie counterpart does. Hopefully though future development of movie video games will take more time insure that the video games they are releasing are fun to play!
