{"id":6070,"date":"2014-05-30T00:01:42","date_gmt":"2014-05-30T07:01:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=6070"},"modified":"2014-05-24T13:19:02","modified_gmt":"2014-05-24T20:19:02","slug":"have-film-video-game-tie-ins-ever-worked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/?p=6070","title":{"rendered":"Have Film-Video Game Tie-Ins Ever Worked?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Computer games have come a long way since tic-tac-toe. Today, the video game industry rivals Hollywood as a source of visual entertainment, not to mention that video games are interactive whereas movies aren’t. Where the two behemoths meet, however, is a sour, ugly patch of land.
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\nI played Super Mario Brothers with my son Jordan back in 1993. We racked up hours in front of the TV enjoying the game’s challenges.<\/p>\n

Then, in 1993, Hollywood foisted upon us the Super Mario Bros.<\/em> movie. Despite a good cast, it sucked.<\/p>\n

That’s the first time I remember seeing a Hollywood-video game movie tie-in. There have been others, of course, but now they work the other way around: A blockbuster Hollywood film is produced and at the same day of the film’s release, we see a companion video game. With perhaps a few exceptions, the video games are truly awful.<\/p>\n

The first, of course, had to be the E.T.<\/em> video game, which pretty much killed off the Atari 2600 video game console back in 1983. (Earlier blog post<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The Super Mario Bros.<\/em> movie came later, but it’s complete failure didn’t stop Hollywood and the video game industry from continual collaborations. In fact, I’m sure in some boardroom somewhere, cigar-chomping bigwigs who’ve never played a video game are adamantly insisting that their “movie package” include a companion video game to be released at the same date as the film’s premier.<\/p>\n

Such nonsense.<\/p>\n

What’s the point of a video game that follows a movie? I suppose I just can’t connect with the type of person who would enjoy seeing a film — a visual story — and then try to re-live that experience in a video game? Why?<\/p>\n

Gone With the Wind: the Game<\/em>. Would that be a first-person shooter?<\/p>\n

I discussed this topic with my son Jeremiah. He reminded me that the Spider-Man<\/em> film from 2002 had a good companion video game. I agree; I played that game and it wasn’t that bad, but again it wasn’t a complete copy of the movie, either. The Harry Potter<\/em> video game I bought the kids was so complete bereft of anything substantial that my boys played it only once.<\/p>\n

Video games don’t always spawn from films. As with Super Mario Bros.<\/em>, and proving that Hollywood is frequently out of ideas, sometimes it goes the other way around.<\/p>\n

I recall that the Doom<\/em> movie was just horrid, almost painful to watch. It’s sad, too, because Doom<\/em> could have been a really creepy thriller. Think of the possibilities of a character in a film who discovers “god mode”? That would be cool.<\/p>\n

The only exception I can think of are the Tomb Raider<\/em> movies, which weren’t that bad. Or they could be bad, but after watching Angelina Jolie for two hours, who would notice?<\/p>\n

Beyond those few exceptions, it would be my continued observation that Hollywood and video games shouldn’t mix, but I don’t think that my lowly opinion will stop them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hey! The new Superman movie is coming out. And on the same day is the Superman Movie Video Game. Will it suck? Do I need to ask?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-main"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6070"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6141,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6070\/revisions\/6141"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wambooli.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}