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What licensed video games do you know that take an unexpected (at the time of launch) approach when adapting the source material

delete12345

delete12345

One Winged Slayer
Member
Nov 17, 2017
19,673
Boston, MA
Make sure to point out the origins of the video game adaptations in your list! 😊

EDIT: Apparently, I didn't construct this thread in a matter that I wanted. Going by feedback, I'm rephrasing how this thread should be.

EDIT 2: Yes, I understand IP-licensed video games all technically fall into your list of video game adaptations. What makes them stand out in your adaptation is what's important.

I have some examples:
  • Dragon Ball FighterZ (based on the manga Dragon Ball from Akira Toriyama)
Dragon Ball FighterZ is the first Dragon Ball fighting game that I'm introduced by friends, not by myself. The adaptation comes into the fact that the game is structured around tournament battles, a general theme in Akira Toriyama's work in Dragon Ball, where one competes with another to see who is the strongest, and who is the mightiest on planet Earth. What other games out there would pit players against each other to see who is the mightiest? Might no longer has any worth in the context of competition anymore. :(
  • Naruto Shippuden 1/2/3/4 and similar battle arena action games (based on the manga Naruto)
Naruto Shippuden 1/2/3/4, or Shippuden in general, is also based on the adaptation of Masashi Kishimoto's magnum opus, Naruto. It popularized the 2D and 3D battle arena genre in fighting games, making it much more action oriented with some strategic tactics involved. Plus, it introduces new techniques in how camera panning in fighting games are used in a 3D environment. Thus, I give the series an important emphasis.
  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets GBA game (based on the Harry Potter franchise)
This particular game is impressive as an adaptation, mainly because I love it and because I'm 99% beat the whole story. It introduces real-time battles in an isometric stage, meaning, you have to move your characters around, jumping and dodging attacks, while casting your spells out towards enemies, all in that isometric view. I rarely see this type of adaptation implemented on licensed titles, so it made on my list.
  • Lemonade Tycoon / Lemonade Stand (based on an educational software created for the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium in 1973.)
This tycoon game stood out on my list because it's an adaptation of a serious game that's structured around educating business management back in 1973. It teaches the aspects of daily business management, and how to deal with risks and financial gains with luck-based pseudo-randomness. You rarely see adaptations created with the emphasis on randomness, let alone, building empires around preset data sets obtained through research papers and planning.

What other video games do you know that are not based on other video games, but rather, are adaptations from completely different media?
 
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Trode

Trode

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Mar 27, 2018
310
The Witcher is the most obvious example imo, being based based on the novel series of the same name.
 
Santar

Santar

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Oct 27, 2017
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Every liscensed based video game ever?
Lord of the Rings, Ducktales, Transformers etc etc etc etc.
 
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Platy

Platy

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Oct 25, 2017
27,647
Brazil
List threads are not very foundly taken, so also talking about how well they adapted stuff would be interesting

Personally i always had a foundness for adaptations of .... products. Like not books or cartoons or movies.

The 16 bit era was full of those. Cool Spot is an adaptation of the 7up mascot, Zool is an adaptation of a lollipop, MacDonalds have some videogames that are weirdly very good (or not weirdly since they are made by Treasure), Yo Noid is a game about the Dominos mascot and Chester Cheetah the snack mascot has an ok game. And all M&M games are pure trash

it was specially interesting because i live in a country that at the time, didn't had neither 7up, Dominos or Chupa Chups
 
Dan-o

Dan-o

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Oct 25, 2017
4,887
Not sure if this really counts, but the first Nioh game was apparently based on an unfinished Akira Kurosawa script.
 
Strings

Strings

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Oct 27, 2017
31,384
Tales of Phantasia was adapted from an unpublished novel written by its programmer.
 
nutaroundthecorner

nutaroundthecorner

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Feb 5, 2020
404
I guess this is a thread where I can plug Ratatouille for the PS2. I remember that game being a banger as a kid. It also reminds me of how games were so easier to make back in the day that you could have three entirely different versions of the same game (i.e. PSP, PS2/Wii, PS3/360) rather than ports of the same game for all consoles.
 
blame space

blame space

Resettlement Advisor
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Oct 25, 2017
15,420
the stanley parable is an adaptation of the script for the stanley parable
 
L Thammy

L Thammy

Spacenoid
Member
Oct 25, 2017
49,994
New Mobile Report Gundam Wing: Endless Duel, based on the Gundam Wing anime series.




Mobile Suit Gundam: Gihren's Greed, based on the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime series and other works set in the same time.




Super Gachapon World: SD Gundam X, based on the Universal Century Gundam continuity.

 
mopinks

mopinks

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homeimprovementsnescof8j9i.jpg
 
styl_oh

styl_oh

Fallen One-Winged Chicken Chaser
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Nov 24, 2019
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Alberta, Canada
And the manga Dragon Ball by Akira Toriyama is loosely based on the famous Chinese novel Journey to the West (how far can we go?)
 
styl_oh

styl_oh

Fallen One-Winged Chicken Chaser
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Nov 24, 2019
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But yeah, I can't think of anything interesting besides games based on books (Parasite Eve, Witcher) as games based on film properties et al. are a dime a dozen.

Maybe an interesting thread would be what scripts or information a game is based on; sort of like 'did you know Hemingway wrote a bunch of movies?' except for games... one of the Yakuza games allegedly contained either rewrites or a bunch of inside info from a real Yakuza member. That's kind of a hard concept to define, though.
 
Serif

Serif

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Oct 27, 2017
3,789
Tetris Effect goes all in on the "Tetris Effect" phenomenon by purposefully having dreamlike sequences that use scenes from the natural world as setpieces for Tetris. So it's kind of a Tetris -> Real World -> Tetris path where people day/dream of Tetris after playing it for hours, and Tetris Effect takes that to the next level. Makes perfect sense that there'd be a VR port.
 
The Spoony Hou

The Spoony Hou

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Oct 27, 2017
2,928
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Ghostbusters the game is actually based On a famous movie! Who'd thunk it? (The movie licensed the name from an old TV series, but is not based on it).

Well, to try to actually contribute, the Wolfenstein series was based on old pc game stealth game.
 
L Thammy

L Thammy

Spacenoid
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Oct 25, 2017
49,994
In line with the OP's update, I'd like to build on one that I mentioned earlier.


Mobile Suit Gundam: Gihren's Greed, based on the original Mobile Suit Gundam anime series and other works set in the same time.


The reason that I like this series is that they approach the original Gundam like a historical simulator, with the same level of detail. That leads to some decisions that might be unusual in a normal video game. For example, in the original PlayStation 1 game, it takes around 10 turns to get the Gundam if you rush it - and with the pace the game goes at, that could be hours. That's entirely in line with the story of the series, where the Federation didn't really win with giant robots with the Gundam, they primarily won their campaign on Earth with things like tanks and fighter planes, and were only able to deploy Mobile Suits on a mass scale when they had retaken the Earth and pushed the fight back to space.

The main character of the original Gundam anime is only the second best Federation ace according to the toyline and setting bible, and his main rival doesn't even make the Zeon top ten because he ends up being too distracted. A lot of these other notable people who were never in the animated series appear in this game as well.

You can deal with a lot of nitty-gritty details that wouldn't normally be touched by video games that are just trying to get straight to all of the cool toyetic stuff. With the PS1 game, you can start negotiating with other parties like neutral nations and the arm industry, and the PS2 game breaks this down even further so that you can deal with individual companies who don't like you being friendly with their rivals. You can also damage these relationships if you break treaties such as moving into political neutral areas of using nuclear weapons.
 
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eraFROMAN

eraFROMAN

One Winged Slayer
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Mar 12, 2019
2,877
The Turok series is based on a series of comic books, which isn't terribly commonly known, but the games started affecting the comic canon and vice versa, which is pretty neat. The "Turok" on the art of the first game is actually based on Joshua Fireseed, the protagonist of the second game, because he was introduced to the comics not long before the first game released, for example.
 
L Thammy

L Thammy

Spacenoid
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Oct 25, 2017
49,994
delete12345 said:
  • Naruto Shippuden 1/2/3/4 and similar battle arena action games (based on the manga Naruto)
Naruto Shippuden 1/2/3/4, or Shippuden in general, is also based on the adaptation of Masashi Kishimoto's magnum opus, Naruto. It popularized the 2D and 3D battle arena genre in fighting games, making it much more action oriented with some strategic tactics involved. Plus, it introduces new techniques in how camera panning in fighting games are used in a 3D environment. Thus, I give the series an important emphasis.
Click to expand...
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I believe one of the major influences in this 3D arena fighting genre is the Gundam Versus series, originally developed by Capcom before being taken over entirely by Bandai Namco (who owns the Gundam license).

The original games were slower and more serious. Take the first one, Federation vs. Zeon, which was exclusively based on the first anime. This has sort of the clunky feeling of the original series, but still has the combat where your main melee and ranged attacks are chosen based on your range. This one would be from 2001, so a number of years before the Shippuden anime and a few years before Ultimate Ninja Storm.





Now if you look at the most recent, Mobile Suit Gundam: Extreme Vs. 2, it's taken the fast pace that you'll see in other games of the genre. This one is still arcade only, which is why there's no in-game audio on this video.





Despite posting a bunch of Gundam games before, I actually haven't put a lot of time into this particular series, so I'm just aware that of its influence on the genre on paper. I'm not really sure when it started taking an over-the-top approach, for example.
 
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MoonlitBow

Member
Oct 25, 2017
4,874
I think part of the reason why this thread is so confusing is because a 1 on 1 fighting game is exactly what I'd expect for a Dragon Ball Z game, I think the various RPGs (including the various turn based card-based RPG games that exist) might be a better example of what the topic is about?
 
arcadepc

arcadepc

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Dec 28, 2019
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Sweet Home for the NES influenced the horror genre, yet it was based on an obscure horror movie more resembling Poltergeist . Game introduced new characters and story elements too.
 
Dervius

Dervius

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Oct 28, 2017
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UK


John Wick Hex was an interesting genre choice given the bombastic, action packed nature of the films.
 
Scottoest

Scottoest

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Feb 4, 2020
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Basically any movie or TV tie in game from the SNES/Genesis generation or earlier, where they inevitably turned a sitcom or whatever into a bad side-scrolling platformer every single time.
 
L Thammy

L Thammy

Spacenoid
Member
Oct 25, 2017
49,994
MoonlitBow said:
I think part of the reason why this thread is so confusing is because a 1 on 1 fighting game is exactly what I'd expect for a Dragon Ball Z game, I think the various RPGs (including the various turn based card-based RPG games that exist) might be a better example of what the topic is about?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You can make unexpected moves even within a common framework. Super Butouden 2 is a Dragonball game where Goku is a secret character - definitely not the most common route.
 

Deleted member 51248

Banned
Dec 25, 2018
1,926
Bionicle Heroes despite largely being set in and featuring characters from the Voya Nui story arc, pretty much does its own thing and ignores adapting any of the story beats outside of the overall Piraka vs Toa Inika idea, It was unexpected because outside of a few tie ins (like the 'Free the Band' ARG where the Piraka had kidnapped the All American Rejects) most Bionicle media were set in the same continuity (like Halo), theres no rescuing the Toa Nuva and freeing the matoran enslaved by the Piraka, there's no character arcs (most important being Matoro coming to terms with his destiny), to fill out the enemy/boss roster there's characters that are either long dead by that point (Nidhiki, Kreka and Sidorak were dead 1000 years by this point) or nowhere near Voya Nui (Roodaka would be in prison until being roped into some kind of Suicide Squad with the surviving villains from Voya Nui and the later Mahri Nui arc). Kinda disappointed with all the characters that were added as bosses, what would be the final boss of that arc wasn't in the game. Was expecting the Vezon boss fight to end with a second stage against the Kardas dragon.
latest

In saying all that I still enjoyed it at the time.
 
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