The Game of the Book: Difference between revisions

[[Video Games]] are a medium that can easily be adapted from a book or comic series. Typically, to gain a mainstream audience [[The Film of the Book|a book is adapted into a movie]]. A less common occurrence is when a book is adapted straight into a game. These were common in the late 1980s and early 1990s when graphical computer games were becoming popular.

* The [[Discworld]] books have had a few games based on them: a [[Text Adventure]] based on ''[[Discworld/The Colour of Magic|The Colour of Magic]]'', two Rincewind-centric games that took elements from multiple books, and ''[[Discworld Noir]]'', which had an [[Canon Foreigner|original protagonist]] and storyline. ([[Development Hell|There still haven't been any big-screen films yet]], just [[Made for TV Movie|TV movies]].)

* Two for ''[[The Great Gatsby]]'' (not entirely serious).

* ''[[American McGee's Grimm|American Mcgees Grimm]]'' and ''[[American McGee's Alice|Alice]]'' games take liberties with the source material, but are essentially [[Grimmification|Grimmified]] adaptations of books rather than any of the films based on the original written material.

* A few comic-book games have adapted specific stories rather than general material or movie and TV versions of the characters or series:

** ''[[Asterix]]'' has been adapted into several games on several platforms.

** The ''[[Superman]]'' SNES and Genesis games adapting the "Death and Return" arc from the comics.

** ''[[Ultimate Spider-Man]]'', which was supposed to be in-continuity with a current arc of the comic. [[Continuity Drift|It didn't quite work out.]]

** ''[[Marvel Ultimate Alliance]] 2'' is a loose adaptation of the ''Civil War'' [[Crisis Crossover]].

*** Years before that, ''[[Captain America (comics)]] and the Avengers'' was an even looser adaptation of the "Acts of Vengeance" crossover.

** The ''[[Iron Man]]/X-O Man of War'' game adapts the intercompany crossover of the same title.

* ''[[Incredible Hulk|Hulk: Destruction]]'' got a [[Recursive Adaptation]] comics miniseries released simultaneously with the video game, creating an ambivalent example. Like the ''Ultimate Spider-Man'' example, it was supposed to be comic-book canon but didn't end up fitting properly.

* The [[Ur Example]] comes from Tellarium Games in [[The Eighties|the early 1980s]]. They adapted several books into games with varying degrees of success from [[In Name Only]] (''Swiss Family Robinson'') to canonical sequels to the author's original work. The most famous of these was their [[Canon]] sequel to the ''[[Green-Sky Trilogy]]'', which got the greenlight from Zilpha Keatley Snyder provided they use the game to [[Author's Saving Throw|reverse a decision she regretted making in the final book]].

** [[Ray Bradbury]] also helped write a Farenheit 451 gane for them that acts as a sequel to the book.

* In 2010, ''[[Dante's Inferno (video game)|Dantes Inferno]]'' was produced as an action-adventure game. The ''weird'' part is that the [[Recursive Adaptation|tie-in novel]]... was [[The Divine Comedy|the actual 700-year-old epic poem]], just with branding and art from the game.

* The game ''[[Megami Tensei]]'' was born from a novel series, ''[[Digital Devil Story]]'', that would become a large series containing plenty of spin-offs, such as ''[[Persona]]'', and later games with the original name.

* ''[[Scott Pilgrim (video game)|Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game]]'' is based on [[Scott Pilgrim|the comics]] rather than [[Scott Pilgrim vs. the World|the movie]], but the game and comic book were released in tandem.

* Various ''[[Harry Potter]]'' [[Harry Potter (video game)|games]].

* [[The Tick (animation)]] game was primarily based on the [[Animated Series]], but also used several characters exclusive to the comics, such as the Running Man, the Red Scare and Clark Oppenheimer.