Top Five Worst Movie Game Adaptations

It seems that the video game industry have gone away from adapting every film into a game (Even Wayne’s World and The Blues Brothers got a game!), but then can you imagine a game version of Black Swan or The Hangover? So in honour of the Oscars, I thought I would take a look at the Best and Worst games that Hollywood has inspired.

Today it’s the Worst…

5.) Batman Returns (Megadrive)

Batman Returns is a game that was the bane of my life because it was just so insanely difficult. Not in a ‘I will master this game’ way, but in a ‘I never want to play this again’ way. It was great at capturing the dark nature of Burton’s film, but unfortunately forgot about the fact that the game still needed to be playable and fun.

Moody look does not equal fun!

The sad thing is the SNES adaptation which went the Final Fight/Double Dragon route was so much better and even included a level where you could drive the Batmobile!

4.) Enter the Matrix (Xbox, Gamecube and Playstation 2)

Did Atari learn nothing from their experience with ET? Apparently not, as they sunk all their eggs (and the company) into this game inspired by the hugely successful The Matrix film and was actually advertised as a buffer between the original and the upcoming sequel The Matrix Reloaded.

I am Neo…Er… Actually no, I’m not!

It included footage shot by the film’s director’s The Wachowski Brothers and they were heavily involved in the game’s creation. Surely nothing could go wrong, right? Well there was one slight problem. Someone forgot to add any fun to the gameplay. Controls were unresponsive, camera angles at times unhelpful and it was simply no fun to play. Another issues was that despite all the hype about you playing as Neo, all of a sudden you were playing as two other minor characters that you really did not care about. It is almost like releasing a Super Mario game in which you played as Toad!

3.) Charlie’s Angels (Gamecube, Playstation2)

I’m sure we could also say this is one of the worst games ever. Playing this game was almost like some form of masochist torture as you took control of one of the three Angels (a horrible rendition of either Drew Barrymore, Cameron Diaz or Lucy Liu) and moved them around this awful 3D beat em up. What is worse is that it made staring at the digitized butt of Cameron Diaz in a bikini annoying! How is that even possible?

I would love to say that outfit is a patch mod. But it’s not. That’s what the designers put her in!

An awful game, horrible graphics and simply no fun to play. Oh and you spend most of your time watching your character climb ladders…lots and lots of ladders!??

2.) Streetfighter: The Movie (Playstation)

Ok, I’m sure we all agree that Streetfighter 2 is one of the greatest fighting games of all time, right? I mean how could they mess this up? It’s easy Jean Claude Van Dam. Instead of just re-releasing the old game, Capcom decided to take a leaf out of Midway’s playbook and digitally capture the cast of the film including, the sadly deceased by the time of release, Raul Julia.

Yes that is supposed to be Blanka!

Then they proceeded to produce the worst, most awful looking, unresponsive and disappointing Streetfighter game that there ever has been. So bad that it actually makes the film look good!

1.) ET (Atari 2600)

Could it really be anything else? The game that was one of the main factors in the fall of Atari in 1980s. A game so bad that according to legend when Atari were unable to sell the surplus stock simply just buried them in the desert like Joe Pesci at the end of Casino.

ET is actually not a bad game when you consider that designer Howard Scott Warshaw only had a few weeks to create it. However the resulting game is considered one of the worst, if not the worst game ever released. The game involved you trying to locate parts for ET’s communicator (I think) and also involved you levitating ET out of holes and getting stuck… a lot. Horrible game. Just horrible.

So there we have it. The Worst Movie games ever created. Think others are more deserving, maybe Back to the Future, Jaws Unleashed or Friday The Thirteenth? I’m sure there is more than these five, please comment away.

Best Movie Games coming in a few days.