10 Best Video Game Adaptations Of 90s Movies, Ranked | ScreenRant
Video-game movies don’t have a great reputation seeing as it’s a running joke amongst gamers that there’ll never be a good movie adaptation of a game. But when that’s reversed, when there’s a video-game adaptation of a movie, the result can often be positive.
Even in the 1990s, when the gaming industry was still very much in its infancy, developers were looking to movies to experiment with designing games. Whether it’s a surprisingly brilliant tie-in game or a game that was released decades after the movie, '90s movies had some stellar game adaptations.
10 Fight Club (2004)
Fight Club is one of the reasons 1999 was the greatest year in film, as its nihilistic attitude and mind-bending plot twist cemented it as one of the most unique and creative movies ever made. However, based on the title, those who haven’t seen it would understandably believe it’s nothing more than a fighting movie, and the creators of the game mustn’t have seen it either, as the game is nothing more than a beat ‘em up.
It completely misses the point of the whole movie, and Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit is hilariously an unlockable character, but the game does well to capture the grittiness of the movie, and it tells a new story, too.
9 Disney’s Tarzan (1999)
Tarzan is one of many Disney games released in the 1990s that showed how seriously the studio took their tie-in games. Similarly to the movie, the video-game sees Tarzan as a young child fighting with wild animals and climbing trees, and he eventually grows up and defends his and his family’s home against the hunters.
It might not feature the best gameplay mechanics in a game, but for the time, Disney’s Tarzan was one of the best looking games available, and the colorfulness and jungle areas made the game a joy to play.
8 Disney’s Hercules (1997)
There are a lot of Disney properties that deserve a proper video game adaptation, but Hercules already has one that’s surprisingly very good. With Hercules being one of the best Disney movies of the '90s, and certainly being the most action-packed, it only made sense to make a video-game adaptation, and serve as somewhat of a precursor to God of War.
As the game was released in the early days of the first PlayStation, a lot of Hercules’ gameplay was a little dated, but it combined all of the best parts of the gameplay from the previous generation, and it ended up being a charming little game.
7 A Bug’s Life (1998)
With the release of A Bug’s Life in 1998, a video-game adaptation quickly followed, and it’s just as colorful as the movie.
The game might not be perfect, but it’s one of the most inventive tie-ins of a Pixar property, as it thinks up things that weren’t even found in the film, such as bouncing on mushrooms to get to hard to reach places. The game can be irritatingly difficult, but it’s hugely satisfying when players finally find their way out of one of the many ant hill mazes.
6 Tomorrow Never Dies (1999)
The developer changed the gameplay style from first-person to third-person for this entry, and though the decision was criticized at the time, it works really well. Tomorrow Never Dies never reaches the height of its predecessor, which was one of the defining moments in gaming history, but the 1999 game is one of the best looking PlayStation 1 games and one of the most faithful video-game tie-ins.
The fact that Bond is voiced by a Pierce Brosnan impersonator is the worst thing about the game just goes to show that it’s still a fine example of a third-person shooter.
5 Disney’s Aladdin (1993)
It’s hard to believe, but many of Disney’s video-game tie-ins to their animated movies in the 1990s were absolutely quality. Just as with Tarzan and Hercules, Aladdin is a 2D platformer, and being one of the earliest games to be released, it was way ahead of the curve.
Everything audiences loved about the movie translated perfectly to the video game, whether it was the animation, the colors, or the music, and the gameplay was fantastic too. The game allows players to control not only Aladdin, but his monkey Abu, too, and there are even levels where players ride on the magic carpet.
4 Die Hard Trilogy (1996)
Though the first Die Hard movie was released in the 1980s, Die Hard 2 and Die Hard: With A Vengeance were released in 1990 and 1995, respectively, and Die Hard Trilogy has levels based on events that happen throughout all of these movies. What’s great about the package is that each movie is presented with three different types of gameplay.
The first Die Hard is a first-person shooter that sees players navigate their way through Nakatomi Plaza, Die Hard 2 is an on-rails shooter, and Vengeance sees players behind the wheel of several vehicles, trying to reach bombs placed in New York before they detonate.
3 Jurassic Park (2011)
As the Jurassic Park video-game came out in 2011, it’s one of the video game adaptations that was released years later, as the movie saw release in 1993. However, there have been a lot of iterations of the classic movie in the gaming industry, but Telltale’s take on the material is by far the best.
Telltale’s bread and butter is thought-provoking narrative based point and click games, and Jurassic Park was the first attempt at doing such a thing. Though it’s doesn’t reach the highs of Batman: The Telltale Series, the dinosaur game shows the potential the developer has, and there are some surprisingly engaging non-canon characters in the game too.
2 Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear To The Rescue (1999)
As Toy Story 2: Buzz Lightyear To The Rescue was released in conjunction with the second movie of the beloved Pixar series, it’s one of the best video-game tie-ins to a movie, and it’s one of the reasons why Toy Story is a great franchise, not just a great film series.
Toy Story and its sequels have been the basis for many great video-games, but Lightyear to the Rescue is the cream of the crop, as it sees players control Buzz in huge environments, including Al’s Toy Barn, Andy’s entire house, and the airport. It’s almost like a puzzle game in the way players have to figure out how to reach places that toys ordinarily can’t get to, and it still holds up.
1 GoldenEye 007 (1997)
Being one of the James Bond games you need to play to get ready for Project 007, a new game in development from the makers of the Hitman series, GoldenEye 007 is often cited as one of the greatest games ever made.
The game, based on the James Bond movie of the same name, is often cited as being the video game that properly started the first-person shooter genre, and it showed what future games were capable of. Many of the locations of the movie were recreated in incredible detail for the game, and the mechanics of the gameplay were unrivalled at the time.
from ScreenRant - Feed
Join Our Email Newsletter Now!
Join over 1,897 people who get free and fresh content delivered automatically each time we publish.
