Film and television adaptations of video games
Numerous electronic and video games have been adapted into films and television series, with the work in the new medium incorporating elements of the game's narrative, characters, gameplay, and concepts.
The first and earliest adaptation of a video game was an American animated series Pac-Man, loosely based on a 1980 Japanese video game of the same name by Toru Iwatani, produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions. Early adaptations were created cheaper and faithfully, such as Saturday Supercade, Pole Position, and Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach!. Television adaptations of video games became more popular in the late 1980s and 1990s, driven by its popularity and generally garnered mixed and positive responses by critics and fans of video games. Quintessentially, the live-action game show Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? and its follow-ups of Carmen Sandiego were critically praised and won several Daytime Emmy Awards and a Peabody Award.
The Hollywood film industry began making live-action film adaptations in the mid 1990s, including Super Mario Bros., Double Dragon, and Street Fighter. Most of these films were typically made to capitalize on the popularities of these games, and tried to incorporate the interactivity of a video game to the fixed medium with mixed results, with several of these films being critically panned. While some works in the 2000s and 2010s received positive criticism and were profitable, many received poor reviews and were box-office failures, leaving game developers hesitant about giving studios permission to adapt their feature films.
Film adaptations of video games were revitalized in the late 2010s after the releases of Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog, both critically praised and becoming box-office successes. Video games becoming mainstream with more narrative elements allowed creators to make the films more effective and faithful to the source material, establishing a positive trend for future adaptations. In the 2020s, several video game films were successful at the box office, including The Super Mario Bros. Movie and A Minecraft Movie. Newer television adaptations since the late 2010s, following similar approaches of focusing on the game's narrative rather than gameplay, drew similar critical praise. These include Carmen Sandiego, Arcane, The Last of Us, and Fallout.
History
1982–1993: Origins
United States
The 1982 animated series Pac-Man, based on a video game of the same name, is claimed to be the first adaptation of a video game. The 1983 anthology series Saturday Supercade was the second to adapt from video games, produced for Saturday mornings by Ruby-Spears Productions, consisting of four 11-minute segments based on various arcade video games including Frogger, Donkey Kong, and Donkey Kong Jr.. In 1984, it was followed by two different adaptations from video games released at the same year: a fantasy animated miniseries Dragon's Lair by Ruby-Spears Productions, based on the 1983 LaserDisc video game of the same name, and a sci-fi action animated miniseries Pole Position by DIC Enterprises and MK Company, loosely based on the 1982 arcade racing video game series of the same name by Namco. The latter made its first time for an adaptation of a video game to win an Emmy Award.File:NES-Console-Set.png|thumb|Nintendo is responsible for adapting popular NES games into several animated series started in the 1980s.
After the video game crash of 1983 and its introduction of Nintendo Entertainment System in the United States in 1985, animated television adaptations of Nintendo video games became more popular in the late-1980s. The Legend of Zelda
In the same year, the 1989 animated series Captain N: The Game Master, based on video games released from Nintendo, specifically featuring characters and elements from various popular Nintendo games. It was then proceed to the 1990 animated series The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3, loosely based on Super Mario Bros. 3., until the following year, the 1991 animated series Super Mario World, based on the Mario video game series, will be the last animated series to be adapted from Nintendo video games. In addition from adaptations of Nintendo video games, other animated adaptations released in 1993 were the animated series Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog as well as its related series of the same name, both based on Sonic the Hedgehog by Sega, and the action-adventure animated series Double Dragon, based on the video game series of the same name by Technōs Japan and Tradewest.
Live-action adaptations have not introduced until The Super Mario Bros. Super Show!, which being the first live-action/animated hybrid series, some varied of live-action snippets appeared in most episodes. The first fully live-action television adaptation of a video game was a 1990 sitcom Maniac Mansion by Eugene Levy, loosely based on the 1987 video game of the same name by Lucasfilm Games. It was followed by a children's television game show Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, based on the series of computer games by Broderbund, broadcast by PBS. The game show's first season received critical success and received two Daytime Emmy Awards in 1992, winning once for Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction/Set Decoration/Scenic Design. Over the five seasons it was on the air, the game show won another six Daytime Emmys out of 24 nominations and a Peabody Award, described as "a uniquely creative and influential use of television on a topic of primary importance". It was later succeeded with another game show Where in Time Is Carmen Sandiego? in 1996.
The first theatrical live-action feature film in the United States, the eponymous Super Mario Bros., was released on May 28, 1993, to both critical and commercial failure, failed to earn back even its $48 million budget in worldwide gross. Critics including Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times criticized the film's lack of faithfulness to the source material. Its failure of a live action film negatively affected Nintendo, Shigeru Miyamoto forced not to license any Nintendo game series, particularly Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda into the medium in the future, departing its adaptation property with both a live-action film Super Mario Bros. and an animated series Super Mario World as the last two projects ever released.
Japan
starts working on films adapted from video games in 1986: two anime films Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach! and ', and a live-action sport short film ', were the first three from Family Computer and Nintendo Entertainment System games released in July 20, 1986. Hudson Soft commissioned Star Soldier's Secret and Game King as a double feature to promote Star Soldier, but it was a box office failure and pulled from theaters earlier than anticipated due to clash with Super Mario Bros.; it was later released on VHS containing two films. Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach! was followed by short films and OVA between 1989 and 1995.The first live-action feature film adapted from a video game in Japan was the 1988 direct-to-video film Mirai Ninja, based on the Namco arcade game of the same name, although the film was premiered in Tokyo on October before the video game was released the following month.
A two-episode OVA titled Tengai Makyō Ziria Oboro-hen, based on a series of role-playing video games Tengai Makyō by Oji Hiroi and Red Company, was made and released in 1990. A 50-minute adult animated dark fantasy OVA titled Wizardry was produced by TMS Entertainment in February 20, 1991, based on Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord by Andrew C. Greenberg and Robert Woodhead; the OVA depicts graphic violence and death, a rare feat for any adaptations of video games in the 1990s that introduces complex, mature themes. Between 1991 and 1993, anime films and television series based on Dragon Quest: The Adventure of Dai were released.
1994–2001: Mainstream breakthrough
Super Mario Bros. was followed in 1994 by other adaptations, such as Double Dragon and Street Fighter, which received similarly negative reviews. This changed with the 1995 film Mortal Kombat, directed by Paul W.S. Anderson, which was the first film adaptation of a video game to gain a critical and commercial success, earn more than $100 million at the box office, with Anderson established by critics as a preeminent director of video game films; the film remains one of the highest-rated video game films among critics. Its mainstream success of Mortal Kombat continue to follow their essences for live-action film adaptations include Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, also received moderate commercial success.Animated films and shows also began gaining mainstream success. Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, the first fully animated film in the Street Fighter franchise, became a commercial success in both theaters and home video rentals in Japan. The anime series Pokémon, based on video game series of the same name by Game Freak, becoming the most successful adaptation of video game of all time, spanning two films, Pokémon: The First Movie and Pokémon: The Movie 2000 also became internationally successful. A live-action/animated series Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego? garnered critical success and won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Children's Animated Program.
In 2001, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, distributed by Columbia Pictures and directed by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, became a major milestone in the history of animation and adaptations of video games, particularly its pioneering and influential achievement of motion-capture to achieve rendered photorealism in computer animation.