Why are there no longer video games based on movies? The rise and fall of a phenomenon impossible to replicate

Not so long ago, every movie released in theaters had its corresponding video game. It didn’t matter if it was Catwoman or The Lord of the Rings, nor if the games somehow followed the movie’s plot or completely invented it. They were just another piece of merchandising. The Goonies? Video game. Spider-Man 2? Video game. Fight Club? The Godfather? E.T? You know. However, recently, it’s rare for a movie to decide to accompany its release with a more or less mediocre game. And the reason, believe it or not, is technological advancement.

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From celluloid to pixel

In 1982, Raiders of the Lost Ark achieved a record: being the first video game in history to license a movie. However, before it, there were already several examples of the industry’s eagerness. For example, in 1976, Death Race was very loosely based on Death Race 2000, opening the door to adaptations. After all, anything was possible at Atari. An Alien game that was actually a rip-off of Pac-Man? Of course. And The Empire Strikes Back? It was only a matter of time!

However, we all know what happened with E.T: the game symbolizes the decline of video games (although it was neither the worst nor the only example) in the early 80s, and marked a before and after, as if it were a cautionary tale. Beware, everyone, of movies, because if you don’t play your cards right, they can sink you. However, in 1983, the craziest versions were still appearing.

Porky’s, Dark Crystal, Halloween, Rocky, and even The Texas Chainsaw Massacre had their versions that ended up in the hands of players who were already anticipating the arrival of NES and Sega Genesis. And that’s where the madness began: everything could be a video game, from Back to the Future to Rambo: First Blood, including Attack of the Killer Tomatoes and Top Gun. So, where did it all go wrong?

This smells rotten

Over the years, games based on movies (with honorable exceptions like 007: Goldeneye or Spider-Man) have rightfully earned the label of “shoddy.” They were made in a rush to satisfy fans’ cravings, and often consisted of repetitive screens, subpar graphics, and a storyline that had nothing to do with the movie itself.

There are thousands of examples: versions of Underworld, Van Helsing, or Bad Boys, versions of Mission Impossible without Tom Cruise’s face (due to lack of rights), adaptations of Elf (for some reason), or fighting games with Shrek. Everything goes, at a certain point, to which we must add the TV franchises: The Simpsons, SpongeBob, etc. And of course, the quality suffered because, deep down, the developers knew very well that they didn’t have to spend a lot of money if they wanted to recover their investment in a Nintendo DS game of the Hannah Montana movie. And, unintentionally, they started to saturate the market.

By the time they tried to fix it, it was already too late, and the versions of Chicken Little, Fantastic Four, and Silver Surfer, or even Madagascar 2, caused the system to wobble: it was increasingly necessary to invest more time and resources in making these games, and very few (very, very few) times did they yield profits. It might still have been worth it on consoles like the Nintendo DS, where a tiny team could bring to light a more or less playable and easy-to-monetize title, but it wasn’t worth putting a hundred people to work on the PS3 to make the version of Megamind and Surf’s Up.

In the mid-2000s, anyone who called themselves a “gamer” wouldn’t buy games based on movies, because they were aimed at a very specific target: children. Disney, Pixar, and DreamWorks made versions of practically all their titles, from Up to Flushed Away, until even these stopped being profitable. The competition was high, cinema was no longer the main entertainment and, with the possibility of playing games on Facebook or directly in Flash, it wasn’t worth dusting off the PS4.

What now?

In 2024, not a single game based on a movie has been released. In 2023, only Robocop: Rogue City, Puppet Master, Avatar, and SD Shin Kamen Rider Rumble have reached the public, and the previous year wasn’t much better. The loss of AA games, combined with a much less naive audience, a greater entertainment offering, and the fact that cinema has lost its leadership to the video game industry, make no one want to take risks anymore. Why play the Space Jam: A New Legacy game if there are all kinds of basketball games on the market? What does it offer?

It’s not that cinema has abandoned video games, of course: they are simply now DLC for games like Fortnite. There’s no need to create a story, nor to think about how it might damage the brand, nor to have a hundred people making a game because right now, a very high graphic level is needed, and no one would pay attention to something more amateur. It’s much easier to put your intellectual property as a downloadable character in Fall Guys, so the public doesn’t forget its existence and you can take a break.

Are games based on movies still being released? Yes, of course, but they are usually a passion project, like Alien Isolation, which don’t have the pressure to be released as soon as possible to fit into the release schedule. They are another chapter of the saga, not an adaptation. And deep down it’s a bit of a shame that movies like Barbie or Wild Robot haven’t had their pixel version, because they could be very imaginative and fun (although experience tells us they would be simple platforms without much to explore).

At its core, the lack of movie adaptations is yet another symptom of a disease affecting the entire video game industry, one that indicates you need to constantly copy your neighbor to ensure success, that demands minimal risk, that requires all games to be million-dollar AAA titles, without allowing games with fewer resources, where novice programmers can gain experience and perhaps showcase surprising new ideas, to come to light.

Nobody is saying that we have to keep playing infamous games like Catwoman, The Wizard of Oz, or Home Alone (have you seen its version for PS2? I recommend it for a day when you want to open an unknown door to a black hole), but beyond marketing, these games provided variety in the library of consoles increasingly in need of games. However, it is not understood that no one can expect everything released to be an expensive blockbuster. Sometimes, we simply need a Spider-Man 2. And that has been denied to us.