After having seen that there are a large number of video games based on novels and novels based on video games, although surely many (I am guided by some of your comments) this relationship had been overlooked, especially in the case of the novels based on video games, today we are going to take a look at a curious list.
While looking for information to make this special I came across a list in which there are five video games considered the worst when it comes to adapting books and I thought it might be good to end this special by taking a look at that list. I would have liked to make it myself, but I confess that I have not played enough games based on novels to be able to make a top of this type.
I do not roll more, let’s see what these five pearls are.
5. Dracula Unleashed
‘Dracula Unleashed’ , based on the work by Bram Stoker ‘Dracula’ , was developed by ICOM Simulations, released in 1993 for Sega Mega-CD (Megadrive, go) and PC and it was still an interactive film in which precisely the interactivity was almost non-existent. He practically forced us to sit in front of the TV or the monitor to watch 90 minutes of movie without doing anything. Fun, fun. Where is my popcorn?
4. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde ‘ for the NES, developed by Toho for Bandai and released in 1988, is based on Robert Louis Stevenson’s ‘ The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde’ (1886), in which the author deals with the issue of personality splitting in a very pleasant way: with murders and various investigations.
The game had such a nefarious control system that it was practically unplayable, not to mention that here the bad guy is Dr. Jekyll and not Mr. Hyde (how cool is this, huh?) Or the colorful graphics designed to melt our retinas.
3. Where’s Waldo?
Here we know this Waldo as Wally , that heavyweight in the striped sweater we had to find while he was laughing at us hidden in the crowd. This version for NES was the first video game based on the book ‘Where’s Wally?’ and in it our task was … to find Wally in a series of images. (Applause). Best of all, Beteshda are the developers (laughs).
Graphically it sucked a lot (I think you could go blind playing this) and the fact of having to scroll to see the areas of the image that were off the screen in the medium and high difficulty levels did not help. too much. Bad bad.
2. The Hobbit
In the previous post of this special we talked about the conversational adventure that appeared for the 8-bit computers of the time based on ‘The Hobbit’ , but it is not that title that has the honor of occupying the second place on this infectious list, but the one that was released later (2003) for GameCube, Xbox, PS2 and PC.
A Zelda-like platform and adventure game with a lot of poorly planned puzzles that also claimed to be the only video game based on Tolkien’s work. Come on, man, is it possible?
1. Square’s Tom Sawyer
‘Square’s Tom Sawyer’ is, as its name suggests, a Square game based on Mark Twain’s play ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’ . (More applause). It is an RPG released in 1989 for the NES that, luckily, did not make it out of Japan.
Apparently, I’m not sure why, Square came up with a fairly racist game in which, in addition, the gameplay is not that it was too brilliant. The best part is that Nobuo Uematsu , the songwriter for ‘Final Fantasy’ , took care of the soundtrack. Less gives a stone.
With this and a cake I conclude this brief review of the universe of video games and literature. Two apparently distant worlds that, as we have seen, are more united than many believe.
That you read a lot and well.
More information | The Minus World | Videogames and literature (I): from novel to videogame, Videogames and literature (II): from videogame to novel
