Over time, mankind has been subjected to some of the greatest forms of entertainment around. Whether it was from the comfort of our own home, or it was out and about at a local theater. Unfortunately, the greed of mankind has also allowed some of the worst abominations to take form by trying to create a hybrid between different forms of entertainment and that has resulted in a ton of lost money and quite a few headaches.
While some hybrids work out just fine, it seems that the video game industry hasn’t learned its lesson in the field of combining movies with games whatsoever. In fact, I used to think the industry was getting better over time with this practice, but it turns out it was only because the visuals were getting better. Due to this, I’ve compiled the absolute worst movie-to-game adaptations of all time. To be honest, I can’t figure out what these developers were thinking when creating these games. It’s almost as if pride didn’t exist during these time periods and I’m sure most would like to rewind back and just scrap these projects altogether.
Without further ado, here we go!
Number 10: Balls of Fury
Balls of Fury was a movie about a guy down in the dumps redeeming himself through the “hilarious” underground world of Ping Pong. I’m not too sure if great comedic films like Beerfest help spur the creation of this movie, but not even Christopher Walken could save it from its own stupidity.
Oddly enough, a publisher was actually dumb enough to consider developing a game from this monstrocity. It wasn’t bad enough that the movie was flat out terrible, they must have felt that the gaming world deserved to go through a little bit of pain with it as well.
Don’t worry though, instead of releasing this masterpiece in beautiful HD, the publishers stuck with the Nintendo Wii since it was best-fitted for shovelware garbage. The end result was something that looked pulled from the Nintendo 64 library of games mixed with terrible motion controls and a lot of pissed off people who threw their money into the grinder of ridicule.
Number 9: Iron Man
When you think about it, the potential for an Iron Man game to succeed and be actually enjoyable is a viable option. I mean, all of the elements are there for a great experience. Iron Man provides a likable main character, great bad guys, an interesting world and a solid set of powers to truly enjoy.
However, when adapting a movie to a game, you have to understand that none of that ever matters and the only thing that truly does is creating a product that will cause the consumer to want to drown themselves in the nearest sink. That’s kind of the problem with Iron Man. The developers seem to have high ambition for the title, but just fell short in every imaginable aspect.
If you take a look at the trailer below, it’ll be quite obvious to see why no normal individual was ever going to purchase a game like this. Sadly, I wouldn’t bet against the fact that every comic nerd who games bought a copy just because it was Iron Man. For crying out loud, the cross-hairs in the game don’t even decide where the attacks fly from IM himself!
Number 8: Iron Man 2
I bet you’re asking yourself, “Is this a typo?” The answer is simple: No. Iron Man 2 was incredibly and surprisingly worse than the original in terms of video games. Unfortunately for the movie studios, the same rang true for the movies as well, but that’s beside the point.
Iron Man 2 took everything that worked well in the first game, threw it aside and in its place decided to add more things that would piss people off. To be honest, I really can’t believe that Iron Man 2 managed to be worst than the first installment. You’d think after one go around, the development team would have the kinks worked out and would have a general idea of how to improve upon the title from the original.
Crazily enough, the developers obviously had no answers for us gamers in that department and we were once again stuck with a mediocre product draining our wallets. We’ve included another stellar Iron Man trailer below — make sure to take it in all the way.
I remember enjoying Minority Report for a bit but you’re right, it was basically the same thing over and over again lmao
Best games to come out alongside a movie were the Punisher and Spiderman 2 both for the PS2.
No wonder I see The Golden Compass for less than $9.99 in most bargain bins! 😛
I’ll have to give it a try just to see how bad it is. By the way, you forgot Charlie’s Angels and Superman 64.
Oh, and I actually found Balls of Fury to be hilarious in an incredibly stupid way.
LOL. The Golden Compass was the only one of those games I’ve completed – I played it for over four hours and have to say its easily the worst movie-game tie-in of my collection. Not the worst game I own, no. Not quite.
i gues goldeneye and charlies angels dident make it on the list
In defense of E.T. all Atari games were pretty bad. There were a handful of good ones, but there was so much garbage released on Atari, movie games included, that I always found it strange that E.T. got all the bad press. Raiders Of The Lost Ark was almost the same game as E.T. as far as gameplay goes, and it was just as bad. I can’t believe one of the replies thought Goldeneye should be on the list, that game is a classic. It was so loved that they just re-released it on the Wii.