Books, though? Actual printed books? They weren’t really game fodder.<\/p>\n
Comic books seemed easier to adapt to video games, like Activision’s Ultimate Spider-Man<\/i> game, probably because of the visual aspect.<\/p>\n
There were exceptions. For instance, Vivendi had the Lord of the Rings<\/i> book license while EA had the Lord of the Rings<\/i> movie license, and Vivendi released a couple of interesting games that were totally unlike the movie-based games EA released at the times. And I liked the Fellowship of the Ring<\/i> game from Vivendi quite a bit, even if I’ve never finished it.<\/p>\n
Or the Forgotten Realms<\/i> game setting has spawned a number of video games, drawing especially on the novels of R.A. Salvatore. But they weren’t straight-up adaptations of the FR<\/i> novels.<\/p>\n
But I have to wonder.<\/p>\n
Would Fellowship<\/i> have even happened<\/i>, in the absence of Peter Jackson’s films? I’m doubtful. No doubt it’s easier to take a book, turn it into a film or a television series, and then<\/i> turn around and turn the movie into a video game.<\/p>\n
Was it always this way? My memory for video games, honestly, doesn’t stretch back that far, but there must have been a lost golden age. You wouldn’t think it likely, but somehow even F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby<\/a><\/i> made the leap from the printed page to the 8-bit video game console.<\/p>\n Now I’m imagining a Farewell to Arms<\/i> video game.<\/p>\n To be honest, the world needs more World War I video games; not only are there so many times you can retake Omaha Beach, but there are gamers who have logged more hours in the virtual-World War II than some of the soldiers served who fought in the real<\/i> World War II.<\/p>\n I think science-fiction or fantasy would be easier to sell a game company on than an historical piece.<\/p>\n I’ve said before that I’d love to play a LEGO Star Wars<\/i> game based on Timothy Zahn’s Thrawn Trilogy. LEGO Mara Jade!<\/p>\n I think that a Prince Valiant<\/i> game could be really<\/i> cool.<\/p>\n David Weber’s Honor Harrington books would work as a space combat game.<\/p>\n For that matter, you could go back in time and do a Hornblower “Age of Sail” game or a Sharpe “Napoleonic Wars” strategy game.<\/p>\n Honestly, what I think would be awesome? An Assassin’s Creed<\/i> or Grand Theft Auto<\/i>-styled Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser game. That would be seriously bad-ass.<\/p>\n Maybe not as bad-ass as The Great Gatsby<\/i>, but there’s not a lot in life that’s more bad-ass than a man’s dissolution and destruction in the pursuit of his dreams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I worked for EB Games, especially toward the end, it seemed like every major movie property, and some television properties too, was becoming a video game. James Bond, Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, the Spider-Man films, etc., etc. Books, though? Actual printed books? They weren’t really game fodder. Comic books seemed easierContinue reading “On Books I Would Like To Play”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[297,298,806,722,179,4091],"class_list":["post-5919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video-games","tag-fafhrd","tag-gray-mouser","tag-horatio-hornblower","tag-lego-star-wars","tag-the-great-gatsby","tag-video-games","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5919","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5919"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5919\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5919"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5919"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5919"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}