Breaking News: Avatar Revolutionizes the Movie Game Industry

Share on Facebook posted 06-15-09 by Angelo D'Argenio

With his forthcoming project, Avatar, James Cameron is setting out to change the way we look at movie-based video games, so if you are the type of person who likes being in the pilot seat blowing up aliens, this may just be the movie-game combo for you. We have been reporting on Cameron’s string of impressive announcements over the past few weeks, including his overlong, spotlight-hogging utterances at E3, and now Variety has provided a full rundown of the director’s far-ranging plans. Turns out that Avatar, instead of following the common pattern as a video game based on a movie, will instead be a video game designed in parallel with the movie. In fact, some shots from the game are so well done that Cameron is using them in his movie, in place of the intended film footage. (Oh, that such skillful attention had been paid to other big-name action games, like anything involving the Terminator movies!) Cameron’s idea is to get everyone collaborating on the common goal of making both movie and game great. Game makers will have a say in making the movie, and movie makers will have a say in making the game, bringing both projects much closer together and avoiding the “generic game with a franchise title” effect that has been inflicted on us so many times in the past.

Cameron swears that this process will revolutionize both industries (even more so than his decision to do Avatar in full 3-D), and he may have a point. Some of the best movies of all time have been paired with some of the worst games, and although those games may have come out back in the days when everything was just a matter of beeps, boops, graphical errors, and pong paddles, they still could have benefited greatly from Cameron’s new, holistic method.

Superman 64

You know what says action to us? Superman. If you like retro movies, you probably love (most) of the old Superman films. They basically paved the way for any new comic book movie you see today. The 1999 Nintendo game Superman 64 wasn’t necessarily based on a movie, but rather on the popular New Batman/Superman Adventures, which was enthralling children at the time, and which is widely regarded as one of the all-time best cartoon adaptations of a comic book (oh, Mark Hamill, you’re the best Joker). Indeed, the cartoon was so popular that it led to several movie releases, and in some ways Superman 64 was meant to be an “interactive” movie release. Instead, it was just a pile of crap, chock full of clipping errors, pixilated graphics, and clunky game play. It was without doubt one of the worst games of all time, and definitely not anything that does justice to the Man of Steel.

Top Gun

Top Gun is one of those awesome movies that everyone has at least heard of, but no matter how much I love watching Tom Cruise before his brain was taken over by Xenu the intergalactic conqueror, I can’t get over how bad this NES classic was, and that it even had Tom Cruise’s name on it! A lot of people say that this film was made iconic by the collaboration of Tony Scott and Jerry Bruckheimer — and if only they had worked together with Konami, maybe they would have initiated Cameron’s revolution back in the eight-bit era. As it stands, Top Gun was one of the most played and yet worst-rated games of all time. Blowing up fighter jets? Awesome! Flying around a big empty white void? Not so awesome.

ET

ET was a film that revolutionized the movie industry. OK, maybe it didn’t appeal to action fans as much, especially once the guns were edited out (pander to the censors some more, why don’t you, Spielberg), but you have to admit that ET was a favorite movie of an entire generation. So consider this: ET for the Atari 2600 is widely regarded as the worst movie video game of all time. All time!

Most people believe that it single-handedly killed the console on which it was played and caused acts of violence to erupt against the video game producers. This is the sort of game that made otherwise docile babies cry, it was so bad. Most children who bought this game actually sent it back, even when it was given to children as a charity! This game was so bad, its creators buried 50,000 copies in the New Mexico desert — no lie! Although you might not happen to have a desert on hand, if you really need to get rid of this game, remember that you can just microwave it!