A-List: Video Games that Need to be Movies
By J. Don Birnam
May 17, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com

Having a supply of bananas on the dashboard always makes for a better driver

We’ve seen the Super Mario Bros. movie, we’ve had Street Fighter, and we are even getting The Angry Birds Movie, the first ever based on an app. But, really, is that all there is? Today we look at some of the video games that really need to be made into movies.

Since Super Mario started the trend in 1993, there’s been about 30 or so movies based on videogames. This summer alone we have the aforementioned birds, as well as Warcraft. Looking into the future, Sonic is getting the silver screen treatment, while the Resident Evil franchise has spanned a half dozen movies. But, most of the films we have seen so far have been based on RPG-type games, or on really intense action games like Lara Croft. True, Adam Sandler hit a number of games in one fell swoop last summer with the horrendous Pixels but, really, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, and the others deserved a better fate. There have also been a number of straight-to-video cartoons based on video games, but today I’m listing my top five wish list of games I want to see turned into live action feature length films.

Let’s try to think outside the box of solely action video games (though, admittedly, that’s somewhat hard to do) and come up with weirder ones. Who said Hollywood was out of ideas?

If I missed an obvious one, send me your picks to Twitter!

5. Ninja Gaiden. Am I the only one that was kind of obsessed with the disturbingly sexy-while-pixelated Ryu Hayabusa? They’ve had a Double Dragon movie, so why can’t they adapt this similarly-styled fight-on-the-street type game that has infinitely more interesting characters and storylines?

There was an evil ninja with demonic powers and/or demonic invocations, there were ghastly beasts, there was a damsel in distress who was tougher than she appeared to be (the perennially in trouble Irene), the mysterious motorcycle leather-clad sidekick Robert, evil FBI agents, and much more. On top of that, the Ninja fight sequences would be bad ass.

Sure, you may have to dispense with the obnoxious power pellets and just have Ryu be able to invoke magical ninja powers directly to launch fire and swirls at the baddies. But think of some of the amazing sets and landscapes they’d have to cover! The series spanned the Amazonian jungle to the desert to ice castles and basically hell itself. Sounds like a Cinematography Oscar waiting to happen.

Plus, the original Ninja Gaiden Nintendo game actually spawned a trilogy, and we all know how Hollywood feels about trilogies.

4. Punch-Out. I mean, they make obnoxiously trite boxing movies every other year in La La Land it seems, why can’t they just get it over with an adapt the original of all fighting games, the one that was almost impossibly hard to beat, and that took many of my after school afternoons away.

The main character, of course, would be Little Mac as he trains Rocky style to get to the main event. You wouldn’t want Tyson as the lead role unless you wanted your ear beaten off—he’s basically just the ultimate baddie.

Little Mac, meanwhile, would be played by Jesse Eisenberg and his trainer, Doc, would obviously be John C. Reilly or some such bit actor. The real fun would begin when you start casting the ridiculous opponents—remember the guy with the turban who disappeared but you had to time your punches with the jewel in his head? And, Mike Tyson, of course, would punch you out with a single blow—ouch.

The best part, however, would undoubtedly have to be casting Bald Bull and/or King Hippo. You couldn’t come up with more outrageous character names if you tried, and I hear Christopher Walken is looking for work.

3. Sim-City. Ok let’s start thinking outside the box a bit. If they can have movies based on apps, and movies based on rides at Disney World, why can’t they have a movie based on a one player simulation video game?

The Sim-City series was wildly popular and spanned, Hollywood style, dozens of sequels, spin-offs, and prequels.

The plot in this one would be easy, it basically writes itself. The unknown Mayor of Cityland begins developing a small enclave in a mostly level terrain that is water adjacent. As successive generations pass, the Mayor somehow continues to live on. At first, the plot centers around the complicated decisions required to get the city to grow on a small budget—and you can’t click the fast forward button against time, either.

But, the fun will really begin when the city has turned into a megalopolis with skyscrapers, and disasters begin to befall it. Fires and tornados at first, and maybe even a meltdown of one of the old coal plants. The real tragedy will strike, however, when they have a monster come through and wreak havoc through the streets.

Come to think of it, they’ve made this movie already many times—it’s called Godzilla, but here you’d also get the back story of how the city got built in the first place. Nerds, at least, will love it.

2. Dr. Mario or Tetris. So let’s move from outside the box into the rectangle. I’m not sure exactly what the plot of this one would be but the effects would be wondrous.

Dr. Mario is perhaps most conducive to adaptation because you can have the title doctor fighting increasingly more dense populations of three-color viruses. Again, this move has been made before, most recently by Sodebergh in Contagioin.

Here, of course, the stakes aren’t as high, it’s simply mass suffocation by pill obstruction. Perhaps the little rectangle in the video game, shaped like a pill bottle, was really a metaphor for your trachea?

Either way, the hero saves the day by dexterous handling of the remote and nifty finger work.

Ok, perhaps this one wasn’t the most well-conceived of the ideas. I bit they could make it happen still though. Just turn the viruses into characters and viola.

1. Super Mario Kart. But the video game I’d most like to see turned into a movie is undoubtedly Super Mario Kart and all the series that it engendered.

Again, this movie has been done several dozen times already—car racing movies abound. But think of how much more fun it will be if the drivers are Princess Toadstool instead of Daniel Bruhl, or Wario instead of Chris Hemsworth.

Better yet, think of the sets again! If Ninja Gaiden had cinematographic promise, Mario Kart augurs Oscar gold for the set decorators, the sound mixers, and the visual effect artists. You’d have to go into the varied and complex sets in the game from Princess Toadstool’s castle, to a Ghost House, to the even more elaborate and complex settings in later versions.

The best part, of course, will be having the characters throw shells, banana peels, and an evilly destructive blue shell that chases the leader. That’s without even talking the fearsome lightning bolt that can be used!

And, since in later iterations you could have two characters in one car, think again of how much better that will be than the plain old, boring, linear races that we have grown accustomed to seeing?

Step it up, Hollywood.