The entertainment industry has forever been turning books and comics into movies and TV shows with varying levels of success. Lately, we see more and more movies and TV shows being made based on much loved video games. We’ve seen many movies that have been successful, and many that have failed.
However, I personally think that the time constraint of a feature film or movie doesn’t allow for the level of storytelling we gamers are used to and expect from our favourite video games. I am a huge fan of TV shows because those are where stories can be developed in detail.
Most of the video games we love are the ones that require us to engage with the story for extended durations. TV shows have a long-form nature better suited for the stories of most video games. I watched and loved The Walking Dead, and I didn’t even realize it was based on a game until much later. Recently shows like The Witcher, Dragon’s Dogma, and Castlevania have also gained massive popularity.
There are several more video game to TV projects in the works, and here are a few of the ones I am looking forward to the most this coming year.
The CupHead Show!
There is something to be said about nostalgia and simpler graphics. The Cuphead Show! is based on the 2017 hit game of the same name, and follows the adventures of siblings Cuphead and Mugman. While the game was brutally challenging, the animation and artwork was cutesy, inspired by 1930s Walt Disney, something that can easily be created at home with Adobe Photoshop 7.0.
The animated web television series is being created for Netflix and is produced by Studio MDHR and King Features Syndicate. It is set to release in early 2022 but you can see leaked footage from the first four episodes of The Cuphead Show! online.
Resident Evil
The Resident Evil franchise have kept the audience engaged in a gory and gritty onslaught of flesh-eating Zombies since 2002. While critics have never been very friendly where the franchise is concerned, no one can deny that Resident Evil is the most successful video game franchise, with 6 live action movies and 3 animated movies being released from 2002 to 2017.
Another live action movie, Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City is all set to launch in November 2021, and an animated TV series, Resident Evil: Infinite Darkness, just dropped on Netflix. But the instalment I am looking most forward to is the live action series titled simply Resident Evil which is due to release on Netflix soon. The show will feature Lance Reddick as the series’ regular villain Albert Wesker.
Tomb Raider Anime
Lara Croft is one of the most iconic characters ever to come out from a video game. Since the game originally came out in 1996, the tomb raider franchise has seen a handful of films and comic book spinoffs.
This year Tomb Raider celebrates its 25th anniversary and will be launching an anime TV series on Netflix. The show is not planned to be continuation of the story that have made up the films, but instead continue the storyline from where the game series’ left off.
With the success of these franchises, there is hope for developers like me to create a game that may enjoy similar fame (and fortune). In the meantime, I am going to download game developing apps from Get into Pc, work on my skills and dream of my pet project making it to Netflix someday.
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