In the 1980s it seemed like Hollywood hated everything that was going to compete with it: television, video games, books, comics, you name it. If it wasn’t being used as an ancillary product for a movie, then it was the enemy. Why would an executive want to embrace something like Spider-Man or Space Invaders and try turning it into a movie? Which, granted might be why so many movies from the 1980s were classic. Where’s our next John Hughes, already? If there was a video game announced tomorrow based on Ferris Bueller’s Day Off or Weird Science, I would retire this column for eternity. Unless the game sucked.
But what about movies that came out years ago that still live on through video games? Games have single-handedly managed to keep some franchises flush with cash, long before the currently Hollywood trend of retreading, prequelizing, and refurbishing movie happened. Now, you’re just as likely to have a game coming out day in date with the movie, if not a few weeks before in an effort to hype the buzz. But what about those that came before? Here are a few examples.
