Friday, May 11, 2007

Five Licenses That Need To Be Turned Into Videogames

If there's one thing that the gaming world needs, it's more games based on licenses. It just makes sense - even when you make a very good game, it's logical that it would have been better if it had also been based on a comic book, movie, or TV show.

For instance Danger Girl. Or South Park. Or, um, Pimp My Ride. Artistic gems, every one.

So clearly as the keen-minded futurist I am, it's my civic duty to trawl the oceans of our shared cultural heritage for unharvested intellectual property to fuel the games of tomorrow. For your ease of reference, I've compiled a quick list of the five game licenses that absolutely need to happen.

1) Barbarella
Your mission, Barbarella: find Durand Durand!
Humanity's future is in danger... and only Barbarella can save the day! UNLEASH a huge array of questionable fashion choices! CASUALLY STROLL your way through implausible locales ripped straight from the hit film! Go head to head with evil scientist Durand Durand in RAMPAGING Orgasmatron battle sequences! Finally you can bring Barbarella home - in this brand new hit videogame!

2) James Joyce's Ulysses
If you liked The Da Vinci Code, you'll love Ulysses! Can YOU crack James Joyce's unintelligible literary cypher? Take control of TWO rugged heroes along with a host of memorable allies in your quest for a Gorgonzola cheese sandwhich, a backyard to urinate in, and the reconciliation of the history of the English language from Anglo-Saxon times to the modern day. The eighteenth and final level consists of eight massive rooms unmarred by walls, objects, enemies, or goals!

3) A Clockwork Orange
Fancy a bit of the old ultra violence? Then sobirat your britvas and your milk-plus, my droogs, and get ready to drat with a HUGE array of nazzes, millicents and chassos! Sod molodoy ptitsas! A bit of the old in-out, in out! Take jeezny by the yarbles! Get the bolshiest pan-handle as you viddy TWENTY ONE horrorshow levels full of crast, creeches and lubbilub, all to the zvooks of the old Ludwig van! You'll be smecking for sure!

4) Videodrome
At last David Cronenburg's masterpiece comes home to next-generation consoles, and puts YOU in the driver's seat! As Professor Brian O'Blivion, producer of renegade TV channel Videodrome, it's up to you to keep viewers literally glued to their seats by serving up a mind-destroying programme of televised torture, violence and rape! Use the Videodrome Signal to cause long term damage to television addicts! Maximise your converts - and your score - by stringing hallucinations and brain tumours into mind-rocking combos! Long live the new flesh!

5) The Brady Bunch
Forget The Sims! The ultimate blended-family game this holiday season is The Brady Bunch! Basically, it's the story of a lovely lady, who is bringing up three very lovely girls. ALL of them have hair of gold like their mother - the youngest one in CURLS! But the action REALLY starts when we introduce a man... named BRADY... who is bringing up no less than THREE boys of his own. Four men living all together - yet they are all alone... Use a revolutionary new game engine to help this lady meet this fellow! You'll soon know that it's much more than a hunch that this group will somehow form a family - and THAT's how they become The Brady Bunch!

There's no need to applaud my genius. It's just a matter of analysing market trend and seeing the almost inevitable next craze. My only hope is that these games come out for the Wii, because there's not a one of them that wouldn't be even better with motion sensitive controls.

8 comments:

Josh said...

*applauds genius anyway*

Anonymous said...

hmm. I actually think that the clockwork orange game would work...
but only if you made the story incomprehensible without reading the manual, and the gameplay sequencing make no sense in relation to the plot.

Greg Tannahill said...

If the rumours about a Barbarella remake come to fruition you can bet your wireless controller that a game adaptation will follow. They were talking Drew Barrymore in the title role for a while (which would have been awesome), now I hear the candidate is Kate Beckinsale (less good).

Chris said...

Awesome - I'm not sure I'd *play* Ulysses, but I'd happily design it. :) As for Videodrome... ick. ;)

Unknown said...

I'd also like to see a text based RPG based on Kafka's 'The Castle'.

Greg Tannahill said...

Text based RPG? What is this, the early 80s?

>go castle
It is dark. You are likely to be eaten by sprawling unconstrained bureaucracy.

Really, if you have to experience some kind of interactive Kafka experience, just change your Windows logon to "K" and then try and remove all the Microsoft spyware and adware on your computer without destroying it.

Unknown said...

"Text based RPG? What is this, the early 80s?"

I wish :-(

Anonymous said...

Clearly, we need an MMORPG based on Atlas Shrugged.