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The popularity of video game adaptations has certainly grown over the years. Just look at the success of the Super Mario Bros. Movie; based on a classic video game franchise, it received overall high ratings and raked in a solid profit. There are also Detective Pikachu and Sonic the Hedgehog movies. On the episodic side, there is Arcane and the new Tomb Raider project.
Meanwhile, movie adaptations of books are practically a dime a dozen in Hollywood — everything from Dune to The Hunger Games and everything in between. While the pipeline between books and video games is less well known, you’d be surprised to know that some of the most well-known games in the industry got their start in the pages of a book or that unexpected pieces of classic literature got a surprising amount of screen time as a game.
5. Nancy Drew Mysteries – Carolyn Keene
Nancy Drew is the perfect example of a young female detective. She’s an icon to young girls everywhere who might be seeing themselves in a smart, determined, confident book character for the very first time. Between the 1930s and the early 2000s, over 175 Nancy Drew books were published, and the stories have been a classic among mystery fans for literal generations.
Since the books are such big hits, it’s surprising that more people aren’t aware of the Nancy Drew Adventures games. The games were published by HeR Interactive between 1998 and 2019 – first for PC, then PC and Mac. Each game is a point-and-click adventure that puts the player in Nancy’s shoes to solve a mystery, usually adapted from one of the novels. The series has over thirty games to date, and a new one, Mystery of the Seven Keys, is due this year.
4. Goosebumps – R. L. Stine
Another heavily serialized children’s book series, the Goosebumps books were many kid’s first step into the horror genre. Written by R. L. Stine, the books usually centered around a pre-teen or teenager stumbling into some kind of haunt scenario, with notable examples including an abandoned theme park, a haunted ventriloquists doll, and plant parasites. There are 62 Goosebumps books in total, written between 1992 and 1997, and the books have been made into two movies starring Jack Black.
What you might not know is that Goosebumps has also gotten the video game treatment – several times, in fact. The first was Goosebumps: Escape From Horrorland, a 1996 point-and-click FMV game starring Jeff Goldblum. Goosebumps: Attack of the Mutant came out the next year, and five more Goosebumps games would be published between 2008 and 2020, with platforms ranging from the PS2 to mobile devices.
3. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code (2003) has gone down in history for two things: the massive amount of controversy it caused among religious groups and the 2006 movie starring Tom Hanks. The movie, while not reinventing the genre of action flicks in any way, gave the movie enough traction to spawn two sequels, Angels & Demons (2009) and Inferno (2016), both with Hanks reprising his role, of course.
However, even if you’re in the crowd that saw The Da Vinci Code the day it hit theaters, you might not be aware that a video game adaptation hit shelves the very same day. The Da Vinci Code (2006) is a single-player action puzzle game released for the Xbox, PS2, and PC, where players can alternatively control Dr. Robert Langdon and cryptographer Sophie Neveu. Interestingly, the video game is based on the book, not the movie, meaning that the game characters bear little resemblance to their silver-screen counterparts.
2. The Golden Compass – Phillip Pullman
Anyone who was familiar with their summer reading lists in school has probably heard of the His Dark Materials books by Phillip Pullman. More commonly known as The Golden Compass books in the US, the trilogy takes place in a world where humans have daemons, an external manifestation of a person’s soul that takes the form of an animal. The first book was made into a movie in 2007, but you might not know about the video game that was released at the same time.
Released just before the movie, The Golden Compass is an action-adventure puzzle game developed by Shiny Entertainment for the PS2, PS3, PSP, Wii, Xbox 360, and PC, with a Nintendo DS port developed by A2M. Players control protagonist Lyra and her daemon Pan or her armored bear companion Iorek Byrnison. Though the video game adaptation was based on the initial scripts for the movie, it bears a few changes from the movie that made it to theaters.
1. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
Chances are high that you’ve never heard of Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad. Published all the way back in 1899, the story has sailor Charles Marlow telling stories to his crew as a framing device to criticize European colonialism in Africa. Among other things, the novella highlights Conrad’s view that there’s not much difference between “civilized people” and “barbarians.”
While you might not recognize The Heart of Darkness, you might be familiar with the games it was adapted into. Far Cry 2 (2008) and Spec Ops: The Line (2012) are both considered adaptations of Conrad’s novella, with the former being a loose retelling and the latter being a direct modern adaptation. Spec Ops: The Line even has a character named John Konrad, a direct callback to Joseph Conrad.
