Video Games And Comic Books
What is the relationship between video games and the comic book industry?
Well, comic books and video games have a lot of the same fan base; they attract a lot of the same people. Video games is one of the first places where you could do these amazing things that superheroes could, in a game. Spiderman for the Atari 26 was one of the first ports; very successful. And that was very successful because DC Comics and Atari were both owned by Warner at the time, so it was kind of easy to cross over when you own both of the companies. Since then, they've enjoyed a fairly successful run of comic-based games, and it's something that's going to keep… I mean movies, all the licenses are tied together at this point.
What are some of the qualities of a successful video game based on a comic book?
To base some things, especially when you're talking about super heroes, on a comic book, you need to properly emulate those super powers when you're playing the game. One of the very disappointing things about the some of the early superhero games is that, for example, Spider-Man would shoot his web and just knock you over; it wouldn't 'web you', it didn't feel like it it did in the comic book. That's something especially with the Next-Gen Consoles; you're really able to achieve that kind of power. You can be Nightcrawler and jump from place to place in one of the more recent X-Men games. You really can jump as high as a building or fly, and it's important that if a video game is going to be based on a comic book, especially one of the superheroes, that you're able to properly emulate those sorts of powers, because that's the fun in it.
What are some of the qualities of a successful comic book based on a video game?
Well, in a comic book based on a video game, an important quality is to be able to take those characters and flesh them out more, especially if it's going to be a serial comic. It's the same kind of idea as taking a video game and making it into a television series; you have to make sure you have enough material there to forward the plot, to forward the characters, and to really drag people into that universe.
What are some of the best video games based on comics?
Some of the best video games based on comic books have got to be 'Spider-Man' for the Playstation, 'Batman and Robin' for the Dreamcast, and a personal favourite for me is the 'Marvel vs. Capcom' fighting games; I thought that those were really strong. Also, 'X-Men' in the arcade is a very good title.
