Slender Man began life as a creepypasta internet meme. He was created back in 2009 by Eric Knudsen on the Something Awful internet forum. However, Slender Man quickly worked his way into many other forms of media, including the Marble Hornets series, Slender: The Eight Pages, Slender: The Arrival, and even Minecraft.
After his video game appearances, Slender Man eventually made it onto the big screen. In 2015, a film adaptation of Marble Hornets was released, with Doug Jones playing the role of the faceless suited creature. A few years later, Javier Botet took on the role in the 2018 movie that was simply titled Slender Man.Â
This meme-cum-video game-cum-movie has been a huge success, but Slender Man has taken a different path to most characters and plots that appear in both video games and movies.
Traditionally, a movie is made first and the video game follows. Of course, there are some very obvious exceptions to that from recent years; most notably the Tomb Raider video game franchise was turned into the 2001 film Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and the 2018 movie Tomb Raider.
Memes also usually come later. They’re typically made up from screenshots or short clips from films, video games, and TV shows, but Slender Man, again, moved against the grain.
Here are some of the biggest games that began life as movies.
James Bond
James Bond is a movie character that needs no introduction. He is the United Kingdom’s most famous spy and has been working to save the world from all its dastardly villains since Dr. No was released in October 1962.
Over the years, the franchise has generated several iconic movies. One of the most notable of these was Casino Royale (2006). It was the first outing for Daniel Craig as 007 and saw a reboot of the story, with Bond beginning his career in British intelligence.
One of the highlights of the film is when Bond takes part in a high-stakes game of poker against an international criminal before being poisoned and having to try resuscitation on himself. This scene has led many poker fans to consider it one of the best movies about the sport.
Since the 1980s, Bond video games have been released at regular intervals. Some have coincided with movies, but others haven’t. While Casino Royale is a highlight among the films, there wasn’t a video game released to complement it.
In fact, there have only been four games released between 2006 and 2021. This is quite a climb down from the heyday of Bond games which saw at least one released each year between 1997 and 2005.
Of all these titles, the best was GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64. It was one of the first first-person shooters to ever be released on a games console, becoming a huge hit among fans thanks to its pioneering use of features like stealth. It was so important to the Bond brand and gaming in general that it was re-released in 2010, though an Xbox 360 remaster was cancelled.
Alien vs Predator
The Alien, Predator, and Alien vs Predator movies have been huge box office hits and spawned an equally large range of merchandise and spin-off publications. Included among these are the Alien, Predator, and Alien vs Predator video games.
The first of these was simply titled Alien and released on the Atari 2600 in 1982. It was a Pac-Man style maze game, which was all the rage at the time. Players controlled a human who had to move through the different mazes, collecting eggs and avoiding the aliens that stalked the corridors.
There was nothing special about it, but it laid the foundations for what would become a hugely popular video game franchise.
Alien, Predator, and Alien vs Predator games have since been released on just about every platform ever created since the Atari 2600, including the Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, and Amstrad CPC in the 1980s; the Nintendo and Sega devices of the early 1990s; and both the PlayStation and Xbox series, respectively.
The games are actually a good way to watch the evolution of video games. Starting at the original Alien maze game, the franchise added 2D scrolling platformers, Tekken-style fighting games, and first-person shooters.
Indiana Jones
Like Alien and Predator, the Indiana Jones movie franchise has also regularly found its way onto just about every video game platform ever made.
The first game was Raiders of the Lost Ark which was released on the Atari 2600 in 1982. It was a little different to the maze games that were in vogue at the time. It required the player to control a very primitive stick figure that is supposed to depict Indiana Jones and move him through different rooms while avoiding a snake that slithers its way around the screen randomly.
Unless you’ve played it before, it’s a little difficult to understand the premise at first, especially while in the market.
Regular releases of Indiana Jones games continued through the 1990s and 2000s, but there haven’t been any major releases for around a decade. This could end soon though as a currently untitled game is believed to be in the works, with Bethesda Softworks, MachineGames, and Lucasfilm Games involved in its development.
Miami Vice
Miami Vice started out as a crime drama TV series in 1984. It was a huge hit that ended up running for five seasons and 112 episodes. As the name suggests, the film was set in Miami and followed two undercover cops. It was very much a product of its time, borrowing heavily from the New Wave culture popular then.
A video game was released in 1986, but that was based on the TV show.
A 2006 movie also titled Miami Vice rebooted the franchise and brought it to a new audience. To coincide with this, Miami Vice: The Game was released exclusively for the PlayStation Portable.
It’s a third-person shooting game that loosely follows the plot of the film. Developers have tried to make it more realistic than other similar titles as health runs out quickly if the player gets shot. Therefore, a lot of cover-taking is required, which helps it to fit in more realistically with what you’d see while watching the movie.