TV Shows. Shows. On TV. That we watch. Sometimes, these get turned into Video Games. That we play. Everyone follow that? Good. This list was based on a video I saw on YouTube recently, which was basically the same concept. So, the rules? None, really. Needs to be a TV Show that has existed (none that I made up inside my head 🙁 ), and that’s about it. Doesn’t matter if the show has had a game or games made previously either. These are simply shows that I would want a game made out of, or ANOTHER game made out of them. Lets get started!
Red Dwarf
With games like Mass Effect letting you travel to different planets and through space etc, it would be easy to take the concept of Red Dwarf and apply it to a video game. Obviously I’d keep it more action based than RPG and heavy story driven like the Mass Effect series, with plenty of the classic Red Dwarf comedy thrown in. Let us wander around Red Dwarf for our “hub”, and when we want to start a mission, we can hop into Starbug, choose a destination and fly off somewhere. The “missions” could all be based on actual episodes of the show, or completely new adventures. Preferably I’d go with a mix of both, so we can play some of the best episodes while still getting something new out of the Red Dwarf universe. Holly can provide us with instructions via the watch from the show, and each character can have their own unique abilities to help in certain situations, giving us the chance to switch between them freely depending on what is happening. Now if only someone could make it…
The Simpsons
For such a beloved franchise, The Simpsons have few games worth mentioning. And that sucks. Its about time we got a new adventure that builds upon the Hit & Run and self titled games to let us fans truly enjoy Springfield. A little difficult for me to decide what type of game I’d want this to be. Hit & Run was a great “GTA” style game with a big emphasis on driving around for most of the missions, then allowing you to get out to collect items and explore. Meanwhile “The Simpsons Game” was more of a standard 3D Platformer for the most part, and if there is one thing I love, its a good 3D Platformer. While a big fully open world Springfield game sounds EXTREMELY appealing to me, I think this time I’d have to stick with another 3D Platformer. I feel that The Simpsons TV Show is better suited to that formula, allowing each level to be like an “episode” of the show and being more linear with still items to collect and areas to explore. Unlike Red Dwarf though, I’d avoid making levels based on actual episodes and stick with what Simpsons games normally do; create their own story. And like The Simpsons Game, they can still throw in a few different game genres for us to play in certain levels, so it isn’t just about jumping and platforming around. That way we could get a driving section so we can race around Springfield, or another GTA parody level like we actually got in The Simpsons Game. Endless possibilities here, and it does surprise me that we rarely get a Simpsons based video game these days. Any we do get tend to be mobile games, and fuck that!
Angel
The (superior, imo) spin-off to the popular teen show Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel had 5 great seasons of TV yet didn’t get a single game. Buffy, on the other hand, only had 2 more seasons and managed to get a handful of games for it (the console ones were quite good, handheld were hit and miss). Why Angel never got its own game, I’ll never know. If it got a game release back in the day, I would have been happy with a 3rd person action style game that the Buffy console games got. However, if we got a release today… I’d definitely have to go the Platinum Games Bayonetta route. Give Angel a nice sword and let him decimate hordes of Vampires. Give Gunn an Axe maybe, Cordelia a sword, Wesley a couple of guns, and Fred a fast firing bow and arrow. Just as their basic starter weapons, at least. Give them all the ability to equip other weapons as you go along, as well as use magic. Then add to it a story, preferably something new and original, but something that could bring cameos of TV villains and other characters. Basically a similar thing to how the Buffy games did, but with the Bayonetta gameplay style. Where can I buy this game? Oh, right. It hasn’t been made. Just like the 6th season. Me sad now.
Marvel’s Daredevil
Speaking of games with the Bayonetta style… how AWESOME would a Daredevil game be like that? Very awesome. That is the answer. But that’s not what I want. Nope. I think you can all guess what I would want. Batman Arkham style, baby! The Batman Arkham games with a Daredevil skin would fit so damn perfectly imo. Combat? Check. Grappling hook aka his stick? Check. Weapon combat aka his stick… again? Check. That batvision thingy that lets you detect enemies that could be BLIND VISION or something here? Check. Just set the game in New York with Daredevil and you have yourselves a game. Give us Kingpin as the main villain, with appearances from Elektra, Bullseye, Stick and whoever the fuck else is a Daredevil villain/friend (I’m not that up on him outside of the Netflix series tbh). Throw in a Punisher cameo and a couple others like maybe Spider-Man, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage etc and everyone can be happy. Let it happen, Marvel!
Lost
Oh man, what a show LOST was. I didn’t start watching it initially, and I actually saw episode 4 first, but after that I was HOOKED. This was back when shows in the US would take seemingly forever to come on UK TV, so I was able to binge watch the majority of the first season before it had finished airing over here. From then on, I was on the US schedule for it, even resorting to staying up until 4am in the morning to catch it online and watch it immediately. While the end was disappointing for many reasons, overall the show remains one of my all time favourites and one I can easily sit through and watch time and time again (got myself the bluray boxset!). Now, we DID get a Lost game at the time. What, you don’t remember it? Well, there is likely a reason for that; it wasn’t very good. Lost: Via Domus had you play a new character with amnesia, and it was your job to discover just who the fuck you are and how you ended up there. You have a camera which you can use to take pictures with (!) and uncover secrets within the photos and remember stuff. The major problem was that the story was dull and the voice acting for the show characters was AWFUL. Not sure how many had the actual actors voice them, but it wasn’t many. And they didn’t do a good job of trying to sound like their TV counterparts. The actual gameplay, seeing you explore different parts of the island, was quite fun in places, but those damn Smoke Monster sections were frustrating as hell. Enough of that though. I wanna talk about what I’d want a NEW Lost game to be like. For starters, this game would be made now that the show is over. That gives us access to the entire story of the show, so we could just play through the show’s main story, controlling different characters as we go along. Gameplay wise… think Far Cry 3 but on the Lost Island. Not sure I have to say much more than that. Give us a big open world Island from the show with plenty of secrets to find and areas to explore while taking us through the TV show’s story (maybe even fill in some of those gaps too as a bonus…) and you’d finally do the show justice unlike Via Domus.
Marvel’s Agent Carter
Yet another Marvel show! Spoiler: Its not the last. Agent Peggy Carter was the love interest for Steve Rogers in the first Captain America film. A beautiful and totally badass women more than capable of handling herself in any situation. The show is set in 1946, after the war, where she works for the SSR (Strategic Scientific Reserve, which I believe it what would eventually become SHIELD). However, despite her experience and skills, being a women in that time period meant she was more often than not assigned coffee duty. That is until an old friend comes to her for help; Howard Stark. Framed, Stark is on the run, and asks Carter to investigate the people behind it to help clear his name. Unfortunately she must do this on her own and undercover from the SSR, leading to some interesting moments and situations. The show got 2 seasons, and imo was fantastic, but declining ratings meant it was cancelled, and sadly it looks to be the end. However, a VIDEO GAME based on this show would be great! How would I want it? Well, there just so happens to be a game already that fits the mould; LA Noire. LA Noire is also set in the 1940’s with a detective. Change it to Agent Carter working for the SSR, and focus a little more on action rather than interrogations and we have a winner. As for the story, I’d love for them to essentially use the game as a third season, since the second season ended on a cliffhanger.
Futurama
Futurama was lucky enough to already have a video game, back in the Xbox/PS2 days. And you know what? It was good. Cel-shaded graphics gave it that “animated tv show” feel, and the story was written by actual writers of the show. Overall it was a very fun, very solid 3D Platformer. For a second Futurama game, I’d happily take more of the same. Cel-shading looks even better now than it did in 2003, so visually it would be able to look almost identical to the show. Throw in another original story from the writers of the show and we’d have gold. Gameplay wise, again more of the same would be fine with me, only now we’d have more refined gameplay. Basically, think of the new PS4 version of Ratchet and Clank, but with the Futurama licence!
Robot Wars
Numerous Robot Wars games were released during the peak of its popularity, and all were actually pretty good aside from the original on Game Boy Colour (which was definitely hindered by the hardware). Extreme Destruction on PC is a favourite of mine, and a game I’ve had installed on my PC at all times since I first got it in the early 2000’s. Sadly, Robot Wars was cancelled, and no more games were going to be released for a show that wasn’t on the air any more and honestly wasn’t THAT popular to a mainstream audience. However, with a reboot of the show about to air once again later this year, I think this would be a perfect time to release a new game. Take what Extreme Destruction did and use today’s technology to knock it out of the park. Updated graphics, improved physics, better weapon animations, more destructibility and improved robot creation. Give us a great roster of old Robot Wars competitors from over the years, as well as throwing in some of the new ones from the new series. I want to be able to play as Chaos 2 and battle Cassius. I want the ability to switch between different versions of the robots, so for example if I selected Chaos 2, I could then choose Chaos 1 or even Robot the Bruce, both of which were previous incarnations of Chaos 2. As for the robot creation, give us more. More more more. And let us truly customise our robots with paint jobs etc. Similar to the likes of WWE games where we can upload and image and use it as a logo or something. That’d be awesome. I’m hoping if the show’s reboot does well we WILL actually get a new game. But only time will tell as to how good it ends up being.
Marvel’s Agents of Shield
The last Marvel property on this list, honest! Agents of SHIELD got off to a rocky start for a lot of people, but for those who stuck with it, we got one hell of a TV show. And now I want a hell of a game based on it! Have the SHIELD base from the show as your hub, and then set off for missions in a Quinjet. Mission briefings can be done by Director Coulsen, and you could either be a totally new character with their own team, or you could take control of the main team from the show. I think honestly I’d go with being a new character, and as you advance in the game and missions get harder and more dangerous, you are given the likes of May and Daisy to aid you. Fitz Simmons are the perfect pair to be in the lab developing new weapons for you and giving you hints on what you need to do. All of this combined I think could give us one hell of an action adventure game!
Person of Interest
A few days ago, this absolutely incredible TV show came to an end. It has officially become my FAVOURITE TV show of all time. It deserves a video game for sure imo. In fact, this show was the reason I was so behind Watch Dogs in the beginning. Watch Dogs was about hacking and following people and saving others before something bad could happen. At least… you can do those things as optional side missions. I pre-ordered the game. I pre-ordered the DEDSEC edition. And then the game finally came out and disappointed just about everyone. Watch Dogs was not the POI game I thought it could be. So POI needs its own damn game! The show has so many characters that could drop in and out of the game for missions, and the whole “person of interest” aspect of it also means they could add an infinite amount of missions if they wanted to. Play as Reece, give him some basic hacking abilities on his phone, with Finch in his ear to advise him and work on more sophisticated hacks in the background. Enlist help from the NYPD thanks to your inside people, and of course Shaw and ROOT will always be up for helping out the machine. One mission could be trying to figure out what might happen to some random women, while the next could involve Elias and the Mafia, followed by the CIA or FBI being on your tail, and then next time you could be trying to stop Samaritan. A POI game could be the Watch Dogs game we all hoped it would be. So make it happen FFS!!!