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GTA Ideas Pages |
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Art on computers. Hmmm. We all know about "multimedia" CD-ROMs. While these are able to present diverse subjects and previously non-digital art quite well, only computer games allow the viewer to take a first-person standpoint within the world the artist created, facilitating an immersive experience of the story, music, visuals or other forms of artistic expression (see also: Immersive Games ). Good books, movies or artworks have always done so, in a way; one could even say that an artwork is completed only when the viewer does indeed immerse himself in it, perceive it, as it were.
A computer game is art.
It can be good art, or bad. We know of trivial literature and movies
as well.
Ideas change form. It probably started even before legends were put on stage in ancient greek theatres. Whenever a crossover happens, those who see both usually have strong opinions on it. "Which did you like better, the book or the movie?" Often we find something "lost" in the transition, sometimes we see something gained, and we always hope the two treatments would complement each other in a meaningful way, else we wouldn't have gone to see both.
Ace
Ventura - Comedy Movie, Cartoon TV series, game
Reportedly,
no fun to play
Bladerunner - SciFi book (Philip K. Dick), movie
(Ridley Scott), 3D-first person adventure
Reportedly, the feel of
the movie's world has been recreated well.
Blown Away - movie,
3D-interactive movie/adventure
The game doesn't hang together at
all, and is more boring than challenging.
Discworld - fantasy book series (Terry Pratchett), 2
graphical adventures
With a world as elaborate and
well-documented as this, the adventures easily fit right in.
Dune - SciFi book (Frank Herbert), movie, real-time
startegy
An oligarchic socity (3"houses") battling a
hostile planet and its sandworms - looks ok from afar.
Fahrenheit 451 - SciFi book (Ray Bradbury), graphical
text adventure (1985?)
Athmosphere very densely recreated,
immersive.
Gateway - SciFi book (Frederik Pohl), semi-graphical
adventure by Legend entertainment
recreates the athmosphere and
world of the book, you feel at home immediately
Hitchhiker's Guide To the Galaxy - SciFi radio play,
book, TV series and Infocom text adventure (Douglas Adams)
reported
to be good
I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream - SciFi short story
(Harlan Ellison), graphical adventure
Reviews weren't good, the
instructions look promising, however. Maybe more later.
Indiana Jones - Movie (Spielberg), graphical adventure
(LucasArts)
reprotedly a top graphical adventure.
Pink Panther - Movie intro, TV cartoon serties,
adventure
Reportedly, the adventure is fun to play and has the
right athmosphere.
Martian Chronicles - SciFi book (Ray Bradbury),
renderadventure
taken as adventure, mediocre. Luckily, the CDROM
contains additional documentation (video interview etc.) about Ray
Bradbury.
Men In Black - SciFi movie, adventure
reportedly
flawed as an adventure
Monty Python - comedy TV series, movie, multimedia
CDROM
Complete Waste Of Time
is more like a retrospective, the answering machine messages
are almost the high point
Quest for Fame -
rock music (Aerosmith), Vmusic adventure
The Virtual Pick in the
box and the principle of having the player play to the music as if
he were a band member make this an experience that's even more
immersive than just singing along and beating your head to
the rhythm, getting close to actually performing the song.
Shannara - fantasy book series (Terry Brooks),
graphical adventure by Legend entertainment
The adventure's story
features some main characters at a yet undocumented time period and
plays well.
Starship Troopers - SciFi book (Heinlein), movie,
ego-shooter?
I don't belive the feeling of a military
organizartion that Heinlein conveys will be adequately reflected in
the game.
Star Trek - SciFi TV series (Roddenberry et al.),
movies, books
This is a chapter unto itself. While the first
graphical adventures (e.g. Judgment Rites or A Final
Unity) faithfully create episodes of the series, making you
explore strange planets with a small group of officers (and
expendable redshirts), Starfleet Academy leaves the ground of
the series and is geared toward military action and visual effects.
Star Wars - SciFi movie (George Lucas), shoot'em up
games
The vector-graphics arcade game of that name, a shoot'em up
depicting the final approach to the death star, was fun to play, but
looses the added drama and sunspense that the movie's story built up
during that hour or so before that scene. Rebel Assault uses
video-like animations reminiscent of the movie's fighting scenes,
requiring the player to press his button at the right time; the
story doesn't amount to much.
War Games - movie, strategy game
reportedly next to
no relation to the movie
War of the Worlds - SciFi book (H.G. Wells), movie,
real-time strategy game
While in the movie the hero finally finds
a vulnerability of the aliens that can be exploited, I don't believe
a strategic approach would have helped at all; in fact the movie
makes it quite clear that this is the case. How this can be turned
into a rts is beyond me...
X Files - SciFi TV series, movie, video
adventure
reportedly short and boring, the plot requires Mulder
and Scully to have disappeared, which means you hardly see them at
all.
Games that exist(ed) but I can't remember much about: Ghostbusters, Gremlins, Jurassic Park (Spielberg movie), Lion King (Disney), Space Jam, Tekwar (SciFi book by William Shatner), Yoda Stories (Star Wars).
Did you notice? The literary genre that has made first and foremost use of all things related to computers was Science Fiction; nowadays computer game developers take many of their ideas from it and the related fantasy genre.
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GTA Ideas Pages |
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Created
by Michael Mendelsohn