(no subject)

[andrew_jorgensen]

Deep within The New York Times's write-up of the new computer game adaptation of Walter Hill's The Warriors, Dan Houser, Creative Vice President of Rockstar Games, says:

"There were other things that we would watch once or so, but we kept sort of going back to 'The Warriors' and watching it sort of obsessively," Mr. Houser recalled. It turns out that the episodic pacing and cartoony visual style of "The Warriors" were just about perfect for adapting the film into a video game.

"When you watch it as a 7-year-old kid, it seems super-weird and terrifying," Mr. Houser said. "When you watch today, it's over the top. It's sort of surreal in most of the points. But the structure and the style translate perfectly into a video game world. The structure of the journey - encountering people and defeating them on the route - was a fighting game in a movie format before it was ever a video game.

"In a lot of films you look at the way the narrative is designed, and the way the focus is so heavily on characters or the period means they wouldn't translate into good video games," Mr. Houser said. "Maybe in 20 years time you can make a game that's more sophisticated at a character level, but we're still at a point in the evolution of games that physical actions are more effective to convey than emotions or conversations."

The Warriors itself is loosely based on the Anabasis of the classical Greek historian Xenophon. I wonder what then would be the literary equivalent of Pac-Man. Probably one of the Homeric Hymns.

Comments

[lynnmonster.livejournal.com]

You do know that the director of "Top Gun" and "Beverly Hills Cop II" is set to do a remake?

I don't know whether to squeal with glee or cover my eyes and whimper.

[dherblay.livejournal.com]

You left out Days Of Thunder.