Games based on books?

[Antiriad2097]

Reading the Hunchback article in RG issue 151, there's a panel on other games based on books. From that article we have:

Dracula (Spectrum/C64/CPC1986)
Hunchback (Most 8 bit home computers, 1984)
Tom Sawyer (NES, 1989)
Treasure Island (Spectrum/C64/C+4, 1984)
War of the Worlds (Arcade, 1982)
The Wizard of Oz (Unknown, 1985)

I can also think of these:
The Colour of Magic (Spectrum/C64/CPC, 1986)
Discworld (PC/Mac/PS1/Saturn, 1995)
Discworld II (PC/PS1/Saturn, 1996)
Discworld Noir (PC/PS1, 1999)
Frankenstein (Spectrum/C64/CPC, 1987)
The Hobbit (Spectrum/C64/CPC/Oric, 1982)
The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring (Spectrum/C64/BBC/CPC, 1986)
Shadows of Mordor (Spectrum/C64/CPC, 1987)
Treasure Island (Spectrum/C64/CPC, 1991)
War in Middle Earth (Spectrum/C64/CPC/MSX, 1989)

That's quite a few off the top of my head. I'd never really considered just how many there were, is it almost as prolific as movie licensing? What can we add to this list?

[theantmeister]

Was Little Nemo on the NES based off the book or the movie? (nothing to do with Moby censored, of course)

LOL Moby censored.

[Sel Feena]

There's a Dune strategy game, isn't there?
There's also a bunch of Bible inspired games by Wisdom Tree, AVGN did a video on them

[DPrinny]

Never ending story?

Is hitch-hikers guide to the galaxy based on the book?

[TwoHeadedBoy]

Was Little Nemo on the NES based off the book or the movie? (nothing to do with Moby censored, of course)

LOL Moby censored.

Little Nemo was a comic... Think the NES game might've been based on the 1989 movie version. All three of those things are great

[joefish]

Quite a slant towards adventure games. Though some strategy.

I seem to remember one based on Jeffrey Archer's Not a Penny More Not a Penny Less.
And James Herbert's The Rats.

A few multi-choice adventure books got simple game versions - Warlock of Firetop Mountain, Citadel of Chaos, Forest of Doom and three of the Lone Wolf series.

Peter Pan, The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13¾, The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World.

Probably lots more if you allow a book - to - film - to - game connection, and likely a bit more action to be found as well.

And then there's the games that came with background novels like Elite, or had them written later, like the Myst series (The Myst Reader is actually a really good collection of three stories that link the characters and civilisations of the games).

[Antiriad2097]

Probably lots more if you allow a book - to - film - to - game connection, and likely a bit more action to be found as well.

And then there's the games that came with background novels like Elite, or had them written later, like the Myst series (The Myst Reader is actually a really good collection of three stories that link the characters and civilisations of the games).

I was trying not to include games where the license was for the film rather than the book (a bit like the Speccy Blade Runner & War of the Worlds games were based on the records).

I don't think we'd want to include games that came with books not prior released, or that had books written later, since that's fairly common, especially in later years where we have whole series of books written for stuff like Halo. In those cases the games inspired the books rather than vice versa.

[learnedrobb]

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain.

There was a Speccy game released back in 1984, then a "new" version was released in 2009 for the DS, and 2010 for iOS and Android.

[aztecca]

There was a game on the original xbox (ntsc) called the Bible game.

[necronom]

There were two Adrian Mole games for the C64 and Spectrum (possibly others).

[RodimusPrime]

Would Dantes Inferno count?

[paranoid marvin]

There were two Adrian Mole games for the C64 and Spectrum (possibly others).

They were excellent!

[Sureshot]

Lots of Tom Clancy games, eg. The Hunt for Red October, Red Storm Rising, SSN, etc.

Rainbow Six is actually an interesting case - they discovered Tom was writing Rainbow Six and decided to base the game off that (and changed the name). However, they actually ended up finishing it before the book was done, so the plots aren't quite the same.

[The Laird]

Dracula: The Undead on the Atari Lynx

[outdated_gamer]

Turok was based upon a comic, a rather rad theme (native American hunting dinosaurs) that sadly didn't get the kind of treatment in modern times it would deserve (could have been spectacular on the CryEngine). Also, Heavy Metal FAKK2, a bit forgotten PC-only 3rd person action game. And Doom was inspired after Lobo.