From Grease in a brawler to Kindergarten Cop in a classic survival horror, movies had a habit of unexpectedly popping up in 80s and 90s videogames.
There’s long been a link between movies and videogames. There were the earliest licenced games, such as Atari’s groundbreaking Star Wars cabinet or the same company’s slightly less successful E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial console tie-in.
Then there are games that take inspiration from the themes, production design or plot points of movies; Technos coin-op Renegade, when reworked for its western release, drew on the urban malaise of Walter Hill’s 1979 movie The Warriors, for example. Then there are all the games that have borrowed from the look of the Alien franchise, which are too numerous to mention.
Every so often, though, films used to make unexpected cameos in 1980s and 90s videogames. In some instances, their appearance was so brief, or so well hidden, that most people probably didn’t even notice them.
Join us, then, as we look back at a handful of very old videogames – and even older movies…
The Adventures Of Robin Hood
Unexpectedly appeared in: Prince Of Persia
Young game designer Jordan Mechner famously came up with his own ingenious, low-fi form of rotoscoping when he made his pioneering games Karateka (1984) and Prince Of Persia. For the most part, he filmed his younger brother performing various actions (running, jumping, crouching and the like), then traced the footage to create each individual frame of animation. For one sword fight scene in Prince Of Persia, though, Mechner drew on footage from The Adventures Of Robin Hood – specifically, a duel between Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone.
The integration is so seamless that, for a generation of players who sat for hours playing Prince Of Persia, the small debt the game owes to a 1930s swashbuckler probably slipped by unnoticed. All of which brings us to…
Grease and The Cannonball Run
Unexpectedly appeared in: International Karate+
Like Jordan Mechner, British designer Archer MacLean made pioneering use of rotoscoping to create his 1987 fighting game, International Karate+. Again, like Mechner, he took videotaped footage, froze a particular frame and traced over it (by putting a piece of cellophane over his television) to form the outline of a character. He then used this tracing as the basis for his in-game sprites. MacLean was an adept martial artist, so much of the moves in IK+ are from footage of him pulling off various punches and kicks.
When it came to some particularly athletic backflip and kickflip moves, however, MacLean turned to the movies. The backflip came from a background character briefly seen in 1978’s Grease; the split kick came from a sequence in 1981’s The Cannonball Run, in which Hong Kong superstar Jackie Chan boots two villains in the face at the same time.
Back before the rise of the internet – and video platforms like YouTube – finding reference footage wasn’t easy. Hence why designers like Mechner and MacLean often found themselves relying on VHS tapes of classic films.
First Blood and Conan The Destroyer
Unexpectedly appeared in: Golden Axe
If you thought the sound effects that accompany IK+’s assorted blows and falls seem familiar, it’s because they came from 1977’s Enter The Dragon. In fact, a number of classic games sampled various sound effects from that Bruce Lee martial arts vehicle, including Team17’s Street Fighter II clone Body Blows (the game digitises actor Bolo Yeung’s distinctive ‘Dah!’ utterance from that movie).
Sega’s brawler Golden Axe, meanwhile, borrowed its assortment of guttural screams and roars from two very different sources. As you can see in the embed above, the sound of a poor chap falling from a helicopter in 1982’s First Blood showed up in that 1989 game, while some bloodcurdling shrieks and groans were taken from 1984 fantasy sequel Conan The Destroyer.
Friday The 13th Part III and more
Unexpectedly appeared in: Splatterhouse
We’ve written before about the horror movie connections of Namco’s Splatterhouse games, so we’ll keep this one brief: on its release in 1988, the infamously gory arcade brawler was unusual for its huge number of movie references, with nods to The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and David Cronenberg’s The Fly to name but two. One particular homage to genre cinema was soon considered a bit too close for comfort, however: burly protagonist Rick wore a hockey mask almost identical to the one worn by the Friday The 13th franchise’s Jason Voorhees, at least in the original arcade version. The mask was modified to look more skull-like in most later releases – presumably to avoid the attention of copyright lawyers.
Rambo, The Terminator, Spider-Man and god knows what else
Unexpectedly appeared in: Revenge Of Shinobi
Sega’s 1989 ninja action game Revenge Of Shinobi has aged well, though its rather relaxed attitude to infringing copyright certainly makes it the product of a wilder era. Although much of its action involves hacking and slashing rank-and-file ninja and samurai, all clad in traditional garb, some more contemporary characters also made unexpected (and unlicenced) appearances. In here you’ll find sprites unmistakably modelled on Spider-Man, Sylvester Stallone’s John Rambo, The Terminator and Batman. A gigantic lizard even lumbers onto the screen at one stage – its reptilian bulk clearly inspired by Godzilla.
Someone at Sega clearly realised that some of these designs were a bit too copyright-infringing for comfort, as later releases of the game gradually modified them. The most recent versions of Revenge Of Shinobi have also altered the stern-looking face shown on the title screen (not to mention its Japanese box art).
Originally, the artwork was nakedly based on a shot of Japanese star Sonny Chiba, clad in his ninja outfit for the 1981 TV series Shadow Warriors. By the time of the game’s fourth (!) revision in 2009, Sonny Chiba’s visage was replaced by a less famous one: Tsuyoshi Matsuoka, director at development studio M2.
Blue Thunder
Unexpectedly appeared in: Thunder Blade
Sega regularly turned to movies for inspiration in its arcade heyday. Afterburner, for example, was essentially Top Gun: the videogame, albeit without Tom Cruise’s trademark grin. When it came to another aerial action game, 1988’s Thunder Blade, its designers were unabashed in their debt to Blue Thunder, a 1983 action thriller which also featured an advanced military helicopter. Sega’s game not only featured a chopper that looked suspiciously similar to the one designed for that movie, but also digitised a screenshot from it. Sega Retro has managed to track down the specific frame that Sega ‘borrowed’ for its game’s title screen – seemingly without permission.
The same screen appeared in most of Thunder Blade’s ports to home computers and consoles – presumably, without anyone at Columbia Pictures noticing.
Kindergarten Cop
Unexpectedly appeared in: Silent Hill
When players first started poking around in the gloomy recesses of Midwich Elementary School in Konami’s survival horror classic, Silent Hill, they probably didn’t notice the vague echoes of an Arnold Schwarzenegger action comedy released nine years earlier. It was only about a decade after the game came out in 1999 that keen-eyed explorers began to note just how closely Silent Hill’s school references the one in 1990’s Kindergarten Cop. The layouts are remarkably similar, and even the placement of small background details and textures are unmistakably taken from director Ivan Reitman’s movie. You can see the parallels in the video above.
Silent Hill makes all kinds of cinema and literary references, but its nod to Kindergarten Cop is perhaps the eeriest; once you notice it, then roaming Midwich Elementary begins to feel like an interactive version of The Upside Down from Stranger Things.
Or turn it around the other way, and watching Kindergarten Cop now feels like watching a sunnier prequel to Silent Hill…
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