Top 10 Videogames That Should Be Made Into Anime

Have you ever thought to yourself, what are some games you think you’d like to see become an Anime? Well, I’ve been playing videogames far longer then I’ve been into movies, so it is always interesting to see an anime based off a video game and see how it translate to the small screen. Most of the time it is lackluster but with the games choosen below, we think if handled by the right studio, could be epic greatness. Let’s start with the number 10 choice:

Tactics Ogre takes place in the island nations of Valeria; you play Denim Powell, a young member of the Walstanian ethnic group. He, his sister Kachua, and his friend Vice are determined to lead Walsta out from under the oppressive hand of the ruling Gargastan. They’re helped in this aim by a group of exiled warriors from Zenobia: the heroes of the first game in the Ogre Battle Saga. Eventually the scope of the conflict widens to include the rest of Valeria, and culminates in a bitter struggle for the High King’s throne and for the power of an incredibly powerful magical artifact.

High School of the Dead is a zombie anime with plenty of action, ecchi, and funny situations. Dead Island however, is set in the fictional island of Banoi, located off the coast of Papua New Guinea. The main characters wake up in the Palms Resort hotel to find the island attacked by zombies and mysteriously, they are immune to whatever is making people into zombies. As they try to find and help other survivors, they must also find a way to escape the island as well. The tables turn when White’s wife bites him and he uses the vaccine on himself. He subsequently undergoes a mutation and turns into a monstrous creature.

If we’re going by strictly potential of a video game story, then Okami should very well be number one. Set sometime in classical Japanese history, Ōkami combines several Japanese myths, legends and folklore to tell the story of how the land was saved from darkness by the Shinto sun goddess, named Amaterasu, who took the form of a white wolf. It features a distinct sumi-e-inspired cel-shaded visual style and the Celestial Brush, a gesture-system to perform miracles. Throughout the journey, Amaterasu is hounded by Waka, a strange but powerful individual who seems to have the gift of foresight and further teases Amaterasu and Issun to his own mysterious ends. Additionally, Amaterasu locates several Celestial Gods who have hidden in the constellations; the gods bestow upon the goddess powers of the Celestial Brush to aid in her quest. Just the sheer amount of material you could draw from this world could span over 100 episodes.

Anime is all about fun, right? Samba de Amigo is a music game, in which you shake maracas to the beat of the music. You shake ‘em high, you shake ‘em low, you shake ‘em fast, you shake ‘em slow!! So why not a quirky, fun anime based around these characters? Admittedly, there’s no real underlying story to Samba, and what little character interaction you get is abstract at best. Just thinking about the wackiness of a potential anime gets me excited though.

The cool things that differentiate this game from the others are as follows: the fun diversity of personality and style in the characters and their special abilities/combos, the playfulness of the game, and the ability to intercept attacks and reverse them by exploiting the opponent’s latency. The cool thing about turning this into an anime is having all these personalities clash! You could just picture the backdrop of the school and all the characters different adventures. The possibilities are limitless!

Roger Ebert wrote in his blog: “I remain convinced that in principle, video games cannot be art.” For me, Catherine proves this theory wrong. You play Vincent who is having nightmares every night. At the same time, he is being pressured by his long time girlfriend, Katherine, to take their relationship to the next step. And on top of this, another girl, Catherine, is seducing him and trying to take him for her own. Now he is caught in a web of lies, secrets and guilt. Every time you pass a nightmare sequence you wake up to more drama in his real life. It’s very engaging. An anime could handle these elements with hilarious and effective procision.

This list wouldn’t be complete with a potential new mecha anime, now would it? Take any two Giant Robots, put them in a large outdoor area, and invariably they’ll fight. That’s the premise behind Capcom’s Tech Romancer. There are twelve robots to choose from, each representing a particular style of giant robot from Japanese animation. There is G-Kaiser, a robot which resembles Tranzor-Z from the eighties cartoon of the same name, and Pulsion, which could easily pass as an EVA from Evangelion. Each robot has a variety of special attacks, which range from your garden variety rocket fists to the absurdly comical giant squeaky hammer.

Main character Miku has come to the house to find her missing brother, so it’s mostly a matter of making your way through the mansion, solving puzzles that will open doors, and trying to piece together the grim history of the house. But to do this, you have to be prepared to encounter a wide variety of ghostly apparitions, and it’s here that the game really excels. The appearances of the ghosts are almost always a surprise, and it has to be said that they look and sound terrifying. The ONLY way this could work is to make a dark, gritty horror anime with no humor. Just straight forward psychological horror. If a studio could pull this off, it would be a dream come true.

The plot starts slow and predictable, but finishes incredibly strong. Everyone who’s played this game agrees that somewhere in the first 3rd of the story, something grabs your attention and doesn’t let go. Maybe it’s the spectacular world of Arcadia, which basically combines the Age of Discovery and pirates with magic, and throws everything into the skies. People live on floating islands, with magic powered sailboats sailing to and from, clouds pouring down like waterfalls, and strange cultures sitting undiscovered by the Old World. Arguably, my favorite game of all time (next to Xenogears), this would be an anime with unlimited potential.

Chrono Trigger centers around the adventures of Crono (yes, that’s the correct spelling), a young man whose only apparent unusual feature is skill with a sword; otherwise, he lives a rather ordinary life, getting his allowance from his mom, taking care of his pet cat, and, as the story begins, looking forward to the Millennial Fair. At the Fair, he meets with a pretty blonde girl, Marle, who wears an interesting pendant, and who as a stranger to his town asks him if he’d be nice enough to show her around a bit. Things get strange when they visit the exhibit area of one of Crono’s friends, Lucca, who’s an eccentric inventor. Her invention mysteriously reacts to the presence of Marle’s pendant, and Marle vanishes, leaving the glowing pendant behind. When Crono decides to follow her wherever she’s gone and bring her back, he’s catapulted into a time-spanning adventure which will take him from the present to 65 million years in the past, and thousands of years in the future. I’m just scratching the surface here too. That is why this is heralded as a true video game classic and the most anticipated anime on my wishlist.