Manga Videogames

Many great Anime and Manga could brought to life in a way we've yet to see I think. I think it's high time we see game engines in Japan that are capable of allowing for many types of gameplay, and less of  these one hook wonders.  Back in the day Shenmue showed so much promise, and round about now I expected to living and breathing in these great Anime's. Sadly the Anime houses and the developers have not been as cohesive as they need to be, and that's been really disappointing,  Anime houses need to realise the potential of their product and start making money, they need to work closely with developers and try to tell the stories in exciting new ways... I expected the to be speeding down the motorway on Kaneda's bike kicking arse right about now. I hope the west kicks them into gear, to be precise GTA4, because of certain merits.

Akira, Ninja Scroll is another, I could go and mention other masterpieces, but what about you, what do you hope to see reach it's full potential in videogame form, and what are the hurdles in your eyes ?


Akira -1988  Katsuhiro Otomo

I remember seeing a Shonen Jump game on X-Play, that seemed to have various manga/anime characters in it, it was a combination of quite a few.  It was called Jump Ultimate Stars. Unforunately, it was never released in the US. That seems to be a big issue with anime/manga games coming over to Europe and America, because both mediums tend to be split in copyrights to the amount of ridiculousness. It's very unfortunate.

On the subject of the game themselves though, I agree that there could be a lot more done that would make really great games. I can imagine several manga/anime series that would be a great game. There are alot of things done wrong with current ones out there, for example, I've never played any of the Gundam games, but they all have seemed to be received negatively and from gameplay footage just look bad. If done right, I think a Gundam game could be really awesome.

Instead of turning out crap and repeating it, they really need to improve the quality. Just because a bunch of fanatics will buy a anime/manga game no matter what the quality, that's no excuse to not try and make better games that will appeal to more people. I hope we see better quality titles in the future that, hopefully, will work closer to the production houses of these franchises.

Battle Angel Alita would be badass, so would Claymore and Darker than Black. Don't get me started on Hunter X Hunter... Monster and 20th Century Boys would probably make awesome adventure games too. The possibilities are endless...

"I remember seeing a Shonen Jump game on X-Play, that seemed to have various manga/anime characters in it, it was a combination of quite a few.  It was called Jump Ultimate Stars. Unforunately, it was never released in the US. That seems to be a big issue with anime/manga games coming over to Europe and America, because both mediums tend to be split in copyrights to the amount of ridiculousness. It's very unfortunate.

On the subject of the game themselves though, I agree that there could be a lot more done that would make really great games. I can imagine several manga/anime series that would be a great game. There are alot of things done wrong with current ones out there, for example, I've never played any of the Gundam games, but they all have seemed to be received negatively and from gameplay footage just look bad. If done right, I think a Gundam game could be really awesome.

Instead of turning out crap and repeating it, they really need to improve the quality. Just because a bunch of fanatics will buy a anime/manga game no matter what the quality, that's no excuse to not try and make better games that will appeal to more people. I hope we see better quality titles in the future that, hopefully, will work closer to the production houses of these franchises.


"

"Battle Angel Alita would be badass, so would Claymore and Darker than Black. Don't get me started on Hunter X Hunter... Monster and 20th Century Boys would probably make awesome adventure games too. The possibilities are endless..."

"Wow Bruk, I never knew you liked big robots before!, haha. I have had little experience with the Gundam series, I did buy a little toy model when I was younger though...

I agree about the stagnancy, and I am getting sick of it. It certainly impacts tech advances.  Right now, Japanese developers are looking at the western approach more closely, and with good reason to. Hopefully it will have a beneficial effect on making these adaptations more likely. These great animations will have to be adapted, they will require a lot of painstaking from both sides. If developed correctly, they have the potential to be masterpieces in their own right. "

Linkyshinks, it's interesting that you should bring up this very topic right now, because I recall starting up a thread with a very similar premise years and years ago when Nintendo's forums still had a modicum of respectability. I, too, happen to think that really good, compelling anime/manga-to-game adaptations are far and few between, along with having quite a bit of potential in the storytelling department. In my spare time, sometimes I jot up small design documents for games I think of in case I ever wind up in a position to use them and one such game was for Tezuka Osamu's Black Jack manga, an idea which I think could work especially well if, say, someone made some tweaks to Atlus' Trauma Center engine to accomodate some extra features. Additionally, I think Ghost in the Shell is still ripe for a truly good adaptation into a game; it's gotten a few games here and there, but they don't seem to be all that memorable. I always thought it'd be really fun to run around in that universe in an MMO setting of some sort, taking orders from Section 9 until you get to join them on the major missions like ones in the anime or doing your own work for terrorist factions, with both sides influencing the game's politics, economics, etc.

Afro Samurai could have been so much better...

I have edited the OP so it' more conducive for good discussion.

Why has this not happened yet?. It seems to me that tech is a major hurdle, and possibly even the biggest. The foundation of technology is absolutely vital to realizing things on the scale I am talking about. It's perfectly possible withing this generation, and certainly will be possible in the next given the pinnacle of GPU technology rihght now. Developers are to blame,  they should be showing techinical advances  to the point where Anime houses are confident and happy for them to take their product. It's true taht these projects will take time, but they are very worth it. The projects that should be taken up are Anime's with potential worldwide mass appeal. I am looking forward to the Ghibli game, I certainly think that's a good start. I hope you all buy it whatever it is quite frankly.  If a anime house like Ghibi were to have a dedicated videogames division it would have very positive ramificatios around the industry, people on both sides would take note and it may initiate positive changes.

On another note, here in the west Disney should really start looking at something like Ratchet on the PS3, and get working up something on par. They should be releasing episodic content over the PS3 and 360 soon. This is the future.

Hmm....

I'd love to see some large budget anime/manga -> video game conversions but there are unfortunately too many hurdles. The first of which is that the fan base in the west is so small that it's hard for a producer to have confidence in making their back initial returns let alone a profit. For example, let's say a Cowboy Bebop game was released over here -- how many copies should they produce? Too many and they don't make a profit, not enough and it's not even worth their time.

Suzumi Haruhi has seen a few games recently -- ADV games and some weird rhythm game... I'm pretty confident they won't be released over here as Haruhi doesn't have a big following here and the games don't appeal to the general Western audience. That said, I wouldn't mind trying them just to see what they're like so I'm a litte sad they won't come out over here, but not at all surprised.

There have been a TON of anime -> video games on the Dreamcast... that's practically all the system was for in Japan @.@ Of course most of the games were weak ADV games or dating-sims... as those are easy and cheap to produce, which brings me to a second point -- time. An anime game can't afford a 4-year development cycle as by the time it was finished, people will have moved on from that anime and won't care about a game. Hence why we see so many poor games of this genre.... or the movie -> game genre, for that matter.

I'd love to see a well designed Ghost in the Shells game.... that'd be wonderful, but I don't see such a thing happening sadly. And to be honest MMO is NOT the way to go with it, while it would be pretty awesome. It's an idea that works on paper but not in practice, much like the Shin Megami Tensei MMO.

Hopefully the Ghibli RPG "Ninokuni" is well-done, though I had a feeling it would be a stand-alone project and not based on any of their previous works. It might inspire other studios to make games, though I have a feeling they would do the same sort of thing with creating an independant story rather than basing it off of an existing product or show. That way they'll be able to work on it as long as they like without having to worry about people having moved on from the subject matter. For example if they started work on a deep, involving 07-Ghost or Canaan (two brand new titles this year) anime game this year that took 4 years to produce, chances are we'd have all moved on from 07-Ghost or Canaan by then.

*Rambles* My minds fuzzy and I'm repeating what I've already said now. Whoopsies.

Hellsing would make a great manga-video-game. I mean, Vampires, female vampires.... GUNS!

Oh yeah, that will totally work.

There are lots of manga/anime based video games....they just never get released outside of Japan. Most are blatant cash-ins, but some are good. I guess for the studio houses there just isn't much perceived demand.

Yeah I know, I'm talking about triple A games, large risk taking projects. Shenmue killed it proper, lol. it's sad.... Looking at Bayonetta makes me feel such games are now possible on engines like that.. That game is going to shock people, lol. Kamiya knows exactly what's needed, to push that genre on the evidence of what I've seen and read..

Yeah, it's mine, I like it, it's made pretty well.. I would much prefer to have the bike though. Who wouldn't.

I would like to see a really good game for Rurouni Kenshin's manga (Samurai X in the anime edition).
I had a couple of ideas, and the best would be to mix a "Soul Calibur" kind of game with an open world, and would have a rich story mode where one would have to play as the manga characters (hopefully reaching the Heavenly Punishment ark).
For example, if you played as Kenshin, you would have to start from his training era (using it as a tutorial), then move to his Hitokiri era, where you would have to find jobs for the rebels and then gather information and stuff, to finally end with the fights from the OVA's (which are also on the manga, but the OVA versions are better). After the OVA events, would come the end of the Tokugawa era, with the fights against the Sinsengumi (Saito). After that, you would reach the manga era where you would have the Sakabatou instead of the old katana, and would have to help people with doing missions, and as well, doing the important events from the manga, as the rescue of Yahiko, the fight against Samanosuke, then Aoshi, etc.

" Linkyshinks, it's interesting that you should bring up this very topic right now, because I recall starting up a thread with a very similar premise years and years ago when Nintendo's forums still had a modicum of respectability. I, too, happen to think that really good, compelling anime/manga-to-game adaptations are far and few between, along with having quite a bit of potential in the storytelling department. In my spare time, sometimes I jot up small design documents for games I think of in case I ever wind up in a position to use them and one such game was for Tezuka Osamu's Black Jack manga, an idea which I think could work especially well if, say, someone made some tweaks to Atlus' Trauma Center engine to accomodate some extra features. Additionally, I think Ghost in the Shell is still ripe for a truly good adaptation into a game; it's gotten a few games here and there, but they don't seem to be all that memorable. I always thought it'd be really fun to run around in that universe in an MMO setting of some sort, taking orders from Section 9 until you get to join them on the major missions like ones in the anime or doing your own work for terrorist factions, with both sides influencing the game's politics, economics, etc.

There are definitely a lot of series which could work really, really well if the right team got behind them and I hope that happens in the future, as I think it would potential expose another audience to a style of storytelling that's otherwise rarely seen outside of its native medium.

"

" ...I, too, happen to think that really good, compelling anime/manga-to-game adaptations are far and few between, along with having quite a bit of potential in the storytelling department..."

I can only think of two games at the moment that could be called "Manga games", those being Elite Beat Agents (presented in manga format) and Jump Ultimate Stars (presented in manga format AND has popular manga characters). You want to include anime in that statement? : )