As we reported yesterday, Neil Gaiman is making a video game called Wayward Manor, which sounds like it’s going to be just about as Gaiman-esque as possible. See, you play as a ghost who must scare an array of eccentric people out of your gothic 1920s mansion. How delightfully macabre!
Well that got me thinking — what if other acclaimed comic book writers with a thing for dark themes got into making video games? Well, I think that comedy premise might look a little something like this…
IT ALL COUNTS!
Grant Morrison’s Meta Mario
Grant Morrison has cast his spell on Nintendo and been given complete control of the Mario universe. From this point on, every incarnation of the plumber, from Captain Lou Albano to miscolored versions of Mario from Chinese bootlegs count. Adventure through a randomized collection of worlds based on everything from Mario Galaxy to Hotel Mario to the live-action Mario Bros. movie.
In Meta Mario, challenge yourself to master the new camera system that places the viewpoint in front of Mario, making it seem as though he’s constantly running towards the screen in a bid to escape his twisted reality. Also, every copy of the game will ship with a camera, allowing Mario to constantly drop darkly comic quips about what you’re doing. Stages end with an animation of Mario crashing into the screen and briefly “breaking through the fourth wall” before being sucked back into one of an infinite number of parallel universes.
New power-ups will include the Pig suit, Sperm suit and the bald mushroom, which turns you into Grant Morrison himself.
Frank Miller’s The Big Damn Killer Dame
A new video game set in a dark, noir-ish world of gritty back alleys, seedy bars and even more gritty back alleys, The Big Damn Killer Dame is mystery-adventure game aimed at beginner players. No complex puzzles or logic required here! The answer to every mystery is “the broad did it” or “the foreigner did it” or, occasionally “that damn foreigner broad did it”. If you get stuck, just grab the nearest NPC and punch them in the balls until they give you a helpful hint!
You don’t want to know what the frog does to those turtles in the world of Alan Moore.
Alan Moore’s Pixelmen
Early, uncopyrighted video game characters are reimagined by the twisted mind of celebrated magical vagrant Alan Moore!
Pixelmen stars the ball from Pong as a suicidal albino, the ostrich from Joust as a psychotic heroin addict, the frog from Frogger as a Satan worshipper with a necrophilia hobby and Pauline from Donkey Kong as a strong, brassy woman who totally isn’t going to have anything bad or degrading happen to her at all. Nope! No-siree!
But what kind of game is Pixelmen? Well um, it starts as kind of an action game, then towards the back half becomes a sort of weird fetish-heavy dating sim and then everyone dies. So uh, action-adventure? Hey, don’t look at me — it’s an Alan Moore’s game! Who are you to criticize Alan Moore?
Mike Mignola’s uh, hmmm…
…Mike Mignola would totally just make a Castlevania game, wouldn’t he?
This is more or less how half of Mike Mignola’s comics start.
Why don’t we keep this game going? What kind of games do you think other famous comic book writers might make?