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  1. Gaming

The Top 7... Classic books that would make amazing games

Features
By Tom Goulter published 6 April 2010

Like you'd read them otherwise

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Let no one say we don't love the written word. Besides using it to communicate with you lot on a fairly regular basis, werecently rescuedseven worthy tomes from irrelevance by pointing out that they'd had games based on them. But did you know there are literally dozens of books out there? It's true! And due to their reliance on archaic, printed-letters-based technology, those things just aren't getting muchattention. For shame!

Dante's Inferno has taught us, however, that basing a game on a book is one way to get afew eyes on the original text. In that spirit, we present seven more timeless works of classic literature that might get the attention they deserve, if only they'd add a “Press Start” prompt at the title page.

What's the story? You know in sitcoms where a man and a woman will have an argument about how he's so rude and she's such a princess, and they'll storm off, and everyone who has ever seen TV knows that the next shot is required by law to depict the pair kissing passionately? Pride and Prejudice is that scene, stretched to nearly 500 pages, with a much more expensive wardrobe.

How might the game look? It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a way to get his girlfriend into videogames. He could do much worse than to sit her down with a lushly-realized social-niceties sim bearing the Pride and Prejudice license. Six months down the line, his perseverance would be rewarded with somezombie DLC. Sorry, those duds just won't do.

Until then... The P&P game would basically be an Animal Crossing-style “doing favors and making friends” quest, only everyone would be dressed real respectable-like. So, um, play Animal Crossing and do your damnedest to outfit all the little beasts as proper as you please.

What's the story? A group of refugees are convinced via psychic premonition that their homeland is in danger. They venture off on a pilgrimage to find a new home. Along the way they avoid capture in a prison colony, flee a militaristic regime, and free female captives from an oppressive dictatorship. Also the characters are all adorable bunny rabbits.

How might the game look? A hyper-violent battlefield nightmare; for the trailer, the Requiem for a Dream theme should probably just be licensed before concept art has even been sketched. Wave upon wave of savage dogs, murderous soldier-bunnies and fundamentalist grunts must be dispatched in an orgy of disturbingly adorable violence that would make Bloody Roar look like Pokemon Blue.

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Until then... Watership Down wouldn't technically play much different to Warriors of Fate or Castle Crashers. So if you want to just watch a montage of the terrifying animated movie's most violent moments then pretend that that's what Golden Axe is, you wouldn't be too far from the mark.

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