Adaptation Decay

To whom it may concern, 'Tis I. Mario.

There are two types of people in this world. Dungeons. And dragons. Which one are you?

Well, Cuphead and his (adopted brother) Mugman, They like to roll the skee balls By chance they came 'pon the Devil's Game, And gosh, they paid the.... what rhymes with skee balls?

Welcome to hell. This month we're talking about Elf Bowling: The Movie, sometimes subtitled "The Great North Pole Elf Strike", which is sens

The Sims is obviously an amazing game series and we wish we could play more of it. From the outside, the Sims community seems like an inclusive and welcoming space where people can be creative and have fun. And then we have the Sims Spark'd, the product of an ill-advised partnership between EA, TBS, and Buzzfeed Multiplayer. They gather 12 Sims content creators, put them in teams of three, and sub...

Did you know that DC published a comic to promote the release of Deus Ex: Human Revolution? Of course you didn't! The six issue arc follows Adam Jensen on a little side mission that takes place in between chapters of the game. A new augmented terrorist is on the scene, and the series of attacks has something to do with his past on the Detroit SWAT team. So he enlists the help of basically Lara Cro...

You've never heard of this game show, and because it's on Peacock you'll probably never see it. But it's worth talking about because, wow, it's a very bad idea. Imagine sacrificing your bodily integrity to suffer concussions and broken bones on a more boring version of American Ninja Warrior, where every move is "gently jump to another surface and crawl on top of it". And imagine doing so while tw...

This newest Resident Evil movie is simultaneously a better adaptation and a better movie than the Paul W.S. Anderson movies, while also not being good enough. It crams the broad story of the first two Resident Evil games into a breathless mess that's goofy and entertaining, while wasting tons of opportunities to tell the best stories from the source material. But hey, at least it adapts the games.

The Muppet Babies was a smash hit cartoon that started the "baby versions of popular characters" craze, but video game fans remember one episode in particular. Gonzo loves his Pretendo, and the entire nursery goes NUTS when they start playing it along with him. This episode is an excuse for us to get nostalgic for the Muppets while also doing a shorter episode, so we hope you enjoy going on this r...

Billy and Jimmy are brothers. One's a Dragon Master, one's a Shadow Master, until they're both Dragon Masters because a Shadow Master comes to town. It's dumb. The whole show, honestly, is garbage. It's hard to look at, hard to listen to, and it's a really bad adaptation. Avoid at all costs.

This month we take a look at two Christmas specials: one from the Pac-Man cartoon, and one from the Pokemon anime. The Pac-Man cartoon remains as baffling and boring as always, relying on the same non-joke about "chomping" for its entire duration. Meanwhile, the Pokemon Christmas special, "Stantler's Little Helpers" is very cute, but slight. Somehow, both specials have the same plot: Santa injures...

What if the 90s were made into a pure, uncut video drug? You'd get GamePro TV. Hosted by J.D. Roth and the contemptible B-Man, this half-hour commercial claimed to be the television version of GamePro Magazine. Listen as we talk about this fever dream of green-screen effects and poorly stretched commentary.

There are some nice things to be said about the original Silent Hill movie. It has pacing and script problems, but its production design is both high quality AND faithful to the games. When it came time to make a followup, they whiffed every single aspect of it. Sharon from the first movie is all grown up, and Silent Hill wants her back. At least we think it does, it's very self-contradictory.

We're as surprised as you are that this turned out to be okay. But it's kinda fun! We know that Kirby's cute, but he'd also be a nightmare to live around. This 2003 cartoon presents the reality of having a Town Kirby... a pre-verbal infant cosmic monstrosity who can destroy homes on a whim. Though we disgree with his methods, we have to say it's hard to fault King Dedede for wanting him gone.

This month we talk about five issues of really bad comic adaptations of Resident Evil, which should actually be really easy to adapt! It's nonsense, really, how WildStorm managed to biff this one so hard. What starts as half-assed, rushed retellings of the first two games expands into some slightly better, but still worthless expansions and side stories. How does Barry Burton's therapy go? What if...

We head back to the earliest days of video game cartoons to talk about a confusing and boring variety show that's not really based on your arcade favorites! The good news is, YouTube also featured the vintage commercials. Saturday Supercade was an hour long show, and each episode featured four segments... this month, we talk about an episode that features Frogger, Donkey Kong, QBert, and Donkey Ko...

The staying power of the Mortal Kombat brand is a mystery, but we're here for it... even if this movie is dumb as rocks. Cole is a down and out MMA fall guy who happens to be the heir to a great line of ninja warriors. There's also an interdimensional martial arts tournament that Sonya Blade and Jax are investigating. And Kano is here, too. Can the heroes of Earthrealm save the world, again, for t...

The creators of Willy's Wonderland might claim they weren't inspired by Five Nights at Freddy's, but we'll trust our eyes over them. Nicolas Cage plays a mute, mechanical janitor stranded in a small town, and trapped in a haunted fun center overnight. There are also horny teens in play. This is a baffling, cheap, fun movie and we have a great time talking about it.

You have never heard of this movie, and we're going to fix that. Beta Test supposes a world where a gamer can control a living person, who sends back convincing enough footage to make that gamer unaware that they're doing more than playing a game. So the most famous beta tester who ever lives is tricked into controlling a fighty fight guy through a horrible killing spree in order to... and I'm not...

Did you know they made a TV movie out of Legends of the Hidden Temple? And that it's actually kind of okay? This month's Adaptation Decay is a slight deviation from our usual formula, as we talk about the Nickelodeon game show classic, and then examine its faithful film adaptation.

This month we bring you a discussion of two cartoons based on Sonic the Hedgehog, both released in 1993. First, we talk about "The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog", which aired in syndication on weekdays. Specifically, we talk about the episode "Super Special Sonic Search and Smash Squad", which gives the origin story for two of the show's annoying villains. Next, we talk about "Sonic the Hedgeho...

You can't help but smile at big dumb fun. The Rock is one of those muscle scientists, raising the last of the albino gorillas. Unfortunately, a wayward canister of corrupt corporate super contagion makes its way into his zoo, and all of a sudden Chicago is at risk. We really like this movie, because the monters are big and the buildings fall down.

This month, to coincide with the WOFF! coverage of Dragon Age 2 , we're turning our attention to the web series created by Felicia Day to promote the "Mark of the Assassin" DLC. The short version is that we're unimpressed. The long version is that this is a really fun episode if you like to hear us dig in on a failed movie.

The arcade hit Dragon's Lair was already more cartoon than game, so you'd think it wouldn't be hard to push it all the way to one side and make an animated series out of it. The problem is, you also have to have plots, and dialogue, and all kinds of hard things. This show ended up being one of the more boring things we've covered for Adaptation Decay, and that's saying something.

If you die in the game, etc. etc. and so on. A wise man once warned me: If you die in the game, you die in real life. That man was someone speaking in a trailer for this movie, and that's why I've never died in a game. "Stay Alive" is a movie that not a lot of people remember, because it's very bad. Some young people discover an unreleased survival horror-ish game. The problem is, anyone who dies...