Games on Film

Having crowned the original 'Best Film Adaptation' in the Games on Film Awards last episode, Harry and Rory finally focus on the follow-up! Old characters return, new characters arrive, and old characters played by new actors are here too, as Outworld Emperor Shao Kahn breaks the rules of Mortal Kombat, invades Earthrealm, and bellows a lot. Can our heroes (and our hosts) find their inner animalit...

To celebrate 100 episodes of the podcast, Harry and Rory host the first ever Games on Film Awards (or GOFAs)! We take a trip through our back catalogue of video game movies and more to crown the winners in a range of categories. From Best Island to Best Villain, this bumper episode features egregious cameos, awkward acknowledgments and iconic classics of the canon. Much like any other awards cerem...

Harry and Rory are joined by their brother and creator of Dead End: Paranormal Park on Netflix, Hamish Steele, as they return to the world of Pokémon for the fourth animated movie! Ash, Pikachu and 'the rest' encounter the mythical Celebi and the time-travelling Sam on their journey, but with the forest under threat from a villainous Team Rocket marauder, can they prevent an ecological disaster? M...

Harry or Rory? Watch or Discuss? Choose or Die? The new British-made America-set retro-tech horror film on Netflix! Two nerds stumble upon an old text adventure game CURS>R, offering an unclaimed jackpot prize to the one who successfully completes it. But once they have booted it up and the game begins, they find themselves trapped in a series of nightmarish life or death situations. See the fi...

Harry and Rory are joined by comedian Sooz Kempner as they return to Green Hills for the Sonic the Hedgehog movie sequel! This time, allies and enemies from the old Mega Drive days are introduced, as Tails joins the team and Jim Carrey's Dr Robotonik returns with the blue blur's red rival, Knuckles. As they speed around the world in search of the Master Emerald, they learn the value of teamwork, t...

To mark the release of The House of the Dead Remake, Harry and Rory enrol at Undead University for the follow-up to an Uwe Boll video game movie 'classic'. This time, Professor Curien's experiments lead to an outbreak of shambling students who overrun the campus, and AMS Agents Ellis and Nightingale are dispatched 29 days later (lol) to retrieve a blood sample that could stop the zombie threat onc...

Harry and Rory take a journey to the Inkwell Isles for the animated adventures of Cuphead and Mugman in their new Netflix show. They discuss the classic cartoons which inspired the instantly iconic indie game, and how The Cuphead Show! combines a vintage look and feel with modern sensibilities. The beverage-holding brothers face fist-flinging frogs, get spooked by graveyard ghosts, and deal with t...

Harry and Rory are joined by Edwin Davies from the Shot/Reverse Shot podcast to enter The Matrix ! They look at the original film's immediate impact and subsequent legacy, and how its sequels intersected and interacted with gaming spin-offs Enter the Matrix , Path of Neo , and The Matrix Online , as well as animated anthology The Animatrix . Finally, everything is brought up to date with The Matri...

Harry and Rory mark the fourth anniversary of the podcast with their annual semi-traditional tomb-raiding video game movie, this time swapping Lara Croft for Nathan Drake. Having spent over a decade in development hell with multiple directors, Uncharted finally arrives with Tom Holland as a fresh-faced incarnation of Nate, teaming up with a tashless Mark Wahlberg on the hunt for lost treasures, ea...

Games on Film's very own champions - and rival siblings - Harry and Rory look at season one of the hit Netflix animation Arcane, based on one of the world's most popular video games they have no clue about. After wrapping their heads around League of Legends itself, they focus on the series' tale of two cities through the lives of two sisters, and the conflicts that rage between them both. Arcane'...

Games on Film is back! Harry and Rory return from hibernation over the winter break and look ahead to coming attractions this year. But first, there's a quick recap of highlights from 2021 and a few films and shows we missed. Then, we wildly speculate on forthcoming video game movies, including Illumination's Super Mario, the Sonic sequel and an intriguing take on Tetris. On the small screen, high...

The Resident Evil reboot has arrived in cinemas, so Harry and Rory make their umpteenth trip to Raccoon City, this time with the promise of a more faithful and horrifying adaptation than the six live-action movies that have come before. Returning to the first two games via their more recent remakes, it's up to Claire, Chris, Jill, and Leon to uncover Umbrella's plans, survive a viral outbreak and...

The Ryu and Ken of podcasting, Harry and Rory, take to the streets once again, this time for the animated adaptation of Street Fighter II! The iconic video game characters battle around the globe under the watchful eyes of an army of cyborg soldiers in the employ of the villainous M. Bison, who plans to brainwash the ultimate world warrior to join his ranks. But just because it skews closer to the...

It's (bullet) time for Harry and Rory to take on Max Payne in an explosive episode of the podcast! First, they revisit the original video game and discuss whether it's mix of gritty hard-boiled noir and slo-mo gun-blazing action holds up 20 years later. Then, in the feature film, Mark Wahlberg stars as the titular cop who can't be stopped, shaking down crooks and shooting up thugs to find the kill...

Spooky season continues, so Harry and Rory "prepare for a 3D ride through Hell" (minus the third dimension) as they make a return visit to Silent Hill, this time for a Revelation! Nightmares and visions plague teenager Heather Mason as she finds herself drawn towards the titular ghost town. And when her father gets kidnapped and taken there, she heads to Silent Hill to find him, as well as the tru...

To mark the spookiest time of the year, Harry and Rory launch a mini season of scary movies with a Dead Space double-bill! Following the recent remake reveal, they look back at the original sci-fi survival-horror game, its sequels and spin-offs, and how the immersive gameplay, audio and visuals hold up over a decade later. Then onto the two animated movie tie-ins: prequel Downfall, depicting the e...

The name's Bond, Games Bond. As No Time To Die finally arrives in cinemas, Harry and Rory chart the long and varied history of 007's video game adventures. From the early pixel platformers of the Moore and Dalton eras to the first-person shooters of Craig's Bond, taking in Brosnan's original video game missions and Connery returning to the iconic role for From Russia With Love along the way. Is it...

Paul W. S. Anderson and Milla Jovovich return with another take on a Capcom franchise. This time, Harry and Rory are joined by creator of DeadEndia (and their brother) Hamish Steele on their quest to take down the Monster Hunter movie, as a squad of soliders are transported to another world. Along the way they encounter fire-breathing beasts, giant enemy crab-spiders, a feline chef, and whatever R...

Harry and Rory return to the cinema for Free Guy, starring Ryan Reynolds as Guy, a background character in popular video game Free City, who discovers the world as he knows it is in fact a violent virtual playground. As he breaks out of his daily routine, he starts to bend the rules and become a hero, but when his actions draw attention in the real world, it's only a matter of time before the plug...

Infinite Darkness? Our old friend, Resident Evil's on the podcast again! Because a new CG series is streaming, with RE2's Leon and Claire reteaming...to defeat zombies in the White House, mutant rats in a submarine, and a big bad bioweapon in a secret underground facility of course! Harry and Rory try to untangle the Netflix original anime's four episodes, featuring political intrigue, government...

Things get hairy and scary for Harry and Rory with this 'whodunnit with teeth', an adaptation of the VR social deduction multiplayer game. Forest ranger Finn (Sam Richardson) moves to a small snowbound town, but when a corpse shows up and a dog gets snatched, it's soon clear that there's more than a new pipeline and an incoming storm for the locals to worry about. As accusations fly amongst the ec...

With the release of The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles, Harry and Rory are joined by translator Anthony Figueroa to discuss the trials and tribulations of localisation, before cross-examining the live-action adaptation of the first Phoenix Wright game aka Gyakuten Saiban, from director Takashi Miike. Does the movie do justice to the courtroom comedy and drama of the games? Or is an 'OBJECTION!' cal...

It's 40 years since Donkey Kong made its debut, so Harry and Rory mark the anniversary of the iconic arcade classic with the first documentary to feature on the podcast. Join them as they enter the murky world of competitive retro gaming, pitting hot sauce salesman and world record holder Billy Mitchell against newcomer Steve Wiebe to determine who is the King of Kong. Expect controversies, conspi...

Harry and Rory go ballistic watching infamous action flick Ecks vs. Sever, pitting Antonio Banderas and Lucy Liu against each other in the worst reviewed film in the history of Rotten Tomatoes. But how did such a poorly-received box-office bomb spawn two critically-acclaimed first-person-shooters on the Game Boy Advance, the first of which was released a year before the film itself even debuted? F...

Harry and Rory dial in to an 80s cold war classic for an episode of WarGames on Film. High school hacker Matthew Broderick unwittingly kickstarts potential nuclear armageddon when a game of Global Thermonuclear War with a super-computer turns out to be more than just a simulation. Our hosts discuss the film's mix of teen shenanigans and apocalyptic dread, plus its more recent spin-offs, the promin...