When Video Games Serve as an Inspiration for Other Video Games
Video game developers always go with the current trends. If people like a certain type of video game, like first person shooters, real time strategy games, or even sandboxes, developers will go on to create more of the same stuff to fulfill their needs. Most of the times the trendsetters remain the only successful title in the long run (see Minecraft and its numerous clones). But other times a single video game can serve as a basis for an entire genre, creating countless titles for generations to come.
One of the most influential video game of all time was Doom - FPS titles were for a long time referred to as "Doom clones", only to be called "Quake clones" later. But today I don't intend to go into epigones and copycats. Today I'm going to venture into a realm less known to the average gamer, which is still one of the most lucrative forms of gaming to date: real money gaming.
Building a video game based on a successful movie is a well-known practice in the gaming industry. The first movie-based video game was Death Race, an arcade title released in 1975, based upon the sci-fi movie Death Race 2000. (It was also the first video game to spark the debate over violence in video games). The tables have turned in 1993 when the first ever movie based on a video game was released. Called Super Mario Bros., and starring great names like Bob Hoskins, John Leguizamo, and Dennis Hopper, the movie turned out to be nothing but a novelty. But it didn't stop studios to adapt successful video games to the big screen, giving birth to titles like Final Fantasy, Resident Evil, Tomb Raider, and Hitman. The latter two I mentioned made it to yet another medium, being transformed into successful, popular video slot machines as well.
Available for free (and real money) play at Royal Vegas online casino, where you can choose from over 700 exciting casino games, both the Hitman and Tomb Raider video slots were among the most popular games a long time after their release. While Hitman's popularity plummeted, Tomb Raider's success at Royal Vegas was enough to give birth to a sequel, Tomb Raider: Secret of the Storm. After its release at RoyalRoyal Vegas, the game stayed on the top of the charts for months. It's still one of the game portal's lists as all-time fan favorites. And its memory was not tarnished by the dozens of games Royal Vegas launched in the coming years.
Although there are many games that would make perfect slot machines, they are hardly ever transformed into slots. It's almost like A-listers, and indie developers alike, would intentionally avoid being associated with this hush-hush branch of their trade. But slots developers won't give up: if they don't have any video games to adapt, they will create their own stories to tell, their own visuals to amaze their players with.
