Videogames and movies go way back, but their relationship has often resulted in truly terrible children and ungodly expensive licensing agreements. Videogame historians love nothing better than to point out the disastrous Atari title E.T., which was so remarkably bad that many critics hold it personally responsible for the videogame crash of the early 80s. Millions of unwanted E.T. carts ended up in a landfill, and many game critics felt that mixing movies and games was a lot like mixing peanut butter and mayo. Nevertheless, the game/movies kept coming. Much has been made of Atari's Star Wars, and the PS Goldeneye was a hit, though these games' relationship to their movie franchises is fragile at best. Indeed, anyone who has played Universal Soldier knows that it's the old game Turrican clumsily re-made to include Van Damme. Videogames based on movies have never been noted for their originality, as a whole swarm of realllly bad NES platform titles makes boldly clear. Anyone want to play The Adventures of Gilligan's Island?

Why am I writing about all this now? Well, I was browsing Yahoo! this morning and came across two videogame related articles. The first was a report By Ben Berkowitz that says gamers are tired of videogames based on movies. This news comes at a time when almost every would-be blockbuster brings a new videogame title to the shelves. While most of these games have turned a profit based on the sheer volume of people willing to plunk down $30-$60 for a game even remotely related to a "totally kick-ass movie," Berkowitz indicates that this trend may be going the way of tight-rolled jeans.

"All of this creates an exciting prospect for game developers and publishers," Doug Lowenstein, president of the trade group, said recently. "What it means is that they will have the opportunity to launch a new era in game design and creativity."

Hmm...Well, I hate to disagree with such a nice sentiment, but let's face it--there are piles of videogames out there that aren't based on films that are just as boring and played out as these franchise games. Let's hope that gamers will FINALLY get tired of FPS and start looking at some other exciting prospects. I'm still holding out for a wave of truly triumphant RPGs. :-)