I was browsing on cinetv.blog and I happened to stumble upon the latest contest which is about favorite video game movies. Favorite video game movie....

I've written before a few times that I'm not much of a gamer, despite pop culture constantly telling me that I'm suppose to be one. When I was a kid I played a lot of NES and SNES, as pretty much everyone of my generation did, whether they admitted it or not, and so I still have a lot of fondness for things that remind me of those games—the music, the characters, some badly translated lines, etc—but whenever I go back and try to play them now, I quickly grow bored.

I also had a PC in the 90s and so all those old DOS games were my friends—Wing Commander, the LucasArts adventure games, and so on—but those too I have a hard time going back to now.

So these days I definitely am not a gamer, but when I was a kid I was.

All that said, video game movies... When I think of video game movies only three come to me offhand.

1. The new Super Mario movie that is breaking records worldwide. My kids really want to see it but movie ticket prices in Japan are beyond insane, so we will wait until it's on video.
2. The Wizard, which was little more than a hype vehicle for Mario 3. It also contained the iconic line "I love the Powerglove. It's so bad." Bad being good. This was the 80s, after all.
3. The 1993 Super Mario Bros movie with Bob Hoskins that gave us a really bizarre version of the Mushroom Kingdom.

Ok, having written that list, my mind is giving me more.

There were all the Tomb Raider movies, but I didn't see any of them. I did try the first game but I didn't enjoy it. It barely ran on my 486 so I could never get into it. Therefore when the movie came out I just wasn't interested. I also have never been a big fan of Angelina Jolie so that wasn't a draw.

There have been countless Pokemon movies and I've seen bits and pieces here and there because my kids watch them, but I've never seen all the way through. I never got into the games anyway. I didn't have a Gameboy so I never got into those first few games, and never having gotten hooked I just never got into any of the other ones either. I do know my kids love the recent Switch games.

There was that 1994 Street Fighter II film with Raul Julia. That was a pretty horrible movie; watching Raul chew the scenery was the only good point. I remember the anime movie of the same name from a few years before being much better, but honestly all I remember of it is we get to see Chun-Li taking a shower. I was a young boy at the time, so you know where my mind was. Kung-fu may be cool to young boys, but naked chicks are even cooler.

^{This is really all I remember of the movie}

There were a handful of Resident Evil films, weren't there? I only watched one and I remember nothing of it. We were watching it at a party and made a drinking game to try to help us through the movie because it was so bad. I don't remember which of the stars, but one was a Brit doing an American accent and he (or she? I don't recall) was doing such a bad job with the accent that were were drinking to it.

There was also that Final Fantasy movie in 2001. The one that hired Alex Baldwin to do the voice of a character who looked exactly like Ben Affleck. You know it's a bad movie when all I remember of it is that odd casting. At the time we all guessed that they wanted Affleck for the role and designed the character for him, but he refused so they went with Baldwin. I don't remember anything else. It was about the life force of the earth or something, right?

I do remember enjoying the first Mortal Kombat film. It was goofy with bad dialogue, bad acting, and cheesy effects, but it was close enough to the game to be fun, and it had Christopher Lambert as Rayden—that right there gave the movie several points. The kung-fu, while not nearly as good as a good kung-fu film from Hong Kong, was also good enough to keep me interested.

^{They are all kneeling in front of Lambert because they are overwhelmed by his coolness.}

Annnddd.... that's all that's coming to mind. Oh wait, there was that Sonic movie with Jim Carrey? I didn't watch it, but I remember the internet drama about Sonic looking ridiculous, everyone complaining, and the studio actually going back and improving his appearance. That has to be one of the few times a studio actually listened to fans, eh?

I don't think I'm making a good entry to the contest here. I need to pick a favorite, right, not just give random thoughts and memories.

In that case, maybe I'll pick the original Super Mario movie. Yeah, it was bizarre, and it introduced that completely idiotic naming thing of "Mario" being their last names, but there was a charm. Bob Hoskins was a great Mario.

I don't think I can really give many details, because I don't remember many. I went to see it in theaters with my brother, then a few years after that it became one of the very few VHS tapes my grandparents owned so we always seemed to watch it when we visited their house. I do remember we never got tired of watching and always enjoyed, but any specific scene details now escape me.

I do want to see the new one with my kids. It looks fun. There was finally a Japanese language trailer which just made my kids even more excited, since they can understand better I guess.

If this had come out when I was a kid, I would probably be pumped for it too. But honestly, this film won me over when it made the rap song callback to the Captain Lou Albano Mario Brothers Super Show (that rap was the intro for the show).

How could I not like it after that? (I know I know, they put that in to appeal to parents who remember the old show. Well, it worked)

Anyway, there we go. Not so much a contest entry but a video game movie memories post.

❦

David LaSpina is an American photographer and translator lost in Japan, trying to capture the beauty of this country one photo at a time and searching for the perfect haiku.