Skip to content
Curated playlist

Video games adapted into comics

  • Assassin's CreedAssassin's Creed began as a Prince of Persia sequel with the prince cut out.
  • Metal GearMetal Gear became a stealth game because its computer could not handle a gunfight.
  • Call of DutyCall of Duty left World War II in 2007 and sales took off. Modern Warfare sold over 13 million copies by May 2009.
  • The Last of UsThe Last of Us is a video game series from the studio Naughty Dog, published by Sony Interactive Entertainment, and by early 2023 the franchise had sold more than 37 million games. It takes place in a United States ruined by a mutated…
  • God of War (franchise)When the credits of the first God of War finished rolling, a closing line promised, "Kratos Will Return." He did, again and again. The God of War franchise now spans ten installments, beginning on the PlayStation 2 in 2005 and reaching…
  • Heroes of the StormIn Heroes of the Storm, every player on a team levels up together. Fallen minions feed one shared team pool.
  • League of LegendsLeague of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena game from Riot Games. Its 2019 World Championship drew more than 100 million unique viewers. That same year, the game regularly reached eight million players online at the same moment.…
  • Hitman (franchise)Hitman is a stealth game franchise from the Danish studio IO Interactive, and it began as a deliberately modest idea. Designer Jacob Andersen described the plan like this: "We decided to do a quick game inspired by Hong Kong action…
  • Dota 2A month before its official launch in 2013, Dota 2 already had nearly 330,000 people playing at the same moment on Steam. That crowd outnumbered the players in the rest of the platform's top ten games combined. Dota 2 is a Valve game in…
  • Kingdom HeartsKingdom Hearts began with a chance elevator meeting between a Square producer and a Disney executive.
  • Halo (franchise)Halo is a military science fiction franchise, and in 1997 its earliest form went by a codename its own programmer was too embarrassed to say aloud. Bungie's team first called the project "Monkey Nuts." Jason Jones could not bring himself…
  • Pokémon (video game series)The Pokémon video game series has sold more than 515 million units worldwide. That makes it the fourth best-selling video game franchise, behind only the Mario franchise, Call of Duty, and Tetris. It started in 1996, when Pocket Monsters…
  • UnchartedBy December 2017, the Uncharted series had sold 41.7 million units worldwide. Uncharted is an action-adventure franchise developed by Naughty Dog and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Amy Hennig created it. Its heroes are…
  • Far CryFar Cry, the first-person shooter franchise published by Ubisoft, began life as an island full of dinosaurs. At the Electronic Entertainment Expo in 1999, the German studio Crytek showed a technology demo called X-Isle: Dinosaur Island.…
  • Prince of PersiaJordan Mechner asked his own brother to play the Prince. For the 1989 game Prince of Persia, Mechner used his brother as the model for the title character. The animation was then built with a technique called rotoscoping, which draws…
  • Tomb RaiderTomb Raider is a video game franchise that began in 1994 at Core Design, a British studio, and had sold more than 100 million units worldwide by 2024. Its pull was felt almost at once. In late 1996 and early 1997 the band the Prodigy…
  • Five Nights at Freddy'sFive Nights at Freddy's, known to fans as FNaF, asks its players for one thing: stay alive from midnight until 6 a.m. in a pizza restaurant after closing time. Scott Cawthon created the series, and it has grown from video games into…
  • Life Is Strange (video game)Life Is Strange opens in October 2013, as an 18-year-old photography student named Max Caulfield returns to Arcadia Bay, Oregon, to attend Blackwell Academy. During class she has a vivid vision of a tornado destroying a lighthouse and…
  • Fallout: New VegasFallout: New Vegas, a 2010 action role-playing game from Obsidian Entertainment, was built on a schedule that journalists called remarkably short for a major release. Publisher Bethesda Softworks allowed the studio 18 months. The game…
  • Resident EvilResident Evil was almost named Biohazard, but the name was already taken. A DOS game and a punk band held it.
  • Street FighterStreet Fighter player Daigo Umehara parried 15 hits in a row with one pixel of health left in 2004.
  • The Legend of ZeldaAs a boy, Zelda creator Shigeru Miyamoto walked into a cave carrying a lantern. That memory shaped every dungeon.
  • Silent HillSilent Hill got its name from translating a Japanese prefecture's name. The title was not crafted for marketing.
  • Mass EffectMass Effect began in 2003 as a pitch to build a universe on the scale of Star Wars. BioWare wanted to own it entirely.
  • Silent Hill (video game)When Silent Hill's composer played his music, the team thought it was a software bug.
  • Dark SoulsIn Dark Souls, dying twice before you reach your bloodstain loses your dropped souls for good.
  • OverwatchOverwatch was built from the pieces of a cancelled game called Titan.
  • Gears of WarGears of War begins its fiction with a death toll. The event is called Emergence Day. In only 26 hours, the Locust Horde, a race of subterranean creatures, kills 25% of the population of the planet Sera. From that catastrophe grows a…
  • Sonic the HedgehogSonic the Hedgehog, a franchise about a blue hedgehog with supersonic speed, had reached 1.77 billion in combined series sales and free-to-play mobile downloads by 2024. Sega counts it as its flagship. Three Japanese developers created it:…
  • Batman: Arkham CityThe blueprints for Batman: Arkham City were hidden in a secret room inside the warden's office of Batman: Arkham Asylum, the game that came before it. Rocksteady Studios planted those hints in the 2009 original while that game was still…
  • Tom Clancy's Splinter CellIn Splinter Cell, stepping into the light meant you were already dead.
  • Mortal KombatMortal Kombat began as a planned Jean-Claude Van Damme movie game, but the deal fell through.
  • WarcraftWarcraft got its name because it "sounded super cool." Blizzard's co-founder said the word had no particular meaning.
  • Mega ManMega Man's producer, Keiji Inafune, told readers of his blog on the 29th of October 2010 that he was leaving Capcom. He wanted to start his life over, and he had spent 23 years at the company. The blue robot hero known as Mega Man, or…
  • Devil May CryDevil May Cry began as a failed Resident Evil prototype. Capcom let it become its own game instead of scrapping it.
  • Diablo (series)The Diablo video game series is named after a California mountain. Creator David Brevik lived near Mount Diablo.
  • Marvel RivalsMarvel Rivals reached 10 million players within 72 hours of its release on the 6th of December 2024. NetEase Games built this free-to-play hero shooter in collaboration with Marvel Games, and it draws its fighters from Marvel Comics. A…
  • Ratchet & ClankRatchet & Clank began with a reptile. Early sketches for the hero of Insomniac Games' new PlayStation 2 adventure showed a reptilian alien. Artists eventually settled on a feline humanoid and gave it a species name, Lombax, which the…
  • Team Fortress 2Team Fortress 2 drew 253,997 players at the same moment after a 2023 update, the highest count in its history. That figure is remarkable for a Valve multiplayer shooter that had already been on sale for a long time. The road to that peak…
  • MystMyst, a 1993 adventure game from the studio Cyan, opens with a book. The player, an unnamed person, finds a volume titled Myst and reads its detailed description of an island. Resting a hand on the last page carries the player into that…
  • MinecraftMinecraft, the 2011 sandbox game from the Swedish company Mojang Studios, tells its only story through a poem of roughly 1,500 words. The End Poem was written by the Irish novelist Julian Gough. It scrolls past in about nine minutes when a…
  • Persona 5Persona 5 opens in an interrogation room in Tokyo, and it keeps pulling the player back there. The 2016 role-playing game, built by the Atlus development studio P-Studio, is the sixth installment in the Persona series, which grew out of…
  • CastlevaniaCastlevania is a gothic horror action-adventure series from Konami, and its first staff roll in 1986 was full of disguises. The director and programmer, Hitoshi Akamatsu, was credited as Trans Fishers, a nod to the horror film director…
  • Super MarioSuper Mario is a Nintendo platform game series, and in the United Kingdom the wider Mario franchise is recognized by 91% of adults. That makes it the most famous video game franchise there. Shigeru Miyamoto created the series, and its star…
  • FortniteFortnite is a 2017 online game from Epic Games that now behaves more like a platform than a single title. Seven distinct modes share one engine and one overall look. They include a contest where up to 100 players fight to be the last one…
  • Kingdom Come: DeliveranceKingdom Come: Deliverance launched on the 13th of February 2018, and at release it drew 95,863 players at once on Steam. That peak topped the 90,780 recorded by The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The game, from Warhorse Studios, is an action…
  • Fate/stay nightFate/stay night began as an unfinished college story. Kinoko Nasu finished only one of its three routes in 1999.
  • MetroidMetroid is a Nintendo science fiction series that owes one of its best-known twists to a casual question. Halfway through development of the first game, a staff member asked his colleagues, "Hey, wouldn't that be kind of cool if it turned…
  • Angry BirdsOn Christmas Day 2011, players around the world downloaded 6.5 million copies of Angry Birds games on that single day. Angry Birds is a franchise created by the Finnish game designer Jaakko Iisalo and owned by Rovio Entertainment. Its…
  • TekkenIn Tekken, a son throws his father off a cliff, and the father survives to throw him into a volcano.

Queue