Working Title 03.08.07: Silver Screen Games - Shaolin Soccer

Posted by Jordan Williams on 03.08.2007

Silver Screen Games kicks off with one of the funniest and wackiest sports movies ever, Shaolin Soccer. Does it have what it takes to translate into a good game?

Welcome to the #1 Column to watch a chick flick and NOT cry, Working Title!

Fresh off of a week of awesome T.V (Everyone go watch Heroes), awesome games (Everyone go play Crackdown), awesome Myspace(411Mania's Myspace) and awesome roundtables (Everyone go read the roundtable). We get Working Title.


...It's awesome, if you haven't noticed.

No, really it is.



ANYWAY, this week we kick off Silver Screen Games, which is pretty much Hollywood: The Game in reverse. Instead of talking about games that would make great movies, I'm going to be talking about movies that would make great games, and I warn you right now, as with all columns that have me pretty much fantasy booking the industry, these are probably going to be shorter than most of my columns.

Of course, we all know in our little pessimistic gaming community that 9 out of 10 movie games (and game movies) are doomed to failure, but as I've said before, Working Title runs off of HOPE. So we HOPE these movie games (that will probably never be made) won't suck.

So, last week I looked through my backlog of DVDs and racked my brain trying to think of a movie that would make a good game.

Of course all of the really good ones already had game spin-offs. Damn you, THQ. So, I started looking even deeper and I remember a movie that was so much like a video game in its movie form that the translation to a console would just be second nature.

It was a movie that I saw in my Junior year of high school and it pretty much hooked me in and I think I will never forget some of the conversations and jokes we had during and after.

What is this movie?

Well, it's simply the best damn sports movie ever made.


Shaolin Soccer.

The best combination EVER

Stephen Chow is a goddamned genius. Before this movie came out, you could pretty much walk up to anyone and tell them this idea for a movie, and unless they had a really good sense of humor, they would think the movie would outright suck and it'd be horrible. But if you tell them that now, they will LOVE it? That's what Shaolin Soccer did.

It took the most laughably silly plot you could think of, added in some over the top Dragon Ball Z styled effects and humor, and it mixed them all together and made it WORK. The movie itself was fun as hell to watch, and the next illogical step would be a fun to play video game, right?

Well, of course, the video game never came.

While adding over the top special effects and slapstick fun hasn't been a longtime mainstay in movies, it's been like that for awhile in video games. If you pretty much name a sport this side of Curling, there is an arcade-y offshoot of it. So if Shaolin Soccer were to become a video game, how would they have to set it apart from so many other arcade styled sports games out there?

I mean, we already have FIFA Street, while the game isn't that great, it could get better and pretty much be what people imagined for Shaolin Soccer, so again, how would someone inject a new feel and life into it?

Just ask Pete Wanat (Game Informer, February 2007). "Don't follow the movie plot."

Plain and simple, although Shaolin Soccer had a pretty good plot, if we just follow that plot, or similarly just makes a soccer game with SS tacked on, it's not going to seem great.

The Rules Return

Remember waaay back when I did Hollywood: The Game and I said there will always be four types of video game movies: Prequels, Sequels, Adaptations, and Universals.

The same almost holds true for movie video games, except the meaning change a bit. Most of the time when a movie gets turned into a video game (and I mean MOVIE, not a license), it most of the time is usually an Adaptation of the game. These are usually not all that great, but they usually get the point across.

But there have been times where a movie game has actually fell into one of the other categories.

One could argue that Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay was a prequel, although I would personally call it a creative license, but for the sake of argument, we'll use that as an example of a Prequel.

Truthfully, I haven't seen many movie games start where the movie itself ended, so I really can't think of any examples, but if I am wrong, feel free to tell me so.

I already touched on Adaptations; these are by far the most common type in this sense, although they are usually merged/mixed with the next type.

Universals are movie games (and game movies) that usually do not follow the plot of the source; they rather use a character(s) in a completely different situation, but in the source materials universe. Two very good, and very different examples of this would be Spider-Man (the movie game) for XboX, PS2, and Gamecube and Power Rangers: The Movie for SNES.

Spider-Man the movie for the most part adapted the movie into a game, and was pretty good. But developers realized that they couldn't just have Spidey vs. Green Goblin the whole time, or else the game itself would get stale. So they injected real Marvel Villains into the games story, with the Spidey vs. Green Goblin story still playing over it. You had appearances from Shocker, The Vulture, Rhino, The Scorpion, and a slew of other levels that of course never took place in the movie, but it very well could have during the moments you never see on camera.

It fleshed out the game, and in turn, the movie a lot more because it kept it from getting stale over time.

Power Rangers: The Movie, however, didn't follow that rule as stated above. Anyone who has seen the Power Rangers Movie (admit it, you have) and then played the game knows that outside of the final boss (in name only) there is NO comparison to be made between the two.

In the movie the Rangers went to a new planet, turned into ninjas, came back, and fought in Zords.

In the game the Rangers somehow ended up in an air force base, snowboarded down an icy mountain, ended up in a Russian War Zone, fought on the back of a moving train, did the lambada, and made lasagna.

This would have to the best example of a Universal I could think of. Not because it took new characters, mostly because the Power Rangers went EVERYWHERE in the Universe besides the movie plot. Also, I also consider Power Rangers/Super Sentai to be a creative license, but since this game was intended to be directly linked to the MOVIE, it still counts.


But with all of that yapping, what did any of that have to do with Shaolin Soccer? It's pretty simple if you think about it. There is no way this came could be an Adaptation without coming off looking like a bad rip of FIFA Street, or worse, a messed up hybrid of Dead to Rights and Winning Eleven. Besides, there were only five teams. That plan is nixed.

The movie COULD be a prequel, but then it wouldn't be Shaolin Soccer. The monks came up with the idea to play soccer DURING that movie, before that they had all parted their separate ways and were on different walks of life. They weren't even stopping underground crime syndicates like every other Kung Fu master does in their off time. Nixed.

Universal sounds logical, seeing as *SPOILER* at the end of the movie the world had embraced Kung Fu as a way of life, and were using it in every day activities, and there were really no other main characters in the movie who did anything worth while that they could link off of. So Universal wouldn't work just anything to work with.

So that only leaves one real choice. The dreaded S word that threatens every good movie and game.

Sequel.

Yes, this seems so out of nowhere and nonsensical that it just has to work. Of course, like I said earlier, at the end of the movie the whole world(or at least that area) began to embrace Kung Fu as a way of life, that would of course mean it carried over into more sports, and most likely got even stronger in the sport that (in the movie) put it on the map.

So, Shaolin Soccer was interesting when it was The Super Team vs. the average teams, and then it got REALLY good with they faced off with Team Evil. Imagine if the whole league was shaped like that now. It's a start.

My idea would be not to use the characters from the first movie, but instead you build and create your own team, with each of its members having its own skills and weaknesses, I mean, you could pick a pre-made team already, but there's no fun in not exploring the options. That's like choosing to play as a wrestler instead of using your CAW.



You build your team, you play through little mini-tourneys and what not, and eventually you break out into the big leagues with that team and it goes on from there. Even though it still feels very much like a run of the mill FIFA Street, at least now it has some personality injected into it.

Now with online play factoring heavy in most games, especially sports ones, you could even have an online league of sorts. Players from around the world play against each other and trade or buy players, team up, make mixed teams. It might seem way too big of a movie game, but if they can turn Chronicles of Riddick into a crossover hit like they did, they could easily turn something that was as fun to watch as SS into a game that would be fun to play.

So let's just break it down now, shall we?

Silver Screen Games presents...



Shaolin Soccer



Now, the big question is who would make the game, what consoles would it be on, and all of that other stuff that would usually determine if the game did well. Let's break all of that down right now.

Publisher/Developer: EA Sports (BIG possibly), they are the only people I can see wanting to do this game, as well as the only ones I would TRUST enough to do an over the top sports game.

Console: XBox 360, PS3, Wii. It's a given that if a game appears on PS3 or Xbox 360, it'll appear on another. This game will really want to tap into the online gaming market, and of course the Wii will get a version tuned into the Wiimote which could also work well considering some of the maneuvers.

Type of Game: Arcade Sports (Soccer), Sequel/Follow-Up to Original Movie.

Could it work?

That really depends, just like with Hollywood: The Game, a lot of these ideas and things are coming right out of my head, meaning they are completely fabricated and are just more of a "this is what -I- would do" type thing. If someone were to pick this up and make it into a game, I think it would work if they tried hard to translate the comedic action from the movie into the game, and didn't make the controls complicated.

Why would I play it?

This game is going to probably reach out first to fans of Shaolin Soccer and/or Kung Fu Hustle(the two most well known Chow films in America) before it hits the soccer fans. The people who would track this game down and give it a play will be those people who saw this movie the first time and were completely floored by it. They would want to recreate that feeling again when they play the game. If the game turns out good it will probably spread to the more serious sports fans as a nice alternative to Winning Eleven or FIFA.

It will work pretty much just like any game based off of a movie or creative license. The people who know about it will seek it out first, and then if it's any good, everyone else will follow suit.


Indecisive Bastard!

Of course, I can never end one of these without having second thoughts about other movies I think would make great games.

I said earlier that I had thought long and hard about all four of my choices for this, here are a few ideas that didn't make the final cut.

Versus: The Game (Action Adventure, Capcom)

Starship Troopers. Yes, I know that Starship Troopers already had a (horrible) game, but I think it could be saved. (Third person shooter/Squad Based, EA)

Braveheart. (Action/War, ???)

Those three almost become THIS column, and who knows. I might cover those if I ever decide to make a sequel to this series. You can only hope.


Next time...

Week one of yet another Working Title fantasy booking extravaganza is over, and now we look ahead to next week to see what game I'll try to pop out of my big head. Thinking of an idea for next weeks game was a bit easier, because it is one of my all-time favorite movies. Despite the fact that it's sequel was bad.

Next week on Silver Screen Games, we'll see just how good The Transporter could be if it were a video game.




Until next time, I'm Jordan Williams and this column won't have a name until it finishes all of its Brussels sprouts!