In the olden days of 1993, I was still young and full of hopes and dreams, locked into afternoons filled with Star Fox and baseball. That is, until the Super Mario Bros. movie came out and destroyed my fragile mind, crushing what little ambition I may have saw in seeing my favourite video games into larger-than-life silver screen productions. Someone had twisted my visions and that experience has turned myself and many youth of that time into broken shells of our former selves.

While that might be an exaggeration, the relationship between Hollywood and the gaming industry hasn’t exactly been one that has benefited either side for the consumers. Games made into movies tend to be somewhere along the lines of tolerable to god awful, and the movies that are released onto any gaming platform are usually churned out as advertising fodder shovelware more than anything. As such, memorable mash-ups that have had any level of real success, especially critically, is something that has yet to be fully realized. Considering the growing strength of the gaming industry, and the apparent weakening of the movie industry, the cross-over between celebrities into the gaming world is starting to grow.

After some success with Steven Spielberg’s Boom Blox, EA has signed on another director to make some video games for them. That director being Zack Snyder, someone who is familiar with medium blending having directed the adaptation of Frank Miller’s 300 and is set to release a highly anticipated Watchmen film based on the eponymous graphic novel. Citing his experience and style that falls in line with creating a strong “interactive experience”, EA seems to believe that Snyder is someone that gamers will be able to get behind. As for Snyder’s relationship with EA, “I look forward to collaborating with them.” seems to be the general message. With no details provided on just what kind of projects they are working on, this seems to be the kind of relationship meant to be build on EA’s more serious narrative-driven pieces that they have been gathering quite a bit of lately with titles like Dead Space and Mirror’s Edge (both set for release very soon).

On the flip-side, a very long-awaited movie translation of Max Payne is set to hit theatres in the coming weeks and it will be hitting at a family-friendly PG-13 rating when it releases. After criticizing the MPAA for giving the game the dreaded R rating only a month ago, a few cuts has allowed the movie to slide into safer revenue stream associated with the younger audience. In an interview with GameDaily [link via Ars Technica] the director John Moore also stated that there would be an extended edition released to DVD which would appeal more to the hardcore gaming crowd. Going so far as to call it the “Gamer Dedicated Cut”, Moore explains that it will be slower paced and contain some more details for fans of the game to soak in.

The idea of adaptation is not new, and has been done with various medium across all forms and styles. It also seems the the games-to-film wave that rocked viciously a few years back is slowing down to a moderate pace. The real question is how this will benefit gamers, if at all, and we are only starting to any positive answers for that. As stated before, video game movie adaptations are usually pretty bad (and I hold no hope for Max Payne) and there hasn’t been much evidence that it is reaching a turning point. The film-to-game adaptations aren’t usually that much better, but many are at least making moderate efforts these days and some are even fun and enjoyable past the demographic that is simply obsessed with the original source. With Boom Blox being a good amount of fun, as well, there is some translation available for creative minds to bring to the video game space, but as with any leap to a new medium there will always be some kinks to work out. While the adaptations and cross-overs will continue, do not expect anything world shaking to really occur until the whole environment, top to bottom, is filled with people enthusiastic and inspired by the material they are working with.