Adaptation Decay

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Are video game movies always bad? Is there nothing to love about old Nintendo cartoons? Are any video game comics worth reading? In this monthly premium show, Gary Butterfield and Kaye Ross look at all kinds of media derived from video games and take it apart, answering whether it's a good adaptation, and whether it's a good piece of art.

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92 episodes
Updated January 14
Explicit

Episodes92

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Jul 14, 2021 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 52: Saturday Supercade
We head back to the earliest days of video game cartoons to talk about a confusing and boring variety show that's not really based on your arcade favorites! The good news is, YouTube also featured the vintage commercials. Saturday Supercade was an hour long show, and each episode featured four segments... this month, we talk about an episode that features Frogger, Donkey Kong, QBert, and Donkey Kong Jr. And it couldn't be clearer that they took unrelated scripts and did a find/replace to add in video game stuff.
Jun 18, 2021 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 51: Mortal Kombat (2021)
The staying power of the Mortal Kombat brand is a mystery, but we're here for it... even if this movie is dumb as rocks. Cole is a down and out MMA fall guy who happens to be the heir to a great line of ninja warriors. There's also an interdimensional martial arts tournament that Sonya Blade and Jax are investigating. And Kano is here, too. Can the heroes of Earthrealm save the world, again, for the first time?
May 14, 2021 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 50: Willy's Wonderland
The creators of Willy's Wonderland might claim they weren't inspired by Five Nights at Freddy's, but we'll trust our eyes over them. Nicolas Cage plays a mute, mechanical janitor stranded in a small town, and trapped in a haunted fun center overnight. There are also horny teens in play. This is a baffling, cheap, fun movie and we have a great time talking about it.
Apr 9, 2021 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 49: Beta Test
You have never heard of this movie, and we're going to fix that. Beta Test supposes a world where a gamer can control a living person, who sends back convincing enough footage to make that gamer unaware that they're doing more than playing a game. So the most famous beta tester who ever lives is tricked into controlling a fighty fight guy through a horrible killing spree in order to... and I'm not kidding here... justify gun control laws. It's baffling and distasteful!
Mar 10, 2021 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 48: Legends of the Hidden Temple
Did you know they made a TV movie out of Legends of the Hidden Temple? And that it's actually kind of okay? This month's Adaptation Decay is a slight deviation from our usual formula, as we talk about the Nickelodeon game show classic, and then examine its faithful film adaptation.
Feb 9, 2021 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 47: Sonic Cartoons
This month we bring you a discussion of two cartoons based on Sonic the Hedgehog, both released in 1993. First, we talk about "The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog", which aired in syndication on weekdays. Specifically, we talk about the episode "Super Special Sonic Search and Smash Squad", which gives the origin story for two of the show's annoying villains. Next, we talk about "Sonic the Hedgehog", or Sonic SatAm, which aired on ABC during their Saturday morning programming block. This is the darker, more serious, more boring one. Sonic works alongside the freedom fighters of Knothole village to thwart the grim plots of Dr. Robotnik. Did we mention that it's boring?
Jan 16, 2021 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 46: Rampage
You can't help but smile at big dumb fun. The Rock is one of those muscle scientists, raising the last of the albino gorillas. Unfortunately, a wayward canister of corrupt corporate super contagion makes its way into his zoo, and all of a sudden Chicago is at risk. We really like this movie, because the monters are big and the buildings fall down.
Dec 15, 2020 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 45: Dragon Age: Redemption
This month, to coincide with the WOFF! coverage of Dragon Age 2, we're turning our attention to the web series created by Felicia Day to promote the "Mark of the Assassin" DLC. The short version is that we're unimpressed. The long version is that this is a really fun episode if you like to hear us dig in on a failed movie.
Nov 21, 2020 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 44: Dragon's Lair
The arcade hit Dragon's Lair was already more cartoon than game, so you'd think it wouldn't be hard to push it all the way to one side and make an animated series out of it. The problem is, you also have to have plots, and dialogue, and all kinds of hard things. This show ended up being one of the more boring things we've covered for Adaptation Decay, and that's saying something.
Oct 14, 2020 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 43: Stay Alive
If you die in the game, etc. etc. and so on. A wise man once warned me: If you die in the game, you die in real life. That man was someone speaking in a trailer for this movie, and that's why I've never died in a game. "Stay Alive" is a movie that not a lot of people remember, because it's very bad. Some young people discover an unreleased survival horror-ish game. The problem is, anyone who dies in the game is killed in a similar way by supernatural forces. So the friends must work together to learn where to game came from, and figure out how to lift its curse. Suffering from a lot of the problems you'd expect to find in a low budget PG-13 slasher film, Stay Alive does have some fun surprises and over the top performances. But it's a lot more fun to talk about than watch.
Sep 11, 2020 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 42: Plants vs. Zombies Comic / Pac-Man Cartoon
This month is a rare split episode, because our initial plan would have resulted in an episode that was too short! First, we cover the 2013 comic book adaptation of Plants vs. Zombies. It's a cute kids' comic about two plucky youngsters to team up with Crazy Dave and his mutant plants to stop the zombies from taking over Neighborville. Is it profound? Not really. But it's a great way to read some cute jokes and see charming drawings of those already charming plants. The back half of the episode takes a surreal turn as we talk about the 1982 Pac-Man cartoon. Animated by Hanna-Barbera, this is the first cartoon based on a video game, and boy do they make some serious leaps as to what kind of world Pac-Man lives in, and what kinds of adventures he gets up to. It's a sight to behold.
Aug 12, 2020 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 41: Wreck-It Ralph
This month we watch and discuss Wreck-It Ralph, a Disney animated film from 2012. It has a great cast and works in some very fun video game in-jokes before heading into a soggy middle section that kind of drags things down. John C. Riley's performance obviously runs away with the show, but the other big names are no slouches.
Jul 8, 2020 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 40: Left 4 Dead: The Sacrifice
This digital comic was created by Valve to coincide with the final Left 4 Dead DLC and show us how the stories of the original four survivors began and ended. Over the course of four issues, Bill, Francis, Louis, and Zoey are captured by the military and escape a horrible fate before deciding what their endgame is. It's a fun comic that integrates well with the game, and highlights how good Valve can be at storytelling when they decide to make things.
Jun 12, 2020 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 39: Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm
Why does this exist? Even though Mortal Kombat is pretty juvenile, it makes zero sense to create a childrens' cartoon based on the property. So this show from 1996 is already on a bad foot. Additionally, it's also extremely bad. The animation and blocking are poor, the dialogue is 90% cheesy one-liners, and too much of the runtime is taken up by dogfighting in dragon jets. Wait, did you not know there were jets?
May 13, 2020 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 38: Resident Evil: Apocalypse
Punch Nemesis until he becomes your friend! We go back to the extremely poison well of the Resident Evil movie continuity to see how Alice and co. treat the Raccoon City incident. This is a very poorly-made semi-adaptation of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, where Alice upstages Jill and punches Nemesis until he becomes her friend. It's extremely bad and dumb, you guys.
Apr 8, 2020 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 37: Doom: Annihilation
This won't go how you think. Get ready for this to be slightly more positive than you expect. When the trailer for Doom: Annihilation came out, we were shocked at how bad it looked. The full product isn't actually "good", but there's some SyFy Original fun to be had here. It's cheap and it lacks subtlety, and it's a vague re-telling of Doom 3 through the eyes of the chosen religious soldier Joan Dark. Like I said, it isn't subtle.
Mar 13, 2020 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 36: Mazes and Monsters
D12s... Not even once. This very boring movie is a relic of the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, when concerned parents everywhere got very scared of Dungeons and Dragons without actually learning about the game. Tom Hanks takes a leading role in a story about a college student who loses track of the distinction between fantasy and reality, and his impossibly rich and preppy friends try to lie to the police so they can save him themselves.
Feb 25, 2020 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay: Sonic the Hedgehog
Gary, Kole and special guest Will (Gary's friend and professional writer), tackle what some are calling the best video game adaptation ever. Are they right? No. But it's still a very fun episode.
Jan 15, 2020 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 34: Street Fighter
For us, it's Wednesday, so come get this Street Fighter movie episode. We decided to begin 2020 with an all-out banger. The 1994 Street Fighter movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia is a sight to behold. It's one of the most fun movies we've covered for this show, but it's a complete mess. And it was doomed to be a mess from the start.
Dec 15, 2019 · 5 min
[PREVIEW] Adaptation Decay 33: Nintendo Christmas (Donkey Kong Country / Super Mario World)
This isn't a podcast, it's an act of violence. To celebrate the season, we found three extremely onerous Winter Holiday themed episodes of Nintendo cartoons from the 90s. First and most awfully, we bring you an episode of the Donkey Kong Country cartoon called "The Kongo Bongo Festival of Lights". DK is bad at doing gifts, and one of the lizards is lonely enough to blow up the world. Second, we look at the Super Mario World cartoon where our heroes try to civilize cave men by making them Christian in "The Night Before Cave Christmas". Third, we go back to the Super Mario Super Show to talk about "Koopa Klaus", mostly because it was on the same YouTube video as the other Mario episode. We hate this so much, you guys.