Treasured Memories Adapting Disney Stories into Kingdom Hearts Written by Samuel Gronseth II
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daptation has always interested me. Many see it as artless, or an indication that new ideas are lacking, but I find the whole process fascinating, and uniquely creative. It’s not simply transplanting a story; it’s the creative process of adapting something into an entirely new form. That form can be different in so many ways! Perhaps it’s a different medium, like making a video game based on a movie. Perhaps it’s a different time, like setting an old play in the modern day. Perhaps it’s a different culture or people group, like retelling an old story with people of color instead of the original white cast. All of these adaptations show classic stories in a new light, in the hands of new creators, and I think that’s fantastic. It’s even said that every individual production of a Shakespeare play is its own unique vision of his work, and I love that idea. That so many people could have their hands on a classic story to bring out what they find exceptional about it, and apply their own creative energy and vision to it. With video games, specifically, adaptation is a strange beast. Partly because the medium is still relatively young, still growing and evolving. But it also simply hasn’t done it much. For most of the medium’s history, true adaptation was exceptionally rare. Most video games that were based on anything were rushed-out tie-ins to popular movies; sure, The Lion King, on the Super Nintendo, was technically a movie-to-game adaptation, but it wasn’t concerned with adapting the story so much as using the environments, music, and visuals to create an enjoyable challenge. What’s more, only so many stories outside of the video game medium translate well into traditional video game genres. The Lion King isn’t a movie about Simba trying not to fall into water, but that’s what the player spends most of the time doing in the game, because it’s a platformer. Even more action-oriented movies like The Incredibles or Revenge of the Sith have a lot more talking than they do fighting, and turning them into action games did not provide a very good opportunity for adapting the story in a meaningful way.
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ISSUE 3 | LEVEL STORY
