Classic Video Game Movie Trailers | Retro Flashback

Back in the 80’s and 90’s gamers had it rough when it came to proper representation on the big screen. Video games in general was still a growing market and quickly becoming super popular in household across the world. This meant that everyone was trying to figure out how to leverage the same kids begging their parents for the latest video game. So, of course, it was only inevitable that Hollywood would dip their toe into the pool.

Unfortunately, as many of us know, they didn’t really know what they were doing. Often times movies based on video games didn’t understand the source material like the kids playing them did. Many movies that came out (and still some) bear very little resemblance to the experience you would have had leading up to that point.

They all tried, Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Double Dragon, even the massively popular and well known Super Mario Bros suffered from a significant disconnect from the Mario and Luigi that we had grown to love on the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). The one semi-successful as a somewhat quality piece of film wasn’t actually based on a video game, The Wizard. Instead of being based on a video game directly, it was based on a video game wiz-kid trying to make it to a Nintendo competition.

Check out the group of trailers above for a handful of the most well known video game movie adaptations that came out in the 80’s and 90’s.