Both Marlon Brando and Sean Connery’s last roles were in these games. I don’t know if that’s tragic or hilarious…
There’s something inherently funny about a 1963 James Bond movie getting the full video game treatment in 2005. Like, who exactly was asking for From Russia With Love: The Third-Person Shooter? Did a teenage gamer in 2005 wake up thinking, You know what would really slap right now? Cold War espionage starring famed misogynist Sean Connery?
And yet, that’s exactly what happened.
Back in the mid-2000s, there was this weird, super specific trend: taking old movies—sometimes decades old—and turning them into video games. Not to coincide with a remake. Not to promote a new sequel. Just… because. And it wasn’t just niche films either. We’re talking full-blown cult classics and Oscar-winners suddenly reimagined as open-world crime simulators or horror-flavoured beat-’em-ups.
So before I dive into a few of the key stand outs in this weird genre, was there any reason why this happened?
A few reasons, and they all kind of crash into each other. First off, much like cocaine and Pepsi Max, nostalgia’s a hell of a drug. Always has, always will.
Even if it’s a nostalgia for a time you weren’t even born. The amount of people wearing band t-shirts for artists that split up long before they could spell “smells like teen spirit” is a testament to this. You throw a trendy IP like 60s Bond, Scarface or The Thing on the cover, it’s going to have marketability.
And before anyone says The Thing isn’t trendy, it’s got Wilfred Brimley in it, what more could you want?
Second, the early 2000s were a gold rush era for video games. Consoles like the PS2 and Xbox were at their peak, and the release schedule was definitely quality over quantity. Don’t get me wrong, there were some great games released in 2005, but with around 700 titles dropping for the PS2 in 2005 alone, you’re bound to get a wonky batting average.
And with this big opportunity to jump into a maturing games industry, Hollywood tried something actually a little bit clever. Instead of just cash-in tie-ins, these retroactive adaptations were a new kind of brand resurrection. They filled the awkward gap between “no one under 25 remembers this movie” and “we don’t want to risk a $100 million reboot just yet.”
And third? A lot of them were actually… good.
Take The Warriors game from 2005. Rockstar, yes the Grand Theft Auto one, took Walter Hill’s 1979 cult classic and built a whole playable world around it. Not just a straight retelling, either—they expanded the story, filled in backstories, added more brawls, and made it genuinely fun to wander around a fictional version of 1970s New York where every gang has a theme and somehow nobody owns a gun. The Baseball Furies? Terrifying. Tagging subway walls? Weirdly therapeutic. The game was grimey, stylish, and completely committed to its bit. And it worked.
Then there’s Scarface: The World Is Yours, which asked the question “what if doing an unholy amount of coke made you immune to hails of gunfire”. That’s how the game starts, with Tony surviving the climactic mansion shootout, then swearing revenge and rebuilding his empire. It’s easy to compare it to GTA: Vice City, but it shares the charm of the movie in a way that makes it its own thing, complete with over-the-top violence, and dialogue that somehow made swearing feel like poetry. They even got Al Pacino’s likeness, though not his voice. Which is a shame because if there was a button that made Tony Soprano randomly yell “She had a great ass.”, this would be an instant 10/10.
It’s worth noting just how often these games didn’t just rehash movie plots but reimagined them entirely. The Godfather, for example, didn’t cast you as Michael Corleone or Vito. No, you played some random guy on the fringes of the story, slowly climbing the ranks of the family. It’s like prestige fan fiction. You’d shake down businesses, strong-arm rival gangs, and occasionally bump into iconic characters like Sonny or Tom Hagen. And yeah, it got weird. But it was weird in-universe, and somehow, that made it work. Plus, the developers got Brando, Caan, and Duvall to do voice work. Brando even recorded lines from his hospital bed.
You… can’t tell. Actually, it was quite clever how they got around the sound quality by putting Donny boy behind a door and on his deathbed. And while yes, it’s a bit of a downbeat swansong for such an iconic actor, he did get paid an alleged half a million dollars for 51 seconds of dialogue. Not a paid last pay day.
From Russia With Love, though, might still be the oddest one of the bunch. Not only did it resurrect a film from the early ’60s, it literally pulled Sean Connery out of retirement to voice Bond one last time. And then it gave him a jetpack. Which, if you’ve seen the original film, you’ll know… was not in the movie. At all. But this was the EA era of Bond games, and they weren’t about to let realism get in the way of rocket-powered gadgets and explosive action. It was more Bond fantasy than Bond film—and that was kind of the point. It didn’t need to be authentic. It just needed to feel like the best version of what your nostalgic brain thought the movie was, which was a weirdly poignant pivot point for the franchise before the more gritty Casino Royale hit cinemas the following year.
That same brain trick worked wonders for Evil Dead: Regeneration. By 2005, Bruce Campbell’s Ash had achieved full-on cult icon status, and the game leaned hard into the goofy horror-comedy energy of the films. Instead of following the timeline of Army of Darkness, it went full alternate universe, letting Ash team up with a foul-mouthed half-dead sidekick and blast his way through undead hordes. The best part? You could kick your sidekick like a football into enemies. Repeatedly. It was ridiculous in the best possible way. And yes, Bruce Campbell voiced every glorious one-liner, which will never not be groovy.
Not all these games stuck strictly to their source material. Some of them just borrowed the vibe and ran with it. Alien: Isolation, which dropped in 2014, and while it arrived after the trend of retro movie video games had died away, it may be the most lovingly crafted throwback of them all. Technically, the Alien franchise had plenty of games before it—but Isolation stood out because it actually understood the tone of the original 1979 film. This wasn’t a space marine shooter. This was hide-in-a-locker, don’t-breathe-too-loud horror. You played as Amanda Ripley, Ellen’s daughter, and you couldn’t kill the Xenomorph. You could only survive it. Barely. The alien learned your patterns. It stalked you. It punished you for being cocky. It was, frankly, terrifying. And exactly what the franchise needed.
By the end of the 2000s, this trend started to fade. Games were getting more expensive to make, studios were taking fewer risks, and unless your property was a guaranteed blockbuster, the retro-game gamble didn’t always pay off. What used to be a fun, mid-budget experiment became a much riskier proposition.
Still, you see echoes of it every now and then. Killer Klowns from Outer Space is getting a game. Ghostbusters keeps getting resuscitated in playable form. There’s always some distant rumbling of a Back to the Future or Jaws comeback. And let’s be honest—if someone dropped Escape From New York the game tomorrow, you best believe I’m booking a week off work.
Ultimately, these games weren’t just about capitalising on old IPs. They were love letters. Occasionally messy, often weird, but always enthusiastic. They let us revisit stories we knew by heart and experience them in entirely new ways. They let us rewrite endings, play out fantasies, and beat up Baseball Furies in back alleys without breaking a sweat.
And really, isn’t that what video games are all about?
Anyway, if you ever want to see Sean Connery with a jetpack again… there’s a disc copy of From Russia With Love waiting at your local retro game shop. Probably next to BMX XXX. Both are high art, I assure you.
But what’s your favourite retro movie video game tie-in? Please let me know in the comments below, I’d love to read your thoughts. And while you’re down there, don’t forget to like and subscribe for plenty more videos on all things film and TV, check out our video game channel UDS Gaming, and you can always visit upsidedownshark.com to keep up with everything else we’ve got going on.
Until then my name is Tom, this has been UDS and we’ll see you next time. Bye!
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Tom Baker
I like Star Wars, heavy metal and BBQ Pringles.
