Summary
- Stephen King's books have inspired various video games, from critically acclaimed adaptations to experimental or unsuccessful ones.
- Popular works like 'The Mist' and 'The Running Man' have been transformed into video games, mostly following the plots of the movies.
- Video games like 'Silent Hill' and 'Half-Life' draw inspiration from multiple authors, including Stephen King, to create immersive gaming experiences.
There's a whole section of the video game library dedicated to titles adapted from books, and the works of Stephen King are popular choices for horror, mystery, and action-adventure genres. His darkest and scariest books have made some of the most popular adaptations, but the stories about dystopian futures and techno-terror have also made decent video games.
Video game adaptations of the famous author's books range from critically acclaimed titles to experimental or even poorly made creations. Stephen King's F13 barely qualifies as a game, consisting of a few creepy screensavers and some basic point-and-click action, but it's still a title that fans of the famous horror author would appreciate.
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7 The Lawnmower Man
Only Bears A Passing Resemblance To The Book
- Developers: The Sales Curve, Atod
- Platforms: Genesis/Mega Drive, Super NES, MS-DOS, Macintosh, Sega CD, Game Boy
- Genre: Action
- Release Date: November 1993
The original story by Stephen King is about a forest spirit running a landscaping business, which is what inspired the iconic name. It was eventually published as part of the Night Shift anthology. The video game is based on the movie, with both works only retaining the lawnmower man motif and little else.
Jobe, the mentally disabled landscaper who becomes the subject of Dr. Lawrence Angelo's VR experiments, is also the main antagonist of the video game. The SNES version continues the plot after the movie ends, including an ultimate boss known as Zorn the Doomplayer, who is directing Jobe's actions to dismantle society.
6 Alan Wake
Invokes The Author's Name In The Intro
Alan Wake
- Released
- February 16, 2012
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- T for Teen: Blood, Language, Use of Alcohol and Tobacco, Violence
- Developer(s)
- Remedy Entertainment
- Genre(s)
- Third-Person Shooter, Survival Horror
It's a known bit of gaming trivia that Alan Wake opens with a Stephen King quote, and even though it's not an adaptation of any particular book or story, it's highly recommended by and for fans of the famous horror author. The atmosphere, dialogue, setting, and use of psychological horror and small-town settings are all within King's wheelhouse.
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Alan Wake is organized more like a cinematic or literary experience, consisting of six episodes with plenty of twists and cliffhangers to keep players fully immersed. It was popular enough to inspire a spinoff and a sequel, and is one of the most ground-breaking and critically-acclaimed video games of the 21st century.
5 The Mist
An Early Text-Based Adventure
- Developer: Angelsoft
- Platforms: PC
- Genre: Horror
- Release Date: 1985
The Mist novella was originally written as part of the Dark Forces anthology and was one of the short works included in 1985's Skeleton Crew anthology. This video game is a text-based adventure game, as was the style at the time, and enjoys a cult following for those fans of both Stephen King and old-school video games.
The game consists of 20 levels and includes a variety of monsters, presumably from The Mist, and the premise that anyone who goes into the mysterious fog disappears. The game includes the same basic plot and main characters, along with references to the Arrowhead Project, the scientific experiment gone wrong that created the phenomenon. Several other games would later return to The Mist as a source for future games, but that was 15 more years in the making.
4 The Running Man
A Side-Scrolling Beat-'Em-Up
- Developer: Emerald Software
- Platforms: Amiga, Amstrad CPC, Atari ST, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum
- Genre: Beat 'em up
- Release Date: 1989
Stephen King decided to experiment with the dystopian sci-fi genre, but he didn't want to alienate the fans who loved him for horror, so he wrote The Running Man under the name Richard Bachman. The successful movie made relatively few changes to the basic plot, and the video game is based on the movie as opposed to being straight from the book.
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The player controls main character Ben Richards as he fights his way through the gaming zones, most of which are all that's left of Los Angeles in 2019. The enemies include not only the Stalkers, who are the stars of the show, but also regular street thugs. Finally, the player faces Killian, the game show's host and the game's final boss.
3 Silent Hill
A Whole Catalog Of Literary References
Silent Hill
- Released
- January 31, 1999
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ Due To Animated Blood and Gore, Animated Violence
- Developer(s)
- Konami
- Genre(s)
- Survival Horror
Ray Bradbury, Michael Crichton, and Dean R. Koontz are just a few of the authors who inspired the plot, setting, and characters of Silent Hill, along with Stephen King. The Mist is one of the more obvious inspirations, but it also references other books, including Carrie, The Shining, and Thinner.
Silent Hill is a survival-horror game in which the main character, everyman Harry Mason, searches for his lost daughter Cheryl in a dark, mysterious, and seemingly abandoned small town. It's not just a question of psychological horror, because the monsters haunting the city actually exist. Harry has to fight them to survive and discover the chilling secret of his daughter's birth.
2 Half-Life
Research Gone Wrong
Half-Life
- Released
- November 19, 1998
WHERE TO PLAY
- ESRB
- M for Mature: Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Language
- Developer(s)
- Valve
- Genre(s)
- Shooter
Another game adapted from The Mist, this one focuses on the concept of a scientific experiment gone wrong. Instead of the main character trapped in a grocery store and fighting for survival and escape, the player is Gordon Freeman, one of the scientists working on the top-secret project Black Mesa Research Facility.
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When the experiment goes wrong, it opens a portal to another dimension and releases a small army of prehistoric-looking monsters onto the research facility and the nearby small town. Freeman has to stop the monsters by fighting his way through the secret underground complex to stop the alien invasion before the government kills all of them to cover up the event.
1 The Dark Half
A Modern Jekyll and Hyde
- Developer: Symtus
- Platforms: MS-DOS
- Genre: Adventure
- Release Date: 1992
Another text-based game that was designed for the personal computers of the 1980s, The Dark Half is one of the first video game adaptations of a Stephen King novel, which is a modern retelling of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The plot follows the main character, Thad Beaumont, as he tries to stop the murderous rampage of his alter-ego, George Stark. The game adapts the same premise.
The book is a fan favorite for those who like King's novels, and although the video game stays mostly faithful to the novel, it lacks the same kind of thrill, horror, or creativity. However, it's a simple DOS-based game that might be worth it for those who want to experience the closest thing to a direct adaptation.
- Birthdate
- September 21, 1947
- Birthplace
- Portland, Maine
- Notable Projects
- The Shining, Cujo, The Shawshank Redemption, It, Carrie