Last week brought the news that Asteroids, the classic cult-80s video-game, the one where you “blow up rocks and shit,” is being made into a movie. Despite the complete absence of a plot, characters, and a defining trait would differentiate it from other movies about the cosmic trifecta (space, aliens, and asteroids ), Universal Pictures is taking on the dirty deed.
Because every 16-Bit game has been bastardized in the last decade (see: Super Mario Brothers, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, Double Dragon), it’s time the 8-Bit classics get a shot on the silver screen. To assist directors in this endeavor, we’ve created a list of other potential ’80s video-game film adaptations.
1. Centipede: The Wreckoning Earl is a centipede without a cause, for he is the hunted. In a moment of depraved animalism, seven bratty children from the future plot to hunt Earl with laser-beams via their new trackball guns. The stakes are made higher when Earl discovers he is the last living male of his race. Can Earl find love in a post-apocalyptic bug’s world? Do nice guys always finish last? We’re rooting for you big guy.
2. The Princess and the Frogger Starring Dig’em Frog (Smacks: The Cereal), this new film from the Coen Brothers takes place in a sleepy town one mile away from New Jersey’s Paramus Parkway. Ted Wilson, a neurotic frog with homegrown values and a crewc ut, leads an ordinary life curating flies at the local museum — until he is mistakenly identified as the ruthless leader of a secret anarchist society. Three rifles and two plot-twists later, Ted is on the run. Amidst the confusion, one clear question remains: he can hide, but can he run… across the highway?
3. Galaga: Armadependence Day In what critics are calling an “Asteroids-killer,” Galaga could be the first film to top Asteroids in the box-office this year. Bruce Willis is Clyde Derkin, an ex-army pilot who must save the universe from an asteroid that is about to collide into Earth. Shot off in space to aid astronauts on their mission to prevent this catastrophe, Derkin encounters a group of menacing aliens who are plotting to incinerate the White House. Optimus Prime is rumored to make a guest appearance.
4. Tetris 2012 what? The real end of the world is not a Mayan prophesy of inexplicable natural disasters — it’s when giant, multi-colored blocks of death descend from the sky to crush us all.
5. Burgertime The synonym for “America’s pass-time.” Leading man Jonah Hill works as a two-bit clerk in a rundown hamburger joint. Though he began flipping burgers as a side-job to pay for a new dirt-bike, an unforgettable cast of awkward friends and Michael Cera makes this an experience he’ll never forget. This is Judd Apatow’s Burgertime.