Blade Runner. 10 iconic games from 1997, the year of legens

Blade Runner, Virgin Interactive, 1997

In the past, we have often complained about the level and quality of games based on popular movies. The creators usually hooked up to a well-known brand, hoping that everything could be sold in this way, even the complete crap. So it was centuries ago with E.T. Atari, from our homemade Rambo, to Aliens: Colonial Marines and in many, many other cases. Blade Runner by Westwood Studios proved that it can be done differently, and that a movie can be the basis for a brilliant game. The creators did not try to recreate the plot from the original movie. They preferred to tell their own story, set in the same place and time as Ridley Scott's movie, which allowed a number of references to the delight of fans. This is perfectly presented by the reviews of the game.

Blade Runner smartly merged its original ideas with the movie footage, using pieces of the incredibly atmospheric soundtrack and some of the locations, for example. The way that many scenes were presented and the signature dialogues were also reminiscent of those in the film, and all of this was tightly wrapped into typical point-and-click gameplay. Such a separation from the movie plot helped in getting the green light for the game's production, because the developers didn't had to struggle with many legal obstacles.

Neither director Ridley Scott nor Harrison Ford, who both had very negative memories of working on Blade Runner, were interested in helping prepare the game. Westwood was prohibited from using parts of the movie and the entire soundtrack - the game could only be made because everything had to be created from scratch in 3D graphics. After all, game achieved huge commercial success and received excellent reviews. It sold three times better than The Curse of Monkey Island. To this day, it is considered one of the best games in the cyberpunk world and generally one of the best games in history.

1. More about the game Blade Runner