4

Grand Theft Auto IV

Rockstar Games

Ah, the Grand Theft Auto series! Intricate in its environment-building, ambitious in its scripting, and atrocious in its attempts at making all the shit you have to do actually worth your while. Each and every installment alone contains about a dozen action movies within it, and GTA V expands to Ocean's Eleven territory as well. Although there's certainly a movie or 50 in their events, it's hard to see them contributing anything that hasn't been done with 10 times as much panache by, say, the Fast & Furious franchise.

Which is why the movie should be character-driven. And before you even begin, no, I'm not talking about GTA V's Trevor. Dude's not a character, he's a set of masturbatory jokes for the kind of guy who plays GTA in the first place. Don't get me wrong; he's got his moments. However, if we're going for a proper, well-defined character, I've got to go with this guy:

Rockstar Games
Fast-forward 10 seconds and seven gangbangers have gotten their faces busted in.

The Movie We Deserve:

Look, as much as I've enjoyed the GTA series, it hasn't exactly excelled in creating relatable protagonists. They had three freaking tries in GTA V alone and came up with "snarky washed-up rich guy who used to be the best," "snarky young black guy who wants to be the best," and "snarky sociopathic man-child who talks and behaves just like a 12-year-old Xbox Live player." That's not good character design; that's knowing your audience. However, with Niko Bellic, Rockstar came goddamned close.

In a universe full of assholes who justify their mass murderin' antics with, "I grew up in the hood, man," he's a moderately nice guy with a touch of genuine personality who only happens to be a killing machine because the horrors of the Balkan war nigh-irrevocably fucked up his sense of morality. His entire character arc in GTA IV is trying to recover from all that to become something approaching a human being again, and even then, he loses at least as much as he gains.

3

Castlevania

Konami

I'm ancient enough to have played the very first Castlevania on NES when it came out, and to be honest I hated the shit out of the game. Maybe it's because I just sucked at gaming until Mega Man 2 or thereabouts, but Simon Belmont and I always had a profound disagreement on the subject of how to kill vampires without dying at the first opportunity. Yet I found myself following the development of the franchise with something approaching interest. Not because I enjoyed the games, for I never really returned to them beyond a few half-hearted attempts at Castlevania II, but because the ever-expanding monster-slaying mythology they were crafting was pretty interesting. By now, every single member of the Belmont clan must have killed all the classic Hammer horror monsters at least thrice, and for what Wikipedia timelines are worth, they're going to keep that shit up at least until 2057.

I don't even know how those games play out anymore. For all I know, they might be pretty awesome by now, but all I see when I think of Castlevania is that stupid, sad sprite whip-fighting his way through 8-bit scenery until his inevitable demise when the first set of challenging jumps comes along. Well, that and the whole mythology, concentrated around the Belmonts and their weird, vampire-killin' whip that would drain the life out of everyone who wasn't a part of the family.

Konami
Luckily for errant whip-grabbers, roughly half the world is family.

2

Myst

Broderbund

Every once in a while, a game arises that changes the playing field in a profound and permanent way. Super Mario Bros. taught us side-scrolling platformers were awesome, Wolfenstein 3D ushered in the era of the first-person shooter, and Dragon's Lair taught us we can never succeed in life and all our choices are moot. Myst is one of these games, despite the fact that, even today, no one can tell what the shit it was actually about. There were ... books? And a mystery? Yeah, definitely a mystery, revolving around some fucker that could write magic books that could take you to different planes of existence or whatever.

See, that's the thing about Myst: It doesn't matter what the game was actually about -- only its atmosphere counts. At the time it came out, this first-person puzzle game was unique; not only did it completely neglect the whole "shoot at shit until something explodes" approach that has dominated the video game industry throughout its existence, it actually managed to create something hitherto unseen -- an eerie, surreal atmosphere that could suck you in even though you have no idea what the hell you should be doing and why all the books are screaming at you in static and why you had to solve mind-melting puzzles.

Broderbund
In a not entirely unrelated tangent, fuck this lighthouse.

1

Punch-Out!!

Nintendo

Oh, hell yes.

I will not even bother describing the mound of glorious frustration that is Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! By now, it should be coded into your very DNA, along with the Konami Code and an all-consuming hatred of that fucking Duck Hunt dog. Really, the only strange thing about filming what is the only boxing game worth knowing in the history of both boxing and gaming is why it hasn't already been done. I blame Don King.

The Movie We Deserve:

I've long held the opinion that there should be an Academy Award specifically for movies where people punch each other in the face. Sadly, it's a surprisingly stagnant style: Although occasional worthy contenders have been made throughout the years (see: The Raid movies, Undisputed III, Tony Jaa), the grandmasters of the genre still hail from the 1980s. The best absurd boxing movie will forever be Rocky IV, the finest tournament-style fighting movie is Bloodsport, and I will combat any man disputing this in the kind of flailing mock-fight that is only possible between people who watch too many martial arts movies and get ideas far beyond their level of dexterity.

Punch-Out!! might give us a way to add to that glorious legacy by combining these movies. Ideally, the movie would be roughly two minutes of establishing Little Mac's character ("is little, answers to the name Mac, can box like a motherfucker"), and a good 90 minutes of Rocky vs. Ivan Drago, with opponents and their special skills switching every 10 minutes or so to keep things interesting, Bloodsport-style.

Nintendo
Weight classes clearly aren't a thing here, either.

To be honest, I highly doubt that Punch-Out!! The Movie would be an all-consuming blockbuster of the Jurassic World sort. But does it really matter? Indominus rex be damned -- I'll happily spend my precious spare time watching a plucky protagonist take on Soda Popinski and Piston Honda. That's what I did a couple of decades ago, and I can see no reason to challenge that tradition.

Also, we should totally get Mike Tyson to play himself. Maybe give him a huge monologue just before the final battle, to make his face extra punchable.

Be sure to follow us on Facebook and YouTube, where you can catch all our video content, such as 4 Plot Holes You Didn't Notice in Your Favorite Movies and other videos you won't see on the site!

For more from Pauli, check out 5 Insane Sports We Brought Back (In The Worst Possible Way) and 5 Impressively Insane Theories About Famous Buildings.