There have been countless anime that were based on or spun off video games, as well as countless video games that have been based on popular anime. But rarely do we find ourselves checking out games that took enough inspiration from an existing anime/manga media to turn into their own original thing.
In the list below, we have been able to point out a few video games that were inspired by particular anime series.
5 amazing video games that are inspired by anime
1) Dark Souls
Hidetaka Miyazaki’s second attempt at the Souls franchise changed the landscape of action RPG games in 2011, ushering in the age of a new sub-genre of a specific type of games called souls-likes. Gaming fans clutch the edge of their seats every time there’s a new game revealed by the developers of Dark Souls, FromSoftware.
One must wonder what kind of inspirations the creators sought when making some of these games. While it’s pretty obvious that the game is smeared with a lot of French existential literature and the usual mythologies, Hidetaka Miyazaki has gone on record to say that Kentaro Miura’s ‘Berserk’ was especially one of the biggest inspirations behind the game.
Several characters, enemies, weapons, and even core game designs in the Dark Souls games are direct references to the critically acclaimed dark fantasy manga. After the passing of the manga’s creator, FromSoftware actually paid homage to Kentaro Miura’s works by creating a referential memorial in their latest biggest release, Elden Ring.
2) Street Fighter
In 1991, Capcom changed the landscape of video games by dropping a sequel to one of their well-received arcade titles, Street Fighter. It wasn’t the first game to invent the ‘fighting game’, but it was the one to establish it.
Street Fighter 2 introduced the concept of player versus player for the first time in the competitive arcade gaming scene, it was also the first to accidentally introduce the concept of combos, which actually turned out to be a glitch that was left in the game.
Beyond all its fame, one cannot deny that the influences behind Street Fighter as a franchise lie in anime and manga culture. The creators have credited the iconic Hadouken move in the game as a reference to 1970s anime Space Battleship Yamato’s Wave Motion Gun.
Later iterations in the franchise, like Street Fighter Alpha and the Street Fighter 3 series, also adapted a more anime style and flair to the game’s designs. New characters like Sakura were introduced as a reference to highschool manga tropes, while a character like Rose was clearly introduced in reference to Hirohiko Araki’s Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure manga franchise.
3) Megaman
Just like Street Fighter, Megaman is another important platformer title made by Capcom, originally released in 1987, a franchise that is easily recognized in the gaming world, even though there are barely frequent game releases.
Megaman is an android boy created by the scientist Dr. Light, he was betrayed by his colleague Dr. Wily, who stole most of his robots for his own evil agenda. Rock, the boy android, asks Dr. Light to turn him into a fighting robot to save the world from Dr. Wily’s plans, thus Megaman is born.
Many fans of the game have lingering questions in their minds when they come across the anime/manga Astro Boy, created by the father of manga, Osamu Tezuka. If Megaman was inspired by Astro Boy, seeing the incredible number of similarities between the two franchises.
While there have been rumors implying that Megaman was originally going to be an Astro Boy game before Capcom lost the rights, the developers have not outright spoken on the matter, but they have touched upon the similarities as inspirations.
4) Shin Megami Tensei
Even though Pokémon popularized the monster collecting genre of video games, it wasn’t the first one to do so. In 1987, the first Megami Tensei game was released based on Aya Nishitani’s novel Digital Devil Story, introducing its core gameplay system of monster collection, which utilized negotiating with the enemy to turn them into party members.
The Megami Tensei franchise later converted to Shin Megami Tensei, gave birth to countless spinoffs, one of which is the highly popular Persona franchise. Even though every subseries in the franchise dealt with monster collections. It can be argued that the modern popularity of the Persona spinoff stems from the very fact that it relies on the high school life tropes found in manga and anime.
But Persona isn’t where the anime/manga inspirations end for this franchise. Shin Megami Tensei enemies are derived from real-world mythologies and urban legends, with artist Kazuma Kaneko’s designs inspired by Go Nagai’s manga series Devil Man.
Hirohiko Araki’s Jojo’s Bizzare Adventure series has also been an inspiration in the franchise when designing monsters and game systems in the older Persona series. Persona 2 is the most derivative of Araki’s works, as both artists have been friends in the past.
5) Oni
Whenever discussions are brought up about some of the most influential and popular video games ever, developer Bungie’s name turns up synonymous with franchises like the Halo and Destiny series. But in 2001, before the rights got convoluted, Bungie made a video game named Oni that was never to be seen again and was heavily inspired by one of the most popular anime out there.
Oni was inspired by Akira and, most importantly, Mamoru Oshii’s groundbreaking cyberpunk series, Ghost in the Shell. The franchise is set in a far distant future where cybernetic technology has advanced far enough for humans to augment almost everything in their real body, including the brain.
But the main influences behind Oni were taken from Ghost in the Shell’s characters. Mainly Major Motoko Kusanagi, or ‘Major’, the main protagonist with a fully augmented cybernetic body, and the leader of Public Security Section 9
Major Kusanagi inspired the design of the main playable character in Oni, Konono. She had a similar backstory of leading the Technological Crimes Task Force in the game’s futuristic cyberpunk-dystopia before things started to change.
