PODCAST · tv
Adaptation Decay
by Duckfeed.tv
Are video game movies always bad? Is there nothing to love about old Nintendo cartoons? Are any video game comics worth reading? In this monthly premium show, we look at all kinds of media derived from video games and take it apart, answering whether it's a good adaptation, and whether it's a good piece of art.This is a premium show, as part of the Duckfeed Patreon campaign. Back us at http://patreon.com/duckfeedtv to get access to all of the episodes!
Episodes
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Episode 62: Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City
This newest Resident Evil movie is simultaneously a better adaptation and a better movie than the Paul W.S. Anderson movies, while also not being good enough. It crams the broad story of the first two Resident Evil games into a breathless mess that's goofy and entertaining, while wasting tons of...
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Episode 61: Joysticks
This month, Adaptation Decay dips its toe into the waters of the "Teenage Tit Freak" genre of sex comedies from the 1980s. A high school grad named Jeff runs his grandfather's arcade with the help of a nerd named Eugene and a slob named Dorfus. This arcade happens to be a place where no woman can...
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Episode 60: Muppet Babies: It's Only Pretendo
The Muppet Babies was a smash hit cartoon that started the "baby versions of popular characters" craze, but video game fans remember one episode in particular. Gonzo loves his Pretendo, and the entire nursery goes NUTS when they start playing it along with him. This episode is an excuse for us to...
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Episode 59: Double Dragon (Animated Series)
Billy and Jimmy are brothers. One's a Dragon Master, one's a Shadow Master, until they're both Dragon Masters because a Shadow Master comes to town. It's dumb. The whole show, honestly, is garbage. It's hard to look at, hard to listen to, and it's a really bad adaptation. Avoid at all costs.
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Episode 58: Free Guy
Guy is an NPC who gains sentience. What follows is one of the most unfocused, scattershot, and half-baked movies we've covered on here. And it's all the more insulting for how much money and polish went into making it a visual spectacle. Hear us tear into this movie that is the exact opposite of...
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Episode 57: A Pac and Poke Christmas
This month we take a look at two Christmas specials: one from the Pac-Man cartoon, and one from the Pokemon anime. https://youtu.be/UA8-IehZuF0 (The Pac-Man cartoon) remains as baffling and boring as always, relying on the same non-joke about "chomping" for its entire duration. Meanwhile, the...
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Episode 56: GamePro TV
What if the 90s were made into a pure, uncut video drug? You'd get GamePro TV. Hosted by J.D. Roth and the contemptible B-Man, this half-hour commercial claimed to be the television version of GamePro Magazine. Listen as we talk about this fever dream of green-screen effects and poorly stretched...
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Episode 55: Silent Hill: Revelation
There are some nice things to be said about the original Silent Hill movie. It has pacing and script problems, but its production design is both high quality AND faithful to the games. When it came time to make a followup, they whiffed every single aspect of it. Sharon from the first movie is all...
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Episode 54: Kirby: Right Back at Ya!
We're as surprised as you are that this turned out to be okay. But it's kinda fun! We know that Kirby's cute, but he'd also be a nightmare to live around. This 2003 cartoon presents the reality of having a Town Kirby... a pre-verbal infant cosmic monstrosity who can destroy homes on a whim.…
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Episode 53: Resident Evil Comics
This month we talk about five issues of really bad comic adaptations of Resident Evil, which should actually be really easy to adapt! It's nonsense, really, how WildStorm managed to biff this one so hard. What starts as half-assed, rushed retellings of the first two games expands into some…
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Episode 52: Saturday Supercade
We head back to the earliest days of video game cartoons to talk about a confusing and boring variety show that's not really based on your arcade favorites! The good news is, YouTube also featured the vintage commercials. Saturday Supercade was an hour long show, and each episode featured four...
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Episode 51: Mortal Kombat (2021)
The staying power of the Mortal Kombat brand is a mystery, but we're here for it... even if this movie is dumb as rocks. Cole is a down and out MMA fall guy who happens to be the heir to a great line of ninja warriors. There's also an interdimensional martial arts tournament that Sonya Blade and...
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Episode 50: Willy's Wonderland
The creators of Willy's Wonderland might claim they weren't inspired by Five Nights at Freddy's, but we'll trust our eyes over them. Nicolas Cage plays a mute, mechanical janitor stranded in a small town, and trapped in a haunted fun center overnight. There are also horny teens in play. This is a...
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Episode 49: Beta Test
You have never heard of this movie, and we're going to fix that. Beta Test supposes a world where a gamer can control a living person, who sends back convincing enough footage to make that gamer unaware that they're doing more than playing a game. So the most famous beta tester who ever lives is...
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Episode 48: Legends of the Hidden Temple
Did you know they made a TV movie out of Legends of the Hidden Temple? And that it's actually kind of okay? This month's Adaptation Decay is a slight deviation from our usual formula, as we talk about the Nickelodeon game show classic, and then examine its faithful film adaptation.
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Episode 47: Sonic Cartoons
This month we bring you a discussion of two cartoons based on Sonic the Hedgehog, both released in 1993. First, we talk about "The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog", which aired in syndication on weekdays. Specifically, we talk about the episode "Super Special Sonic Search and Smash Squad", which...
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Episode 46: Rampage
You can't help but smile at big dumb fun. The Rock is one of those muscle scientists, raising the last of the albino gorillas. Unfortunately, a wayward canister of corrupt corporate super contagion makes its way into his zoo, and all of a sudden Chicago is at risk. We really like this movie,...
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Episode 45: Dragon Age: Redemption
This month, to coincide with the WOFF! coverage of Dragon Age 2, we're turning our attention to the web series created by Felicia Day to promote the "Mark of the Assassin" DLC. The short version is that we're unimpressed. The long version is that this is a really fun episode if you like to hear…
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Episode 44: Dragon's Lair
The arcade hit Dragon's Lair was already more cartoon than game, so you'd think it wouldn't be hard to push it all the way to one side and make an animated series out of it. The problem is, you also have to have plots, and dialogue, and all kinds of hard things. This show ended up being one of…
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Episode 43: Stay Alive
A wise man once warned me: If you die in the game, you die in real life. That man was someone speaking in a trailer for this movie, and that's why I've never died in a game. "Stay Alive" is a movie that not a lot of people remember, because it's very bad. Some young people discover an unreleased...
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Episode 42: Plants vs. Zombies Comic / Pac-Man Cartoon
This month is a rare split episode, because our initial plan would have resulted in an episode that was too short! First, we cover the 2013 comic book adaptation of Plants vs. Zombies. It's a cute kids' comic about two plucky youngsters to team up with Crazy Dave and his mutant plants to stop the...
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Episode 41: Wreck-It Ralph
This month we watch and discuss Wreck-It Ralph, a Disney animated film from 2012. It has a great cast and works in some very fun video game in-jokes before heading into a soggy middle section that kind of drags things down. John C. Riley's performance obviously runs away with the show, but the...
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Episode 40: Left 4 Dead: The Sacrifice
This digital comic was created by Valve to coincide with the final Left 4 Dead DLC and show us how the stories of the original four survivors began and ended. Over the course of four issues, Bill, Francis, Louis, and Zoey are captured by the military and escape a horrible fate before deciding…
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Episode 39: Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm
Even though Mortal Kombat is pretty juvenile, it makes zero sense to create a childrens' cartoon based on the property. So this show from 1996 is already on a bad foot. Additionally, it's also extremely bad. The animation and blocking are poor, the dialogue is 90% cheesy one-liners, and too much…
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Episode 38: Resident Evil: Apocalypse
We go back to the extremely poison well of the Resident Evil movie continuity to see how Alice and co. treat the Raccoon City incident. This is a very poorly-made semi-adaptation of Resident Evil 3: Nemesis, where Alice upstages Jill and punches Nemesis until he becomes her friend. It's extremely...
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Episode 37: Doom: Annihilation
Get ready for this to be slightly more positive than you expect. When the trailer for Doom: Annihilation came out, we were shocked at how bad it looked. The full product isn't actually "good", but there's some SyFy Original fun to be had here. It's cheap and it lacks subtlety, and it's a vague...
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Episode 36: Mazes and Monsters
This very boring movie is a relic of the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, when concerned parents everywhere got very scared of Dungeons and Dragons without actually learning about the game. Tom Hanks takes a leading role in a story about a college student who loses track of the distinction between...
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Episode 35: Sonic the Hedeghog
Gary, Kole and special guest Will (Gary's friend and professional writer), tackle what some are calling the best video game adaptation ever. Are they right? No. But it's still a very fun episode.
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Episode 34: Street Fighter
We decided to begin 2020 with an all-out banger. The 1994 Street Fighter movie starring Jean-Claude Van Damme and Raul Julia is a sight to behold. It's one of the most fun movies we've covered for this show, but it's a complete mess. And it was doomed to be a mess from the start.
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Episode 33: Nintendo Christmas
This isn't a podcast, it's an act of violence. To celebrate the season, we found three extremely onerous Winter Holiday themed episodes of Nintendo cartoons from the 90s. First and most awfully, we bring you an episode of the Donkey Kong Country cartoon called...
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Episode 32: Tron
Tron is a groundbreaking and important movie that turns the concepts of old arcade games into gladiatorial combat... at least briefly. Even when it goes off the rails, it still gives us cyberpunk concepts that would inspire games for decades to come.
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Episode 31: House of the Dead
We wanted to cover something good after taking a dive on The Wizard last month, but a tragic miscommunication led to us covering Uwe Boll's House of the Dead instead. We're always shocked when terrible things live up to their terrible reputations, but believe us when we say this movie is...
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Episode 30: The Wizard
A long time ago, it was very novel to see video games in other media. This was the appeal of Nick Arcade, another topic we covered on this show. But not even that novelty can save a bad script, and boy howdy, have we got a doozy. Corey breaks his little brother Jimmy out of an institution in…
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Episode 29: Detective Pikachu
Detective Pikachu made a big splash before its release by audaciously featuring realistically-rendered Pokémon in a live action setting. While those 'mons are absolutely the high point of this adaptation, the film itself is a perfectly serviceable kids' flick with lots of good moments.
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Episode 28: Warcraft
In what stands as a monument to human folly, this extreme waste of money adapts the Warcraft brand into a thoroughly mediocre movie that could easily be read as a parody of fantasy tropes. Made for China and released elsewhere only incidentally, this bland light show will make you angrier than…
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Episode 27: Dishonored: The Wyrmwood Deceit
Gary and Kole chat about the surprisingly decent Dishonored comic that no one else has ever talked to you about.
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Episode 26: Hitman (2007)
Timothy Olyphant cannot save this one... at least that's what one of us thinks, because this is a classic Duckfeed Showdown! Agent 47 is wrapped up in a plot hatched by Russian hardliners, and only jurisdiction can save him.
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Episode 25: Nick Arcade
It's about as nostalgic as Carmen Sandiego, but leagues less educational. Regardless, Nick Arcade was one of the only places a little kid in the early 90s could see video games on television. So listen to us talk about the technical hurdles they had to overcome, and the very strange show that...
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Episode 24: Carmen Sandiego
Double Trouble has stolen another god damn quarry! In this episode, we look at the very good game show and the very bland cartoon based on the hottie amazon known as Carmen Sandiego.
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Episode 23: Resident Evil: Degeneration
We've got Resident Evil on the brain after playing the magnificent remake of Resident Evil 2. So we decided to turn our attention toward a different kind of adaptation... Capcom's first attempt to expand the RE continuity into CGI film. Resident Evil: Degeneration takes place shortly after RE4…
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Episode 22: Bloodborne: Death of Sleep
Titan Comics doesn't have a great track record with Soulsborne properties. Their Dark Souls comics are bad and weird, as we discussed in a long-ago episode of Bonfireside Chat. So we're pleasantly surprised to say that their take on Bloodborne actually works! A few hiccups aside, it's a good...
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Episode 21: Max Payne
The problem with adapting something that is such a pastiche is that you risk just making another version of whatever inspired the pastiche. When Hollywood set out to adapt Max Payne, which itself is an homage to crime and noir films, they avoided that. Instead, they made a really mediocre…
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Episode 20: Pixels
Are you ready for some garbage!? Holy moly, this Adam Sandler movie about invading alien video game characters is just straight up gutter-leavin's. Its humor is outdated, the deliveries are halfhearted, and the visual effects are ugly and confusing. Thankfully, Peter Dinklage is in about 1/4 of…
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Episode 19: Mortal Kombat: The Album
We aim for variety on this show. We don't want to fall into a rut of just covering bad video game movies. Sometimes we want to cover bad video game music, too. Mortal Kombat mania produced a lot of cultural output, but nothing matches the sheer idiocy of Mortal Kombat: The Album, by The…
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Episode 18: Dungeons & Dragons
It's hard to believe it, but the Dungeons and Dragons movie came out in the year 2000. It looks and feels much older than that, hearkening back to a shoddier time in filmmaking. Not even the fully-committed hammery of Jeremy Irons can save this misguided and ramshackle disaster.
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Episode 17: The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, the Comic
It was a fixture for kids 1992. Every issue of Nintendo Power didn't just bring far-too-optimistic coverage of the games available on Nintendo's hardware, but it also brought another installment of Link's adventures through Hyrule. Nintendo Power worked with Shotaro Ishinomori to bring the events...
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Episode 16: Super Mario Super Show
Swing your arms from side to side, but make sure not to drop your phone while you listen to this Adaptation Decay about 1989's bizarre hybrid live-action/animation Mario show. For this episode, we talk about "The Bird! The Bird!" and "Butch Mario and the Luigi Kid", and all of their celebrity…
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Episode 15: Mortal Kombat
This episode takes us back to the Paul W.S. Anderson well for a movie that's much more fun than Resident Evil. The fate of our world hangs in the balance as extradimensional beings battle it out in the tournament of Mortal Kombat. This movie is cheesy, goofy, brainless, and not high art. But man,...
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Episode 14: Clue
We're playing fast and loose with the mission of the show in order to talk about the most unlikely thing: a board game adaptation that is also a very good movie. Tim Curry headlines an ensemble cast that tries to solve murder after murder in a nonstop horny farce. This movie should be remembered...
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Episode 13: Mega Man the Animated Series
The year was 1994, and cartoons could still be sexist. Of course we'd lead with that, because we're us, but it's remarkable how quickly this cartoon goes from 0 to "whoa" in that regard. Beyond that, the Mega Man cartoon is a very pretty commercial for some very good toys that espouses some very...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Are video game movies always bad? Is there nothing to love about old Nintendo cartoons? Are any video game comics worth reading? In this monthly premium show, we look at all kinds of media derived from video games and take it apart, answering whether it's a good adaptation, and whether it's a good piece of art.This is a premium show, as part of the Duckfeed Patreon campaign. Back us at http://patreon.com/duckfeedtv to get access to all of the episodes!
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Adaptation Decay have?
Adaptation Decay currently has 62 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Adaptation Decay about?
Are video game movies always bad? Is there nothing to love about old Nintendo cartoons? Are any video game comics worth reading? In this monthly premium show, we look at all kinds of media derived from video games and take it apart, answering whether it's a good adaptation, and whether it's a good...
How often does Adaptation Decay release new episodes?
Adaptation Decay has 62 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to Adaptation Decay?
You can listen to Adaptation Decay on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Adaptation Decay?
Adaptation Decay is created and hosted by Duckfeed.tv.
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