When you think about it, it makes perfect sense. In fact, it’s hard to believe nobody has developed this yet. The Boys deserves its own Mortal Kombat-style game.
It seems like every time some franchise wants a quick cash-grab in the modern video game industry, the safest way to go is to make some kind of bizarre “battle royale” title of some sort – or perhaps add a skin to Fortnite if they aren’t feeling all that generous. However, some years back, this wasn’t the case.
Licensed games have always been an integral part of any console’s library. Sure, not all of them are as innovative as non-licensed projects, but, sometimes, a game based on our favourite franchise is all we want. It’s the same kind of feeling as seeing a series brought into live-action: for a moment, you don’t even care about what you’re actually playing; you just want to see the characters come to life in that virtual realm.
That said, whereas action flicks of every shape and form used to dominate the box office in the past decades, superheroes are where the money’s at for quite a while now. However, it’s undeniable that at least a considerable number of fans are growing weary of seeing the same heroes beat the bad guys in increasingly stale TV and film projects. Maybe that’s why Amazon Prime Video’s The Boys has become such a considerable success story.
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It’s not like The Boys is breaking new ground or anything with its deconstruction of the superhero phenomenon, but it’s undeniable just how effective this dark comedy about superpowered vigilantes can be when telling their stories. And, despite being based on a comic book series from the mid-2000s, there are enough interesting ideas present in the source material to warrant bringing them over to the video game world in our modern context.
However, The Boys deserve a video game that can encapsulate the sheer rawness of not just the Prime Video TV series, but also of the comic written by Garth Ennis – which, in some cases, can be even more disturbing than the show.
That’s why we believe that the only way to make a proper The Boys video game would be to place these superpowered jerks in an arena to duke out their issues – perhaps in a fight to the death. A “Mortal Combat,” if you will.
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Mastering the Basics
Seeing the sheer amount of violence present in the TV show and in the comics, it’s clear that the only way we could ever get a The Boys video game adaptation is if it followed the successful Mortal Kombat formula.
Licensed fighting games have been a thing for ages. Who could forget such timeless classics as Street Fighter: The Movie (The Game)? Maybe that was not the best example to prove our point, but, thankfully, NetherRealm Studios themselves have already proved that they’re the best when it comes to superhero fighting games.
Other than Mortal Kombat, the developers are also responsible for the Injustice series, which just so happens to be the undisputed greatest superhero brawler available. A video game based on The Boys following the Injustice formula, but with the crude violence of Mortal Kombat would be a dream come true for fans of both franchises – not to mention fighting games as a whole.
What we have here is a developer with a unique approach to fighting games and violence that would be perfect to adapt the gritty world of The Boys into a fighting game. It would be a great callback to the studios’ roots as the subversive team that revolutionized the notion of violence in video games – just as The Boys’ series is doing for TV at this moment.
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The Perfect Roster
Even though The Boys, in its comic and TV adaptations, were always meant to be a parody of some of the most iconic superhero characters, they have managed to create some emblematic characters of their own. We could argue that Homelander is one of the greatest superhero villains ever written, for example.
The Amazon Prime Video series has shown a hefty amount of characters from the comics, that much is true – but there’s so much more to see in the world of The Boys when it comes to the comics. The entire Godolkin storyline is a gold mine of new characters that would work perfectly in a fighting game, not to mention the other superhero teams besides the Seven.
In the most recent season of The Boys, our titular characters finally experience the effects of Compound-V for themselves, something that allows them to go head to head against the likes of Homelander and the rest of the supes.
As game-changing as this was for the show, this is an event that happens quite early in the comics. It’s the safest way that The Boys have to dispose of supes without risking their lives in the process. What this means is that, in the comics, the Boys and the supes have changed blows in more than one chance, which would be the perfect justification for a fighting game.
When you have a franchise with characters like Wee Hughie side to side with someone like Black Noir, you’ll need a good justification as to why those two can stand on even grounds in a fight. Now, a superpowered Hughie would be just the perfect fighter for a video game – we’re talking about the same guy who decapitated a supe with a single kick in the comics.
Of course, a successful video game adaptation of The Boys would have to take inspiration from both versions of the series, and even Diabolical, for good measure. This leaves us with a considerable roster of interesting fighters, each with unique abilities; just the kind of thing that Injustice and Mortal Kombat veterans like to see in their games.
An Expanding Universe
Those who have read The Boys comic book series are certainly shocked by some of the events that happened during the show’s third season. It’s clear now that Amazon Prime Video is going in a radically different direction with the story – one that not even comic-book readers can predict.
It’s the perfect recipe to keep fans engaged with the show: even if you’ve “seen” it before by reading the comics, you’ll always be taken by surprise at every twist of the plot. This same approach could be applied to a video game set in The Boys’ universe.
Who says that a video game should follow the events of the show or the comics to a T? For all we know, the game could create an entirely new tangent of the franchise’s universe, ready to surprise both fans of the show and the comics.
The best part about The Boys is how flexible its story and characters are. Sure, they share some basic traits between versions, but the tale of superheroes being jerks and an elite group of special forces whose only job is to keep said jerks in line would work in almost any context. Even in a fighting game.
So, the next time you’re eviscerating Sub-Zero for the umpteenth time, just think about how cool it would be if he was Homelander instead. Frankly, with all that’s been happening in the show so far, that could very well be the end of the series.