Anime is becoming more and more popular in society, but in the world of electronic games, they have been close friends for years. There are countless games based on popular anime, and by sheer statistics, there will be some that are good on their own merits and even better than the work on which they are based.
What do we value in this Top 10? We value that they are good, that they capture the anime well and that they make you want to take a look at the original work. To be clear what we consider to be an anime game: a game made to support an animated series, either coming out after its premiere or at close dates if it is a multimedia product.
Anime that came out after a game and the popularity of the animated series is higher will not count. So sorry Danganronpa, and in the future, The World Ends With you.
Table of Contents
The ./Hack Tetralogy on PS2
The ./Hack multimedia franchise is really weird to follow. Spinoffs, timelines, anime, novels, manga… Each one with its own stories. There comes a point where you need to follow a guide to understand ./Hack.
So why do we recommend four PS2 games? Because they are the ideal start, and by themselves they tell a fairly long story throughout a game that ingeniously simulates an MMORPG on consoles, almost on a par with the impressive Final Fantasy XI. His only problem is that perhaps the story is too divided into four discs.
One could only hold the whole story if it had been condensed well. It does not mean that it is one of the most innovative games used to promote a multimedia franchise with anime. Even today there are fans who ask that these games be remastered, and if they do, it is because these games are not bad at all. If you want to check if they are that good, you can play them in a emulador by PS2.
Afro Samurai
Let's start with the most impressive thing about Afro Samurai: an anime has Samuel L. Jackson playing samurai. We could end here, but we've come to talk about a game based on a vanity project by one of the biggest Hollywood actors.
The Afro Samurai anime video game is just what one asks of an action game based on an anime: good combat, good animations, following the story and capturing its setting. Afro Samurai fulfills it and exceeds it, so much so that it became a cult game. A pity that its sequel was the opposite and was withdrawn from stores after its first episode.
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom
Quick question: What would you say is the best fighting game on the Wii? If you said Super Smash Bros Brawl, maybe you need to take a look at this game. We know Capcom a lot from his fighting games, and his Marvel vs. Capcom franchise.
But what happens if we remove the comic characters and put classic anime characters in it? But we are talking about classic anime from the 70s, 80s and 90s, and some relatively new. Tatsunoko Productions was an animation company that was queen in its time, with series here known as Comando G. Those types of characters would face Capcom characters, chosen with immense creative freedom.
Instead of going straight to the most popular ones by Capcom and taking on obvious characters, they took Frank West from Dead Rising, Kaijin no Soki from Onimusha, Batsu from Rival Schools, the final villain of Okami... And those were combined with characters from the Japanese superhero warrior cut. A project so risky that it will never be repeated, and it is one of the best crossovers Capcom has made. We could continue to rave about this game, but there are more that require our attention.
Samurai Champloo and Blood + One Night Kiss on PS2
A good game based on anime embodies the anime. A great game based on an anime, picks up what is important and goes beyond what the contract says. A good creative can make that difference, and that creative was Suda51. Today we know him for No More Heroes, but at the time he had to do graduate work. In the case of Samurai Champloo, the anime was practically designed to adapt to a video game, and is considered a gem of Grasshopper.
When it came to making Blood + One Night Kiss, Suda51 expanded on the original work. First, it can be considered a prototype of No more Heroes or Killer is Dead in many playable and visual aspects. He did not limit himself to capturing what he would see in the anime, and introduced a new character and story that make it almost a special Blood + OVA that acts as an additional chapter.
Dragon ball fighter z
There are countless Dragon Ball games. So many, that we could make your own list and Dragon Ball can almost be considered a video game series. We say this because today the series lives more through video games than manga and anime. Nothing against Dragon Ball Super, but it is clear that classic Dragon Ball fans today are going more towards modern video games.
Now, which Dragon Ball game is the best? The answer is simple: Dragon Ball Fighter Z. Finally a Dragon Ball fighting game is legitimately good after so many years of games that are limited to dozens of characters. Your secret? Entrust it to a developer specialized in fighting games that are popular in the competitive and casual fields. Such a simple idea but few follow because they save money and time.
And this is the only thing you need to make a good anime game. It's so good that even people who are jaded by the omnipresence of Dragon Ball want to play Fighter Z. not because it is an anime game, but because it looks like a fun fighting game that takes hours. And that's what the fans deserve.
Digimon world
Again pulling the wild card of being a multimedia franchise. Technically, Digimon World is not based on the Digimon Adventure anime that we saw in La 2. And that was known by the designers of the European cover, who gave us the Digimon of Chosen Children even though you couldn't play with Tentomon and Gomamon no appears. But it's based on the same universe and they share the File Island stage. They are complementary works taken almost at the same time in Japan. That counts as valid within our rules.
Now, is the game good? He has cool ideas like environment and digivolution mechanics with various evolution lines. But it has very cryptic and frustrating moments, even if you remove the bugs from the game through patches. It is one of these games that is sold to fans immediately and some take it as a gem to be polished.
And it's a shame that Bandai failed to manage the franchise well. Just talking about video games, they put out a lot of spinoffs and continually switched genres from the main series. They recently tried to resurrect it with Cyber Slueth and Next Order, good experiments but focused only on convincing the fan who grew up with the original game.
Naruto: Rise of A Ninja
Yes, we know from the games in the Ninja Storm series. But those games sin to be of the genre of anime brawlers. And what is the problem? That they limit themselves to putting all the characters they can with what they have, instead of being selective and of quality.
Ironically, the best game in a major anime was made by a division of Ubisoft. Yes, that same Ubisoft that fills us with games with small objectives. But that was long before Assassin's Creed and Far Cry 3. Rise of a Ninja was the perfect game to start with Naruto by showing us its characters and world.
It offered a quality exploration adventure mode, which although it made us repeat objectives with higher demands, in context it made us understand the idea of Naruto: fight to be accepted. And the combat system of having to do the techniques with the sticks instead of Street Fighter style combinations is an idea that should continue. If Ubisoft had captured the entire Naruto anime in the style of Rise of a Ninja, there would be a lot more fondness for the orange ninja.
It's a shame Naruto game development went to Bandai Namco for midsize teams to release anime brawlers. But it hurts more that they reuse the engine for the rest of the Shonen Jump series. The game of My Hero Academia is not very remarkable and the same will happen to the future game of Kimetsu no Yaiba.
One Piece: Pirate Warriors 4
Koei Tecmo coined the genre musou, which has its positives and negatives. Negative? Repetitive to infinity. Positive? They can adapt quickly to each franchise or aesthetic, and with One Piece they hit the spot. As of the third installment, the One Piece Musou games surpassed the Unlimited World, and with the fourth installment they were surpassed.
The extreme originality and variety of One Piece characters make its musous really varied, something that is not usually the case in the genre. And they fulfill very well with what to entertain even if you are not a fan, and that they encourage you to read the series. Which, being a series of 980 chapters of manga and 950 of anime, is a great achievement.
And we insist that making a musou seems easy, but you have to know what they adapt. We would have put Berserk and the Band of the Hawk elsewhere on the list. Adapt one of the best manga to musou? It would be a good idea if it weren't for the fact that Berserk is not known for having heroes who take down hundreds of enemies easily. If Guts became feared for killing a hundred men in one battle, having a secondary kill 2034 enemies in half an hour shows that Berserk is not up to being a musou.
But let's go back to One Piece. We really have no more to say about this game. One Piece Pirate Warriors 4 is possibly the best musou game to date based on an anime because it brings together the originality of the series and the important moments. We even say that the best muse to date is better, better than Hyrule Warriors, the one based on The Legend of Zelda.
JoJo's Bizarre Advemture: All Star Battle
It seems unheard of, but this title is the best way to delve into the world of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure before entering the anime or manga. Those who do not know the series, will think that JoJo's is just a series of rare moments with fans who make memes of everything that happens. And they are right, but it also goes further. And it is that JoJo's Bizarre Adventure is one of the most influential franchises of anime and manga since its premiere in 1989, and it has needed an adaptation in 2012 for people to recognize its merits.
This game, which is sadly stuck on the PS3, tiptoes through the history of JoJo's. Although theoretically it shows many spoilers from seven parts of the manga and everything that is animated, having such a concise story mode and showing so little, it is a good demonstration of certain key moments of the series. Curious that a game that releases spoilers, encourages you to read a manga that has been serialized for 30 years by showing some moments and how some battles are. And playably, it's an extremely varied and non-ironic competitive fighting game.
And what about other anime-based games from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure? Capcom's wrestling is legitimately good, but sparse on content. And Eyes of Heaven is the living example of why we hate anime arena brawlers. They put all the characters that one would like to see, but many have complicated mechanics in order to capture characters that the fans want and not at all fun because the characters are very boring to play.
Jump Ultimate Stars, the best anime game is a great crossover
If you were a bit of an otaku during the time of the Nintendo DS, you know this game. Everyone who had a pirate card had this game and for good reason. Not only was it the ideal anime game for otakus, it was also the Smash Bros that the console needed.
Bring together all the possible characters from Shonen Jump, in a time when groups of scans translators were considered heroes without capes, on a console that everyone had and you have the game that everyone wanted to play. And not only was it a great crossover, it was good at idea and realization. Imitating Smash Bros, but with its own mechanics such as managing your own team using different sized panels.
A cool idea that would suit One Piece Gigant Battle. But you could tell that without many different series, it's only good if you're already a One Piece fan. And the idea of putting together Jump series? It was made with J-Stars Victory Vs and Jump Force. But in both cases it was shown that you need a lot more than putting popular characters together to make a good crossover. Because the characters can help you generate initial sales, but no one will be happy if the game is fun to play. And boy was it Jump Ultimate Stars, which could be enjoyed even by those who have not read a manga or seen an anime in their life.
