Summary
Art is a beautifully diverse expression of humanity, and it can come across in many forms. While games may be what you’re used to if you’re here, manga and comics are another incredible form of storytelling. So much so that plenty of manga have been adapted into games.
What about the other way around, though? While it’s not quite as common nor does it tend to produce quite as high quality results, plenty of games have had manga adaptations produced of them. Some of them you may have already heard of, while others are truly a bit more out there than you might be expecting.
10The Legend Of Zelda
Realistically, The Legend of Zelda is one of the most popular manga adaptations of a video game. So popular that the series has been ongoing since the 90s,covering the stories of plenty of the Zelda games, from mainline to spin-off.
The majority of these manga have been handled by the mangaka duo Akira Himekawa, and they are the only creators of it today. In the past, Nintendo produced many one-off Zelda manga such as those of A Link To The Past and the original Zelda.
Elden Ring, while it may not be your favourite FromSoftware game, is undeniably their most popular and successful game ever. The game was a runaway winner from day one and that’s spawned plenty of other projects around it, primarily merchandise. And, since it’s listed here, a manga.
Elden Ring is not the first FromSoftware game to get a manga adaptation, with Dark Souls already having one. Elden Ring, however, is not your standard adaptation. While the game itself may be overflowing with melancholy and struggles, the manga is a full-on gagfest. Just jokes all around. It is a beautiful interpretation of Elden Ring.
Ace Attorney is a game that is a gorgeous marvel of a translation. You may not be aware that the games are actually set in Japan, with the localization seamlessly shifting it to America so that the jokes could land with an English-speaking audience. The sheer absurdity of the games lends itself to a more flowery translation, after all.
This applied to the manga adaptation of the game’s as well, with the two different manga both getting English releases. The first, made by Del Ray, is an anthology doujinshi series, meaning they are fan-produced. The second, made by Kodansha, followa structure more similar to the actual games, though don’t quite perfectly fit the chronology of the games. That’s a new case for you to solve.
We all love our little bean guys. Everyone seems to have a version of them now, but it’s those almost-limbless bean dudes from Among Us that have come out on top. They’re everywhere, from stickers to fan-art, and you’ve likely seen more of them outside of their own game than within it.
And the last place you likely expected to see them was in a manga. Mind you, it’s not actually a full manga but just a one-shot featured in Corocoro. It would likely be quite difficult to expand a bunch of bean folk trying to kill each other into a whole story, so the rather unexpected one-shot will have to suffice.
Pokemon is really funny to track the history of just on account of how massive it is. While it did start as a video game for the Game Boy, when exactly did every other piece of expanded media stop being an adaptation of the games themselves and become their own works completely detached from the games?
Turns out, basically immediately. Pokemon took off to a degree that no one quite expected owing to the mass appeal of the Game Boy, and so the very first manga released the following year. In fact, that original manga is still on-going, adapting each game’s setting into a story of its own.
5Higurashi
Visual novelsget a bit of a rough treatment in much of the Western world, viewed more as glorified books to be improved rather than genuine games in their own right. While that debate has been going on for decades, Japan has actually been developing some stellar visual novels, with Higurashi the first entry in the now-massive When They Cry series.
Having had its origins in 2002 as a murder-mystery, the series has seen an exponential growth rarely seen for a game of its scale. It has movies, live-actions, merchandise, and of course, manga. The manga has adapted much of the visual novels, and there are still some being written to this day, deftly transitioning the series to a non-interactive format.
We all love Kirby because he’s such an effective, affectionate design. What is better than a small, pink blob that can take on any form it desires? Simply nothing. Kirby is a beautiful creation and deserves all the goodness and multimedia opportunities he can get.
And indeed, Kirby has gotten quite a few. With a television series under his metaphorical belt and a recent surge in games, it’s only fair Kirby gets to exist on paper, too. And this can be found in Kirby Manga Mania, a wonderful compilation gag manga. It pulls together many of the older Kirby manga stories, adds in some new ones, and even details the creation of it all.
Across the three Splatoon games, it’s easy to forget there’s a whole story and lore there explaining basically everything about the existence of Splatoon. Did you know it’s set on actual planet earth in a post-apocalyptic setting? Yeah, that’s hidden away in the story mode. Good thing the manga exists to expand on it.
Ah, but it doesn’t, really. The Splatoon manga instead follows the exploits of various teams competing against each other, just like you do in the games itself. This had a direct impact on the games though, with some of the gear depicted in the manga being added as customisation options later.
The story of each of the Monster Hunter games is pretty standard stuff from a storytelling perspective, though still packs some meaningful themes. Hunting is done not for the thrill, but to stabilise the ecosystem. You’re not some trophy hunter, but the only means of keeping the world in balance. It’s a noble deed told simply.
The manga, then, becomes a means to tell that story with a bit more panache. There are actually a few Monster Hunter manga adaptations, though Monster Hunter Orage is the easiest to find, while Flash Hunters is the longest. Again, neither have groundbreaking stories but they use the medium to tell their stories with a bit more style.
Fighting games are, for good reason, some of the most popular genre of video games. Finding their true origin in arcades, they’ve since expanded into a massive esports scene the world over, and Tekken is one of the most prominent of those fighting games. And often underrated aspect of the Tekken games is their story, which is a bit more complex than you might think.
The Tekken manga, confusingly called Tekken Comic, uses a version of the story from Tekken 6. Which namely revolves around Jin declaring war on, um, the entire world through the sheer power of his company, Mishima Zaibatsu. This does not quite appeal to everyone, and so another Tekken Tournament is announced. You should just read it for yourself.
