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Videogames based on hit movies have pretty much always been around since Atari rolled out E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial in 1982. While a lot of them leaned more towards the "sucks so much I wanna tear my own eyes out" end of the videogame spectrum, a select few of them have actually garnered accolades from gamers.

If we're going to base a tie-in videogame's success on how favorably gamers reacted to it, then we could probably make a case for the PSP title 300: March to Glory. Perhaps one of the reasons why it translated so well from the big screen to the small (PSP) screen is that Zack Snyder, the guy who directed and wrote the screenplay for "300", had a lot of input on the PSP title.

"They constantly kept us in the loop with the game's progress, and would bring us builds of the game to show us the progress that they were making," said Snyder in a recent interview with GameSpy. "And because I'm a gamer, and I play quite a bit, I wanted to make sure that we had something that felt like more of a game than a mere tie-in."

So what's next for 300? Snyder says that it could make the jump from the handheld PSP to the bigger consoles. "We're thinking beyond just the PSP game, though," he said. "In the long run, though, we're really interested in releasing a bigger game for Xbox 360 or PS3, and that could be much further down the line, maybe two or three years from now."

 

When the writer/director of the upcoming Warner Bros. Pictures film, 300, Zack Snyder was asked by Yahoo Video Games, about his intentions of churning out a game based on his adaptation of Frank Miller's graphic novel, he had this to say:

At first I wanted to do a larger platform game, but it takes a while for the Hollywood machine to pull a trigger on something like that. ...We wanted to do Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, but everyone has in mind what they want to do with marketing and everything. By the time they get around to pulling the trigger and they want a day and date with the movie, we ended up with the PSP. I'm completely happy with the game we made. I think it's cool.

So there you have it folks, the reason for why 300: March to Glory ended up on the PSP.

What's nice about the PSP game, is that Snyder was very involved with the development of the game. It seems that Snyder actually played through the game, and worked closely with Collision Studios to ensure that the game retains the organic low-tech feel that the movie has.

A specific example of Snyder's influence on the game would be the waving capes on the characters in the game. Despite the fact that Collision could've used the memory (used for the waving capes) on other things, they tried their best to ensure that Snyder's vision for 300 is still there.

 

Before we go, if you're curious about what other graphic novel Snyder chosen to bring to the world of the cinema and video games. Here's a little teaser:

The next movie I'm working on is Watchmen. ...Because of my experience with 300, we've been talking about doing a big game for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 that's consistent with the movie's satire. It can't be just a straight-forward game. It has to be more sophisticated, like the movie is. That's the kind of challenge we face when you make a game from a movie.

Alan Moore's Ozymandias in an Xbox 360 game? Sign me up.