Coffee Beans
Iron Man 3 released last Friday, and is doing a nice job of wracking up hundreds of millions of dollars. With Iron Man 3 having just released last week, for this Movie Magic Monday feature we're taking a look at the first Iron Man video game on the Nintendo Wii.
Iron Man was developed by Artificial Mind and Movement, and published by Sega. The game was released on May 2, 2008 and received an ESRB rating of "TEEN" with "Alcohol Reference, Mild Language, Violence" listed as content for parents and gamers to be aware of.
A description for the game on Amazon.com says, "Iron Man, one of Marvel's most indestructible Super Heroes, is blasting onto video game platforms and the big screen next year (2008). The epic, action-packed Marvel Studios production will be directed by John Favreau and stars Robert Downey Jr., Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard and Gwyneth Paltrow. This third-person action game will immerse players in explosive militaristic combat from the film with loads of additional content created exclusively for the game."
The original Iron Man movie has a runtime of 2 Hours 6 Minutes, but how many hours can you expect from the Iron Man video game? Did the "additional content created exclusively for the game" as the game's description says, add more hours of "explosive militaristic combat" to the game than what the movie provided viewers? Brew yourself some coffee, and let's take a look at the official Nintendo Channel data for Iron Man!
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| How many hours have you contributed to its overall data? |
Iron Man has approximately 114,111 U.S. Wii owners that have reported nearly one million "Total Hours" of game-play, as seen in the image above, with just over 5 years of data possibly being reported.
The game's average reported play time of 8 Hours 11 Minutes "Per person", averages out to be about 1 Hour 33 Minutes played per time reported on the Nintendo Channel. So, Wii owners have played the game in shorter sessions each time they play it, than it would take them to watch the movie.
While the Iron Man movie this game was based off of did extremely well at the box office, and has a 93% "CERTIFIED FRESH" on RottenTomatoes' Tomatometer, how was the game received by critics and customers?
Well, the game's "professional" review score average is 42.64%, based on 14 reviews on GameRankings.com. Its customer review score average though is 80.00%, nearly double the critic average, based on 18 reviews from Amazon.com.
Caffeinated Thoughts
If you never saw any promotional videos for Iron Man when it was releasing, below is one of the first trailers released for the game:
I have not played Iron Man, but I did see the original movie and its sequel, though I have not seen Iron Man 3 yet. I was a bit surprised to see Iron Man's average hours "Per person" sitting above 8 hours, but from what we saw in two March Movie Magic Monday posts, I probably shouldn't be anymore. It appears movie tie-in games are enjoyed a good deal by people that buy them, even if not by the critics that review them. (You can see the Alice in Wonderland and How to Train Your Dragon movie based Wii games data reports, HERE and HERE.)
Surprisingly, there has not been an Iron Man 3 movie-based video game released for the Wii, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 like the two previous movies had (unless I'm not looking at the right places). The Wii U and mobile platforms, 3DS and Vita, aren't getting an Iron Man 3 video game either, from what I can tell.
Sega was the publisher of both the Iron Man and Iron Man 2 console video games, and I'm wondering if perhaps some of Sega's latest ventures (like funding Aliens: Colonial Marines for a few years), is a result of them not licensing/publishing an Iron Man 3 home console game for this movie?
Even without an Iron Man 3 home console game, if you are perhaps in a store this week and see Iron Man for cheap, I would say based on the reported average hours "Per person" and some of the user reviews for the game that it might be worth grabbing if you're a fan of Iron Man. Also, if you're a Wii U owner, without a Wii, remember you can play Wii games on your Wii U system as well. So, even without an Iron Man Wii U game right now, you can grab this one for your Wii U (assuming you have the proper controllers!).
Questions
First, have any of you seen Iron Man 3 yet, and if so, what did you think about? Good? Bad? Indifferent?
If you played the first Iron Man game, or perhaps even Iron Man 2, did you enjoy it enough that you would recommend it to other gamers that might stumble upon it now for relatively cheap?
You can see Iron Game games and movie related products on Amazon.com below:
