Over the years, Stephen King's books have been turned into countless movies, comics, and TV shows. However, there's another medium that has received adaptations from the master of horror. Since the 1980s, Stephen King's works have even been adapted into video games. All of them are weird, and most of them aren't very good.
Books like The Stand and the Dark Tower series would make great video games, but they've never gotten official adaptations. Fans have made their own games or levels based on King's works over the years. Several AAA games have featured Stephen King Easter eggs, like the It references in Far Cry 5 or Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Mostly, though, Stephen King video games are few and far between.
In 1985, Mindscape adapted Stephen King's novella, the Frank Darabont movie and its infamous ending. Being a text-based game, it's like playing through a Stephen King novel. Players type in commands and read descriptions of rooms and events. It's a weird game, and some players might be be turned off by its text-only gameplay - but it's one of the better Stephen King video games out there.
Stephen King's Lawnmower Man, The Dark Half, & Others
Although technically based on a book by Richard Bachman (the not-so-secret pseudonym used by Stephen King), a video game adaptation of the movie, which Stephen King hated, the video game isn't very good.
Arguably the best video game to be adapted from one of Stephen King's works is George Romero's movie adaptation flopped at the box office. The game itself is pretty good, at least for fans of LucasArts-era point-and-click adventures. It's probably the best Stephen King video game, although that bar is ittedly pretty low.
Some of the worst Stephen King video game adaptations include two different versions of The Lawnmower Man, both of which are loosely based on the terrible film, which is so loosely based on a Stephen King short story the author sued the filmmakers for putting his name on it. Both games released in 1993, with the PC version using notoriously terrible low-res images from the movie to convey a vague sense of playing a video game. The other version, which released on SNES, Genesis, and Game Boy, was more interactive; however, it was essentially a run-and-gun Contra rip-off.
Then there's Stephen King's F13, the only video game to actually feature the author's name in its title. Releasing in North America in 2000, F13 was mostly just a bunch of disappointing mini-games. It was a huge waste of time that mostly just served as a way for fans to read King's short story "Everything's Eventual," which was published in a collection with the same title in 2002.
Since F13, there hasn't been an official video game from Stephen King. It's a bit disappointing that King's works haven't gotten better video game treatments. Quite a few of the author's books would make great video games. For some reason, it just hasn't happened yet.
