Men in Black: The Game is an officially licensed game after the Men in Black film franchise. This game was developed by Gigawatt Studios and was released for Windows on 18 November 1997 in the United States. The story is completely unrelated to that of the film, as this was a survival horror game. The actors who played in the movie, including Will Smith, had their faces texture mapped for rendering the in-game characters. Even though the comedic film was a huge success at the box office, this $1.9B franchise couldn’t deliver a game that fans would like. The Men in Black game was a dumpster fire with a rating of 1/10.
Also Read: “We do not care what’s true”: Will Smith Has 1 Major Issue With Men in Black Co-Star Tommy Lee Jones
Which game did Will Smith get his face texture-mapped for?
Even before the Men in Black film was complete, Gigawatt Studios expressed their interest in creating a Men in Black video game. On 25th November 1997, SouthPeak Interactive launched the Men in Black game for Windows 95. The actors who starred in the film, including Will Smith, were in the video game as well. Their faces were texture mapped into the characters who were made up of 500 polygons. The game has several pre-rendered backgrounds.
What is the Men in Black game?
The Men in Black game is a third-person perspective, a horror-survival game much like Resident Evil. There are four levels in the game with unique puzzles that the players must solve to move on to the next level. Only in the first level, players are supposed to play as Agent J. The player can choose between Agents J, K, or L in the other three levels. The idle dialogue of the characters changes according to the game level and mission and based upon which Agent you’re playing with.
Was the Men in Black game bad?
Calvin Hubble of Game Revolution thought the artificial intelligence wasn’t good but he expressed his positive opinions on the graphics of the game, “decent enough to pass.” Hubble criticized the loading screen and menus of the game, “have an extremely simple, bold, solid-color font. I could have made a better interface given Photoshop and about a day.”
Kim Randell of Computer and Video Games commented on the first level of this game, “incredibly pedantic,” and wrote,
“The combat system is fiddly, and the murky backgrounds sometimes make your grasp of the scene less than complete. Later on, it looks and sounds cool, but with a continuing frustration factor.”
The computer version of the Men in Black game made a collection of $200,989 by selling 4883 copies in the United States alone. SouthPeak launched the game with a shipment of 100,000 units. It sold a massive collection of 49,250 copies between January 1998 and July 1998 and made an additional $1,423,382 in revenues.
Source: Computer and Video Games
