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    In the same vein as The Film of the Book: when a popular game is adapted into an anime. Extremely common in the case of Visual Novels. A sister to Animated Adaptation, only the source is Video Games instead of Live Action TV or Film. The difference being that video games, by their very nature, are already animated.

    May involve Bleached Underpants depending on the source. RPGs in particular tend to have sprawling plotlines narrowed or cut entirely.

    If you're looking for the reverse of this trope—that is, the game derived from the anime—see Licensed Game.

    Examples of The Anime of the Game include:

    Examples of games adapted to Anime

    Examples of games adapted to Western Animation

    • Ape Escape now has a Nicktoons flash-animated cartoon.
    • Backyard Sports had a TV special, NFL Backyard Basics: Football Tips from the Pros.
    • BattleTech
    • Battletoads had a pilot episode aired as a try-out for a potential series. It bombed on a spectacular level.
    • A Bubsy pilot was made and broadcast. Calling it a "crime against humanity" is entirely too kind.
    • Captain N: The Game Master is a borderline case, since it is a Massive Multiplayer Crossover in an original setting.
    • Darkstalkers had a short one-season series.
    • Donkey Kong Country, unique in that its adaptation was French (though granted, the games themselves were British at the time)
    • Double Dragon - 26-episodes in 1994 and 1995. It barely had anything to do with the original games as Billy and Jimmy were turned into twins separate from birth and were given beam-shooting swords and dragon masks. It had a tie-in fighting game for the SNES, Genesis, and Jaguar.
    • Dragon's Lair
    • Dungeons & Dragons
    • Earthworm Jim, which was also one of the few Western Animation examples that was well-received.
    • An Eternal Champions series was planned, but the franchise as a whole was stopped dead in its tracks early on in its life to pump Sega of Japan's Virtua Fighter (also, the games were gorier than Mortal Kombat and yet slipped past the watchdogs...)
      • The first Eternal Champions title is fairly light on gore. The Sega CD installment however, is indeed gorier than Mortal Kombat by virtue of anatomical correctness (like if someone explodes, you don't get fourteen legs and five ribcages; you get shredded flesh, bone and organs).
    • Heavy Gear: The CGI series suffered from Adaptation Decay to the point where the tabletop RPG retconned it as in-universe Southern Republic propaganda.
    • Super fighting robot... Mega Man!
      • This one is an interesting example, as it was a joint effort between Ruby-Spears and a Japanese animation studio, and has a somewhat Animesque artstyle.
    • Mortal Kombat Defenders of the Realm, which also marked the debut of antagonist Quan Chi, who would go on to later appear in future games, starting with Mortal Kombat Mythologies: Sub-Zero and Mortal Kombat 4.
    • Mutant League had a cartoon that ran for two seasons, which is pretty lengthy considering most video game cartoons don't last past one season.
    • Pac-Man
    • Pole Position, In Name Only
    • The Power Team (aka Acclaim Masters), a cartoon co-produced by DIC Entertainment, Bohbot Entertainment and Acclaim, which took the basic premise of Captain N and inverted it by having five characters from different Acclaim-published video games (NARC, Wizards & Warriors, Arch Rivals, Kwirk, and Bigfoot[1]) transported to the "real world" in order to protect it from either Mr. Big and his gang (from NARC) or the evil wizard Malkil (from Wizards and Warriors) depending on the episode. The cartoon originated as a series of shorts that aired within the first season of Video Power (i.e., when it was a game reviewing show). When Video Power became a game show in its second season, the Power Team segments were then re-edited into half-hour episodes.
    • Rayman had a 3D series that only lasted four episodes. A full season was planned, but it's rumored that the company didn't have a large enough budget for the rest of the episodes.
    • Sam and Max Freelance Police is another borderline case, based on a game based on a comic.
    • Saturday Supercade had several: Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, Frogger, Pitfall and Q*bert. In the second season, Kangaroo and Space Ace replaced Frogger and Pitfall.
    • Sonic the Hedgehog had three, with "SatAM" being the most popular amongst the fandom (YouTube Poop fans may have to disagree with that, though). There's also the two anime (above).
    • Street Fighter, although this one was actually written as a semi-sequel to the movie.
    • Super Mario Bros Super Show is technically a live-action series, but it had animated segments based on Super Mario Bros. 2 (with Bowser/King Koopa substituting for Wart) and The Legend of Zelda. It was retooled for the second season as a purely animated show based on Super Mario Bros 3 and for its third and final season, it was reduced to 15-minute segments based on Super Mario World alongside Captain N.
    • Tak and the Power of Juju; this caused slight Adaptation Displacement when the characters appeared in the Nicktoons Unite! series alongside other Nickelodeon TV series (It doesn't help that Hal Sparks, Tak's TV actor, voices the protagonist here and there instead of Jason Marsden, his game VA.).
      • The original game was actually supposed to come out shortly before/around a TV series, but it got delayed so much that it became more famous for a game series.
    • Tomb Raider had an online series on Gametap.
    • Viva Pinata
    • Wakfu
      • The animation is part of an MMO/cartoon/TCG cross-media, but the game's universe was the first to be established, it being a continuation of its predecessor Dofus.
    • Where on Earth Is Carmen Sandiego?
    • Wing Commander Academy, done by the same guys that made Exo Squad.

    Examples of games adapted to Live Action TV

    Examples of games adapted to Web Animation

    • The popular Arfenhouse Flash movies were loosely based on a series of freeware spoof RPGs using the OHRRPGCE engine.
    1. ↑ all of which save two, were based on previously existing arcade games
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