Today is the 20 year anniversary of the release of Rockstar Games’ The Warriors.
This open-world action adventure beat-em-up was a video game adaptation of the 1979 action thriller film directed by Walter Hill.
It was part of a 2000s trend of classic movies, such as The Thing and The Godfather, being adapted into video games. In this odd period, developers seemed intent to prove the merit of video games as an artistic interactive medium.
The Origins Of The Warriors
Before the movie or the video game, there was the 1965 novel The Warriors, written by Sol Yurick. Yurick’s novel was a lurid account of New York street gangs, with an eye to examining them under a social lens.
But even Yurick had an older inspiration; the Greek novel Anabasis, written by the ancient military soldier Xenophon.
Xenophon retold how an army of ten thousand fought at Cunaxa to victory, only to see their general, Cyrus the Younger, die in battle.
Xenophon then took control of this army and successfully led them in several months through treacherous lands back to Greece.
Yurick’s novel brought the passionate story of men determined not to die to the streets of New York. Walter Hill’s movie took liberties in making it a pseudo-futuristic tale, like Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.
But Hill’s movie, starring Michael Beck, James Remar, and Deborah Van Valkenburgh, carried over the essence of Xenophon’s tale. A group of desperate men, surrounded by treachery from all sides, determined to survive one dangerous night in New York.
Rockstar Games Brings A Classic Tale To Life Once Again
Rockstar Games decided to get out of their comfort zone again after just releasing Red Dead Redemption and Bully. This time, they took on the challenge of adapting a story that already existed to their open-world game design.
To fit the needs of a game, Rockstar starts the game before the events of the movie. This gives players more to do, and also helps flesh out the story even more.
Rockstar’s touch also comes in when you interact with New York’s street denizens. You are rewarded if you help out random New Yorkers in your trek to clear the Warriors’ name.
The Warriors’ Legacy And Where’s The Remaster?
The Warriors released in 2005 on PlayStation 2 and Xbox. It would also get a portable version in 2007 on the PlayStation Portable.
Rockstar staffers still speak fondly of this project, but there’s no record of how many units it ultimately sold.
Unfortunately, The Warriors is not part of the Xbox Backwards Compatibility Program. It did get re-released on the PlayStation Network for both the PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4.
Those PSN releases of the original game are the only way you can play it now, but it clearly deserves much better.
It seems unlikely that Rockstar will work on new remaster or remakes of games after the fiasco of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition.
But then again, they did produce a much improved version of that anthology for Netflix with Rockstar Australia. Rockstar is also working with Remedy on the Max Payne 1 & 2 Remake.
So maybe the door isn’t completely shut on a rerelease of some form. It’s just not coming anytime soon.
