When Scott Pilgrim vs. The World hit theaters 15 years ago, it was the first film to treat gaming with reverence. It wasn’t a series of empty references or punchlines at the expense of those who saw gaming as a legitimate, worthwhile form of entertainment. Instead, Scott Pilgrim treated gaming like a culture that deserved celebration, while never letting that overshadow its actual plot (even if the finer points of that story don’t hold up all these years later). Much of that credit goes to director Edgar Wright, a self-admitted “lapsed gamer” who sought to capture the essence of what made the gaming-adjacent Scott Pilgrim graphic novels tick.
So when it came time to adapt this graphic novel-turned-film into Scott Pilgrim’s first video game, it’s not a surprise that developers Ubisoft Montreal and Ubisoft Chengdu didn’t treat this as a quick cash grab. Instead, the teams created something that felt truly authentic to the spirit of the Scott Pilgrim series. In doing so, they created one of the most creative licensed games of all time, one that would influence the creation of a studio releasing the best arcade throwbacks all these years later.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game is an arcade-style 2D beat-em-up. Like all the best beat-em-ups of the '90s, it can be played with up to four players. While the title suggests it’s a movie adaptation, you’re not controlling pixel art versions of Michael Cera and Mary Elizabeth Winstead. The game ditches the film altogether in favor of the books, and the translation is literally picture-perfect. Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game beautifully translates the manga-inspired art of Scott Pilgrim creator Bryan Lee O’Malley. The sprite work is immaculate, featuring colorful, detailed environments, expressive character art, and silky-smooth animations, all of which hold up to this day.
In an alternate universe where video games never pursued 3D, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game shows us what the medium could have looked like. This throwback aesthetic is used to set up some smile-inducing callbacks for players who know their history. The character select screen is a direct reference to Super Mario Bros. 2, and the map screen is a shout-out to Super Mario World. The pause menu has a catchy percussion loop pulled straight from Rare’s Battletoads. Player attacks are directly lifted from fighting games like Street Fighter II and King of Fighters. And the entire game is one giant River City Ransom send-up (with a splash of No More Heroes).
It’s as much a giant love letter to video games as the Scott Pilgrim books and film, while being a great game in its own right. Performing combos and juggles is satisfying and snappy. Picking up weapons and smashing them against bad guys is endlessly fun. There’s a ton of enemy and boss variety. And the RPG elements gave you plenty of reason to replay levels and discover new powers.
And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the game’s soundtrack composed by the chiptune band Anamanaguchi. From its high-energy title track, the melancholy lead single “Another Winter,” the jazzy croons of “Cheap Shop” to the celebratory World Map music, this soundtrack is one of the all-time greats, one that its band still plays at live shows.
A licensed game this great was always destined to disappear. At the start of 2015, the game was tragically delisted from all digital platforms due to expiring licenses between Ubisoft and book publisher Oni Press. Thankfully, in 2021, Ubisoft re-released the game on all platforms to ensure it could remain playable on modern devices. But its legacy goes beyond this monumental release. Less than a year after the release of Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game, game designer Jonathan Lavigne, and artists Jean-Francois Major and Justin Cyr would leave Ubisoft to start Tribute Games, a developer dedicated entirely to making games in the style of this seminal licensed game.
Following Scott Pilgrim’s winning formula to a tee, Tribute Games successfully launched Mercenary Kings, a tribute to Metal Slug, on Kickstarter in 2014. In 2020, the studio’s Blaster-Master-like Panzer Paladin was met with high praise. And of course, 2022’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge received universal acclaim for giving the reptilian superhero team a perfect arcade game for the modern era. Later this fall, they’re expected to release the best superhero game of the year in Marvel Cosmic Invasion.
Tribute Games isn’t entirely done with Scott Pilgrim. Nintendo announced earlier this year that the independent team will help bring the immature rock-n-roller back in a spiritual sequel called Scott Pilgrim EX. The game is made in the style of the 2010 classic, with an entirely new story set within Scott Pilgrim’s Canadian universe. It’s a feel-good, full-circle moment for Tribute, and an exciting prospect for fans of the original game, movie, and books.
There’s a reason Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game is considered one of the best games in this genre. It compounded the lovable book series with sound beat-em-up game mechanics, hundreds of homages to gaming’s long history, and a banger soundtrack that slaps to this day. Best of all, its legacy lives on today in the form of Tribute Games’ generational run of awesome arcade throwbacks.
You can’t mention great video game adaptations without mentioning this 2010 classic. As cutting-edge as the film adaptation was for its time, I’d argue that Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game was the better Scott Pilgrim adaptation of the two.
