Video Game Heroes: The Top 5 in Adaptations

Get Your Game On with these Video Game Heroes

Video games have evolved over decades. We’ve gone from Atari’s Adventure starring a yellow square to deeper modern characters with stories straight out of Hollywood. Even older, more basic characters become amazing when adapted to the screen.

But video game adaptations are a mixed bag. The 90s and early 2000s were filled with crappy cash-grabs that have grown much better in the past decade. Of course, no game or movie excels without a great hero. We’re looking for a combination of great characters and how well they were adapted to the silver screen. So who are the best heroes in video game adaptations? Let’s find out.

Honorable Mention: Red/Ash Ketchum

Series: Pokemon
Voiced By: Rica Matsumoto, Veronica Taylor, Sarah Natochenny
Theme Song: Pokemon Theme Song

Everyone thinks of one name when they hear the phrase “video game adaptation.” Pokémon ruled the late 90s, but design aside, the first game’s hero has little in common with his adaptation. 

The Original: Red is a nonverbal ten-year-old who receives a Pokémon from Professor Oak. In return, he agrees to help catalog every Pokémon using the professor’s Pokédex. Along the way, he destroys the terrorist organization Team Rocket and completes the Gym Leader challenge. Red then defeated the Elite Four and his rival Blue to become a Pokémon Champion.

After his victory, Red travelled to various continents and established himself as the world’s strongest Pokémon trainer. He was rarely involved in adventures, but occasionally challenged other protagonists. 

The Adaptation: Ash Ketchum was built on Red’s initial barebones design. Ash was a loudmouth with an almost superhuman ability to bond with Pokémon. He took the Gym challenge as well, often losing but getting awarded Badges needed to advance for stopping Team Rocket.

Ash’s first Pokémon is Pikachu, a stubborn electric rat that shocked him when he was being annoying. Other Pokémon have come and gone, but Ash and Pikachu remain inseparable. Unlike Red, Ash lost many of his Pokémon battles and took twenty-two years to win his first official tournament. Ash’s skills and knowledge reset with each new continent he visits. That made the series suffer whenever Ash lost to first time battlers after previously giving champions a run for their money.

#5 Johnny Cage

Series: Mortal Kombat
Played By: Linden Ashbey, Joel McHale, Karl Urban
Theme Song: Johnny Cage (Prepare Yourself)

Video game heroes often change drastically over time. Well-written losers can grow into heroes like Mortal Kombat’s Jean-Claude Van Damme parody.

The Original: Johnny Cage was a famous B-movie actor frustrated by fans who believed his martial arts skills were fake. He joined the secret Mortal Kombat tournament to prove himself, unaware that it was a proxy war between Earth and the invading Outworld. Johnny fought for his life against real monsters instead of actors.

The actor found allies in the thunder god Raiden and Special Forces agent Sonya Blade. Johnny fell in love with Sonya and tried to impress her, but she didn’t reciprocate until he matured during a war with Outworld. Johnny Cage became a mentor, husband, father, and defeated the Elder God Shinnok in single kombat.

The Glow is Johnny Cage’s secret weapon. Cultivated by a Mediterranean cult to oppose gods, it gives Johnny super strength, speed, and durability when fighting magical foes. They power his sliding Shadow Kick and ranged Shadow Ball moves. His signature move is doing the splits so he can punch a foe’s crotch, stolen from Van Damme’s Bloodsport. Johnny Cage ends fights with a comedic Fatality to ensure his supernatural foes stay dead.

The Adaptation: 1995’s Mortal Kombat reworked Johnny Cage into a narcissist with a heart of gold who can back up his bravado. He was killed minutes into the sequel because his actor didn’t return. Cage served as comic relief in the direct-to-DVD Mortal Kombat Legends franchise before his starring role in Cage Match. Johnny Cage returns to theaters in 2025’s Mortal Kombat 2.

#4 Video Game Hero: Dante

Series: Devil May Cry
Voiced By: Drew Coombs, Reuben Langdon, Johnny Yong Bosch
Theme Song: Devils Never Cry

Most video game heroes are larger than life, but some of them thrive on the spotlight. Sure, they could efficiently save the day, but why not be as flashy as possible while dissing foes into submission? This video game hero is an obnoxious badass who other characters love or hate, but are rarely indifferent about.

The Original: Dante is a cocky half-human Devil Hunter. His father, the legendary Devil Knight Sparda, fell in love with Dante’s mother Eve and unsealed a portal between Hell and Earth. Dante hunted invading demons to cope with the pain of his mother sacrificing herself to save him and his missing twin brother, Vergil.

Dante found new allies in a duplicitous client named Trish and a tough-as-nails demon hunter called Lady. He stopped multiple demonic invasions and learned that Vergil was alive. The twins constantly fought until Dante’s nephew, Nero, punched some sense into them and ended the sibling rivalry.

Demons are hard to kill, but Dante does so stylishly. His matching handguns Ebony and Ivory fire together in perfect harmony, and Dante cuts foes to ribbons with a one-handed greatsword called Rebellion. When he needs more power, Dante can transform into his demon form by pulling his Devil Trigger.

The Adaptation: Devil May Cry was adapted into a short anime in 2007. Dante was unusually morose and his antics were given more serious consequences, but viewers got to see a lot of worldbuilding. A new Devil May Cry debuted in 2025, with a smartass, dorky Dante playing second fiddle to Lady.

#3 Saber

Series: Fate
Voiced By: Ayako Kawasumi, Kate Higgins, Michelle Ruff, Kari Wahlgren
Theme Song: The Sword of Promised Victory

Video games don’t always put gameplay first. Visual Novels are Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books where the player explores various routes the story can take with accompanying visuals and music. 

The Original: Saber is a mythological hero summoned to fight in a war for the Holy Grail. She agrees to serve a Mage named Shirou in exchange for a wish granted by the Grail. Saber’s aloof, duty-bound personality clashes with Shirou’s idealism as they navigate the war and shifting alliances.

Shirou dreamed about Saber’s past and discovered that she was King Arthur. Artoria Pendragon disguised her gender to ensure her knights’ loyalty. Artoria’s self-doubt and attempts to be an emotionless “perfect king” led to Camelot’s fall. Now she wants to use the Holy Grail to travel back in time and let a more worthy person pull the sword from the stone.

Saber has the usual superpowers, plus three representations of her story called Noble Phantasms. Invisible Air cloaks her sword in wind and can launch a small tornado.  The scabbard Avalon can heal almost anything, but she gave it away in a previous Holy Grail War. Artoria’s strongest Noble Phantasm is Excalibur, a holy sword that can fire a laser and becomes more powerful when wielded against threats to humanity.

The Adaptation: Saber appeared in Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works and followed one of the ideal paths as a mentor and guardian to Shirou. The show condensed several scenes explaining her past, trading clarity for brevity. On the bright side, it also cut several gratuitous sex scenes the devs had been ordered to add, a change that stuck for the rest of the franchise and the game’s remake.

Saber reappeared in the prequel Fate/Zero, fighting alongside Shirou’s adopted father in a previous Holy Grail War. The Heaven’s Feel trilogy explored another Route where Saber was corrupted by the Big Bad’s magic. Artoria was also featured in a parody series called Carnival Phantasm with the other Fate characters.

#2 Video Game Hero: Vi 

Series: League of Legends
Voiced By: Cia Court, Hailee Steinfeld
Theme Song: Here Comes Vi

Video games often relegate important information to lore. Some people may care how the characters got where they are, but others just want to jump into the games. This video game hero waited a decade to explore her past.

The Original: Vi grew up in the impoverished city of Zaun. She was a gang member who tried to look out for the less fortunate, but her gang eventually went too far. Vi stopped them, which impressed an Enforcer named Caitlyn.

Caitlyn gave Vi the chance to turn her life around as an Enforcer. She accepted, acting as the loose cannon to Caitlyn’s by-the-book policing. Vi found a rival in anarchist terrorist Jinx, but always held back in their clashes so that writers could tease that they were siblings.

Vi wears a giant pair of Hextech gauntlets that store energy to improve her striking force and create force fields . Vi’s fighting style isn’t fancy. She’s a one-woman wrecking crew focused on punching everything in her way until it can’t be punched any more.

The Adaptation: Arcane retroactively filled in Vi’s backstory. Jinx was her little sister Powder, who their gang deemed a jinx for always screwing up robberies. Vi struggled with her frustrations towards Powder until they were separated during a disaster that drove Powder mad.

An Enforcer sent Vi to jail on trumped up charges to protect her from a gang leader. Caitlyn recruited her to help capture Jinx, now a mentally-unstable terrorist. Vi was torn between wanting to help Powder, having to stop Jinx’s rampage, and a tumultuous relationship with Caitlyn that eventually bloomed into love.

#1 Ellie Williams

Series: The Last of Us
Played By: Ashley Johnson, Bella Ramsey
Theme Song: Vanishing Grace (Childhood)

Modern video game cutscenes are indistinguishable from animated movies. Sony in particular puts a lot of money into making the presentation look good, which immensely helped this adaptation.

The Original: Ellie is a little girl who smuggler Joel was hired to escort to a terrorist organization called the Fireflies. He quickly learned that she was immune to the plague that had devastated the world. Ellie and Joel travelled across America, her innocence slowly rehumanizing the jaded smuggler.

As Ellie travelled, she learned how to fight and survive from Joel. She began opening up about her past life in a military dictatorship. Ellie was captured by the Fireflies, who planned to create a vaccine from her brain tissue at the cost of her life. Joel slaughtered his way through their hospital to save Ellie.

The Adaptation: Ellie is almost 1-1 with her game counterpart, but played differently. She is far more aggressive and confrontational. The show explores Ellie’s backstory early, while also incorporating a DLC level that showed how she discovered her immunity while on an adventure with her girlfriend.

The season finale makes the biggest change, revealing how Ellie became immune. Her mother Anna (played by Ellie’s original voice actor Ashley Johnson) was infected while giving birth to her. Anna cut the umbilical cord, immunizing Ellie before she could be fully infected. I suspect this change happened to show that the cure can’t exist and make Joel’s rampage more palatable, because the first game gave players the option to sacrifice Ellie for the greater good. You can’t do that on television, so the showrunners had to shut the door and bar it.

Who is your favorite hero from a video game adaptation? Is there one better than these? Tell us in the comments.

Image: Devil May Cry S1. Johnny Yong Bosch as Dante in Devil May Cry S1. Cr. Courtesy of Netflix © 2025

Jared Bounacos

Jared Bounacos has written for Movie Rewind since 2016.