Men in Black: The Game

Men in Black: The Game is an adventure game played from a third-person perspective, with fixed camera angles that change as the player moves to each new part of a level. The game is loosely based on the film, and is divided across four levels. Each level includes puzzles that must be solved by the player to progress. The player's character can jump, kick, punch, examine items, and dodge attacks. The player must find key cards, deactivate security systems, and read messages to proceed through each level, while fighting enemies that include grey aliens, large bugs, and spore frogs. Eight weapons are featured in the game, including the neuralyzer and Noisy Cricket, both from the film. Only one weapon can be used for each level. Fist fights against enemies occur frequently due to a limited amount of ammunition. The Windows version does not support the use of a gamepad.[2][3][4][5][6][7]

The game's first level follows the film's opening sequence, as the player controls James Edwards (portrayed by Will Smith in the film), a New York City detective who is sent to investigate a robbery. Edwards is subsequently renamed Agent J when he is recruited into the Men in Black organization, which monitors extraterrestrials living on Earth. For the next three levels, the player chooses between three characters: Agent J, Agent K, or Agent L (the latter two portrayed in the film by Tommy Lee Jones and Linda Fiorentino). The story remains the same regardless of the chosen character. The final three levels use a plot that is unrelated to the film. The second level takes place at a deserted Arctic weather station, while the third level involves an investigation into a Chupacabra living in an Amazon mine. The game ends with the player facing off against computer expert Skip Frales at his private estate, located on the fictional Frales Island in the northwest Pacific Ocean.[2][3][4][5][6][8]

Gigawatt Studios had been interested in creating a Men in Black video game before the film was completed.[8] SouthPeak Interactive announced the game in 1997, with plans to release it for Windows 95 on November 25 of that year, to coincide with the home video release of the film.[9] Actors who appeared in the film had their faces texture mapped onto the game's character models.[7] The game uses more than 200 backgrounds that were pre-rendered, while the model characters are made up of 500 polygons.[8] The Windows version was released in the United States on November 18, 1997.[10][11]

SouthPeak launched the game with a shipment of 100,000 units.[15] In the United States alone, the computer version of Men in Black: The Game sold 4,883 copies and earned $200,989 by November 30, 1997.[16] Between January 1998 and July 1998, it sold another 49,520 copies in the region, which drew an additional $1,423,382 in revenues.[17]

Steve Poole of Computer Gaming World criticized the Windows version for its short length, its "strained attempts to duplicate the film's humor," and its lack of gamepad support. Poole wrote, "Serious gamers will be dissatisfied with the lack of depth, and casual gamers lured by the movie tie-in will be left cold by the game's average graphics and lethargic voice-acting."[4]

Lauren Fielder of GameSpot criticized the game's artificial intelligence and poor controls, and wrote that the game might have been more fun if "you could at least run quickly." Fielder also criticized problems involving the player's ability to perform certain actions: "Unless you are lined up directly in front of your object, you can't act. And jumps are quite improbable even once you align yourself; for example, you can't hop up on a box unless you're right in front of it." Fielder concluded that "it's quite obvious the time and energy went into set design and mediocre character animations, not into actually making the game work." Fielder noted that the sound effects in the first level were "fairly interesting," but that "it too goes downhill, with your character's insistent one-liners and the endlessly looped 'climatic moment' music churning in the background."[6]

Calvin Hubble of Game Revolution noted the poor artificial intelligence, but praised the character animations for bearing resemblance to their film counterparts, and wrote that the graphics were "decent enough to pass." However, Hubble noted that each of the game's menus and loading screens "have an extremely simple, bold, solid-color font. […] I could have made a better interface given Photoshop and about a day."[3] Kim Randell of Computer and Video Games called the game's first level "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."[14]

John Altman of Computer Games Magazine wrote, "As an action/adventure game, MiB is a qualified success – fairly entertaining but thoroughly unoriginal. As the latest product from the Men In Black franchise, the game is a disappointment; the original spirit has been lost, replaced by occasional wit and generous doses of carnage." Altman concluded, "Hardcore fans of MiB will be disappointed to discover that the game is fairly pedestrian and generic, but gamers know that few things in life go together as well as killing aliens and making droll remarks. There's fun to be found here; it's just a matter of keeping your expectations reasonable."[5]

• Men in Black: The Game at MobyGames