Vi in Arcane and Ella Purnell in Fallout

The Game Awards nominees have been revealed for another year and five of the top video game adaptations from 2024 are in competition to be crowned Best Adaptation.

Each year Geoff Keighley hosts The Game Awards which reward the best video games of the year in various categories. The show is also typically accompanied by a wealth of announcements and new trailers from upcoming games and movies. In 2022, the Game Awards expanded to include a category awarding the best adaptation of a video game. The video-game-to-movie or series trend has been steadily gaining steam in Hollywood, after years of big screen flops, thanks to the popularity of newer titles like The Last of Us, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Detective Pikachu.

est Adaptation Nominees at The Game Awards Revealed

In 2024, the Best Adaptation category at The Game Awards is full of strong contenders. The five nominees include Arcane, Fallout, Knuckles, Like a Dragon: Yakuza, and Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft. The Game Awards voting system uses a blend of fan votes and jury input, with the committee votes holding the most weight. It’s a tough competition this year, but judging by viewership numbers and critical reception on Rotten Tomatoes, Arcane and Fallout are the two front-runners.

Best Adaptation Nominees

Arcane (Netflix)

Fallout (Prime Video)

Knuckles (Paramount+)

Like a Dragon: Yakuza (Prime Video)

Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft (Netflix)

Arcane, which is Netflix’s animated adaption of Riot Games’ League of Legends, is currently in the middle of releasing its second and final season, with the new episodes maintaining a perfect score of 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Fallout released earlier this year on Prime Video and adapts Bethesda’s long-running post-apocalyptic action RPG. Fallout was positively received and largely praised for the series’ faithfulness to the world and tone of the games, whilst also bringing its own original story to the screen. It scored 94% on Rotten Tomatoes and recently surpassed 100 million viewers on Prime Video. The two series also happen to share Ella Purnell as one of the lead cast members.

Knuckles is a companion series to Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog movies, focusing on Idris Elba’s echidna warrior who teams up with Wade Whipple, a bumbling police officer. The Sonic the Hedgehog spin-off was received favorably with 75% on Rotten Tomatoes and became Paramount+’s most-watched original series. Tomb Raider: The Legend of Lara Croft was released recently on Netflix and debuted at 73% on Rotten Tomatoes, with Hayley Atwell leading the series as the video game heroine. The final and most recent release of the nominees is Prime Video’s Like a Dragon: Yakuza, which adapts Sega’s Yakuza franchise and scored the lowest out of the group with 67% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The competition for top video game adaptation at The Game Awards this year is no doubt a difficult one. Interestingly, all the nominees in the category this year are TV adaptations. There have been fewer video game movies released in 2024, with the Borderlands film not making the cut and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 still yet to be released. Fans wanting to cast a vote for their favorite adaptation can do so over on The Game Awards website. The winners will be announced live on December 12 at 4:30 p.m. PT/ 7:30 p.m. ET.