‘Now you are Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves™’: Intermedial Medievalism

Abstract

The 1991 Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves console video game constitutes a significantly different vision of the Middle Ages than the blockbuster film upon which it was based. Prince of Thieves is one among a prolific tradition of Robin Hood-themed digital games, which produce anew a legend that has thrived across intermedial networks of representation since the Middle Ages. The game represents a desire to transform popular medievalist narratives into play formats, but also the entwined and invested relationship between Hollywood and the game industry over the last half-century. This article will analyse how three core thematic elements of the game are inherently shifted in the adaptation process: the range of perspectives reduced by a first-person game, the modes of violence, and the role of familial relationships. The game is more than just a remediated version of the same story, as its adaptation process is a result of not only the medievalist tradition of Robin Hood and a connection to this film but also of the history of the action-adventure game genre and movie-adaptation games. This article will argue that the context of video game adaptation and genre conventions shape the way this text operates as a piece of franchise media, and that these constraints or choices in the game’s design in turn shape the production of vastly different historical meanings.