When games became sequential art — official comics, manga, and graphic novels
Archie Comics' Sonic the Hedgehog series ran for 290 issues between 1993 and 2017, making it the longest-running comic series based on a video game property and establishing an elaborate original mythology far beyond anything in the games.
Fleetway's Sonic the Comic ran 223 issues from 1993 to 2002 as a UK-market fortnightly anthology comic, developing a distinctly British tone and a darker, grittier version of Sonic and Mobius that diverged dramatically from both the games and the American Archie series.
Valiant Comics' Nintendo Comics System (1990–1991) published simultaneous comic adaptations of Nintendo's major franchises — Super Mario Bros., The Legend of Zelda, Captain N, and others — as part of a short-lived but fondly remembered licensed line.
Pokémon Adventures (known in Japan as Pokémon Special) has been publishing since 1997, covering every mainline game generation with manga arcs that are widely considered the definitive non-game presentation of the Pokémon world — darker, more detailed, and more faithful to game lore than the anime.
The manga adaptations of The Legend of Zelda games by the duo Akira Himekawa — pen name for the team of A. Honda and S. Nagano — produced standalone manga volumes for nine mainline Zelda titles between 1998 and 2017, giving Link a speaking personality and inner emotional life absent from the games.
Archie Comics' Mega Man series ran 55 issues from 2011 to 2015, adapting the classic NES game series with dramatic seriousness, expanding Dr. Light and Dr. Wily's relationship into a tragic friendship, and culminating in a celebrated crossover with the Archie Sonic series.
UDON Entertainment's Street Fighter comics, beginning in 2003, became the definitive Western interpretation of the Street Fighter universe, producing over a hundred individual issues and collected editions across multiple series that expanded the game's lore with consistent visual quality and genuine knowledge of the source material.
Marvel's two-issue Doom comic adaptation (1996), promotional material packaged with id Software's game, became an unintentional classic of internet meme culture through its unnamed Space Marine protagonist's absurdly hyperbolic violence and the immortal line "Rip and tear until it is done."
Valiant's Captain N: The Game Master comic (1990–1991), adapted from the DiC animated series, depicted a teenager transported into the Nintendo universe alongside characters from Mega Man, Kid Icarus, Simon Belmont, and other franchises in a shared adventure that anticipated the crossover concept Nintendo would later formalise in Smash Bros.
Super Mario-kun, drawn by Yukio Sawada and published in CoroCoro Comic since 1990, is the longest-running Mario manga, adapting each new Mario game in a comedic 4-koma-influenced style that blends slapstick with game mechanics for a young Japanese readership.
The gaming magazine comic strips of the early 1990s — running in Electronic Gaming Monthly, GameFan, and related publications — were a form of short-form game satire that reached millions of readers monthly and served as many players' first encounter with games-adjacent comics.
Masaomi Kanzaki's Street Fighter II manga (1993–1994), serialised in Comic BomBom, was the most widely distributed Japanese adaptation of Capcom's fighting game in Western markets, presenting a brutal and kinetically intense interpretation of the World Warrior tournament.