Revisiting the Harry Potter video games
gonvalhector - Monday, August 03, 2020
Back when I was a kid, like a lot of kids from my generation, I was obsessed with Harry Potter 
.
The yet to be finished book series, the movies, and most of all (being a kid that would have rather stayed inside playing his PS1 than go and play outside), the video games.
They managed to feed my fantasy of being inside that magical world unlike any other medium.
I should point out that back then most licensed games that were published in a multi-platform fashion were developed by different studios, which resulted in each version of a game being entirely different despite being based on the same source material. This was the case for the video games based on the first three books.
I adored knowing that the PC version would be different from the sixth generation consoles version, which would be different from the Game Boy Advance version, and so on. The fact that I could traverse so many different versions of Hogwarts and get excited about the prospect of seeing different parts of it in a different version was a delight.
Growing up I remember I had the PC version of the first two games, the PS1 version of the Chamber of Secrets , the GBA version of Chamber of Secrets and Prisoner of Azkaban (but my cousins had Philosopher’s Stone and Goblet of Fire , so I played those to completion) and all the games that released for the Original Xbox. I don’t own all of these games anymore, so I treasure the ones I have left.
Over the years I’ve played most of the games I missed growing up. But ever since Goblet of Fire most of the game adaptations tried to stay as close to a singular version as possible while trying to be much more like the movies, which was fine, but I pretty much knew what I was going to get with each version.
So I remember those first three adaptations very fondly, especially after the excitement and magic were lost a bit.
I didn’t own a whole lot of games as a kid, so I tended to buy games of franchises or IP’s I was already a fan of, or at least familiar with. And I would replay those games many many times.
And as familiar as I am with Harry Potter video game adaptations , it’s weird to me that I don’t know much at all about the development studios behind these games I love so much. With all that said, I’m going to start a series of posts related to reviewing/revisiting the video games from platform to platform, while shining some light on the developers that made them.
Hopefully it will be insightful, and I’ll gain some appreciation for the people behind these games.