"The Blues Brothers" tie-in (1992) had me fighting lawnmowers. "Cliffhanger" and "The Last Action Hero," what with their junky graphics and pitiful mechanics (unless you enjoy having your punches and kicks go right through enemies), made me forever hold a grudge against its starring '80s action icons. "Street Fighter: The Movie" the game (1995), in which the 2-D fighting series was transformed into a "Mortal Kombat"-ish monstrosity, was so awful that it sullied Raul Julia's legacy even worse than the film itself.

"Total Recall" (1990) required me, for reasons never really explained, to make Ahnold fight pink midgets and sneak past walls that had punching hands coming out of holes. And let's not forget some of the early disasters, like "Friday the 13th" (1983), which generated horror by forcing you to randomly walk around Camp Crystal Lake and fight enormous gorillas, as well as the granddaddy of bad movie games, the Atari 2600's "E.T." (1983), which had players embark on a quest for Reese's Pieces that inevitably, incessantly ended with the extraterrestrial falling into deep holes from which there was no escape. Revisiting the title ten years ago simply confirmed that every aspect of "E.T." was intolerable. Atari, faced with poor sales in 1983, reportedly buried hundreds of thousands of unsold cartridges in a New Mexico landfill.

On the one hand, it’s borderline insulting for companies to annually peddle sloppy, plagiaristic movie games to consumers. But, ultimately, we get what we deserve. So long as there are gamers who, against all reason, regularly plunk down $60 for name-brand rubbish, it’s hard to point the finger at anyone other for this miserable situation. And it keeps going: “Enter the Matrix” (2003) enticed gamers with all-new “Matrix Reloaded”-related film footage (starring Jada Pinkett-Smith), then stuck them with clunky, sub-“Max Payne” bullet-time gimmickry. “Fight Club” (2004) reduced David Fincher’s anti-commercialism saga into a cash-grab 3-D fighting game rife with ridiculously excessive swearing and Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst as a hidden playable brawler.

Though “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” sort of bucks the trend this summer, there’s “Terminator Salvation” to help restore order to the universe, delivering half-finished animations and cut scenes (or is everyone in the future a ventriloquist?), as well as gameplay that forces you to run away from, rather than fight, killer robots. In the case of movie tie-in games, you'd usually be wise to do likewise, and flee -- but if you must, here are the five I'd say are actually worth the while.

The Best of a Generally Bad Lot

1. “GoldenEye 007” (N64): A phenomenal first-person shooter whose multiplayer mode helped usher in the current console craze for online, 50-player-plus FPS deathmatches.

2. “The Warriors” (PS2): A sturdy, faithful beat-‘em-up that nails everything cool about Walter Hill’s gangland cult classic.

3. “Spider-Man 2” (PS2): No Spidey title before or since has so perfectly captured the thrill of web-swinging around Manhattan.

4. “The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King” (Xbox): The gameplay may be straightforward hack-and-slash, but the superlative presentation captures the epic scope of Peter Jackson’s trilogy-capper.

5. “The Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay” (Xbox): An original first-person stealth-action adventure starring Vin Diesel’s antihero, it far outpaces its cinematic siblings.

The Sandbox, a column about the intersection a film and gaming, runs biweekly.

[Additional photos: "Batman: The Video Game," SunSoft, 1990; Jada Pinkett-Smith in "Enter the Matrix," Atari, 2003; "GoldenEye 007," Rareware, 1997]