NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith aren't the only Men in Black. Turns out the onscreen dynamic duo needed a little help protecting the earth from the scum of the universe, so Zed and the team recruited me.

I wasn't real surprised. After all, it was just last month that I helped Spidey conquer the Green Goblin.

It all came about a few days ago. A package arrived on my doorstep with a DVD enclosed. Slipping it into my PlayStation 2, I immediately received my assignment: Hunt down and exterminate a group of escaped alien prisoners whose ship has crash-landed on earth. Donning my best black suit, tie, shoes and sunglasses, I accepted the job and got to work.

I've had a lot of different careers on various gaming platforms. Most of 'em, I'm too ashamed to discuss. In fact, this is the second time the Men in Black have tried to recruit me. The first attempt, back in 1997, was mortifying. The training disk was awful and made me fully understand why Elvis pointed his handgun at the TV all those years ago. I declined the offer. Pretty much every other gamer did as well.

Historically, games made out of movies stink. I mean REALLY stink. We're talking dumpster-on-an-August-afternoon kind of stink.

The software landscape is littered with truly awful games based on film licenses. (Need a few examples? Check out the 'Hall of Shame' to the right.) Roughly five years ago, it was fairly common practice for a publisher to shell out a couple hundred thousand dollars to a movie studio, promise 5 or 6 percent of the sales and slap a film's name on pretty much any game that was sitting around. The end result was a shovel-ware product that failed to capture any of the movie's spirit or imagination – and often didn't hit store shelves until long after the films had enjoyed their box office run.

"What we ended up with was a bunch of jaded consumers," said Steve Allison, vice president of marketing at Infogrames (IFGM: down $0.01 to $2.64, Research, Estimates). "You can't pull the wool over someone's eyes that many times. We got to the point where (the consumer reaction) was 'Movie license? Oh. Crap game!'"

The times, thankfully, are changing. Smarting from the critical (and, eventually, commercial) drubbings they took, film studios and game publishers are spending a lot more time on move-based games these days. And consumers are recognizing the effort. Activision's (ATVI: down $1.28 to $24.97, Research, Estimates) "Spider-Man: The Movie" (which released versions for all gaming platforms the day the film hit theaters) has sold more than 1 million copies to date, according to The NPD Group. Electronic Arts (ERTS: down $3.22 to $62.20, Research, Estimates), which took a similar strategy with its Harry Potter license, has sold 2.9 million copies of the games. A new series of games, based on the upcoming "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets," is due this fall.

That's just the tip of the iceberg, too. Other upcoming games based on films include "The Matrix Online," "XXX" and "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

"Spider-Man: The Movie" broke the game/movie curse to become a critical and commercial success.

It's not just game publishers who are taking these seriously now, either. For the upcoming games based on the sequels to "The Matrix," the Wachowski brothers (who wrote and are directing the films) are writing the game's story and casting the film's actors in cinematic sequences that will appear only in the game. Additionally, the film's actors have already recorded voiceovers for their characters in the game. When Infogrames wants to create a title based on the "Mission: Impossible" license, it needs the direct approval of Tom Cruise, who owns the license (and is a gamer himself).

BONUS PLAY       Read previous Game Over columns

The team up of the gaming and film industries is a natural one. Film studios get to extend their brand into new markets and see an additional revenue bump from licensing fees and a back-end percentage of game sales. Game companies get a well-known property that often has key elements of the game universe already defined.

Gamers, meanwhile, finally get an enjoyable title that extends the film-going experience.  

Morris is Director of Content Development for CNN/Money. Think he missed a truly awful movie-based game in his list? Send him an email.