Vertigo the game: could it delete the horrific history of movie tie-ins?

A new French project ‘inspired’ by the Hitchcock classic could point the way to video games that riff off a film-maker’s wider aesthetic

As someone who has just suffered through the living joyless hell of the Lego Incredibles game at a six-year-old’s insistence, I am the last person who needs to be reminded that video games based on movies are the second lowest form of art, after movies based on video games.

Did you ever play the White Men Can’t Jump game on the Atari Jaguar? Did you ever play the Hudson Hawk game on the Amiga? Did you ever, for the love of all that is holy, shell out money to play the Street Fighter: The Movie game (based, in a nightmarish helix spiral of market synergy, on a film that was based on a game) on the original PlayStation? If you did – or if you’ve played games based on Scarface, Planet of the Apes, Platoon, Porky’s, The Italian Job or either of the first two Godfather films – you’ll know to instantly equate a movie licence with a terrible game.