Vin Diesel – Wheelman. Not only Keanu Reeves – movie stars in games

Vin Diesel went through a phase of intense romance with the world of video games. His most famous approach is the successful, quasi-stealth Chronicles of Riddick, but it's not the only production he's starred in.

Tigon Studios obviously envied Ubisoft's Driver series, even if it became rather underwhelming at some point, and released a game based on very similar assumptions. It was called Wheelman (which is just another name for Driver), and contained a significant dose of Vin Diesel, i.e. Steeve McQueen on steroids. This guy had already been a star of action cinema, especially car movies – he's one of the key figures of the Fast and Furious franchise, the longest series of family car comedies in the history of Western cinema.

Here, he's kicking ass just as well, talks in prison slang with gangsters and the police – although officially, he's just a driver. Wheelman wasn't a groundbreaking game, although had a very nice atmosphere of a B-class movie, and players really rooted for the protagonist. We would prefer to forget the walking sequences of that game, but when the virtual Vin Diesel sat behind the wheel, the game really showed teeth. And that's a duo we want to remember – speeding Vin Diesel and his muscle car.

Erika Eleniak – Panic in the Dark

Hey, dinosaurs, remember her?

When Baywatch was among the most popular TV series, every video game developer wanted their own adventure game. It was the year 1995 – and we bring up the legendary series starring Pamela Anderson and David Hasselhoff for a good reason. Another character from that show appeared in adventure games such as Panic in the Dark – it was Erika Eleniak, another girl from Baywatch. The way she ran in Baywatch...

The cover in the style of a 1960 romance. Only Kojima does this sort of thing today. And Star Wars.

In Panic in the Dark, she played the dual role of twin sisters, the good and the bad. The first sister, Jamie, wanted to save an amusement park from becoming a big parking lot, which Janie, a bad corporate lawyer, wanted to achieve. And we played a journalist who tried to help the first one to save the place.

It played like Myst – a typical point'n'click with static backgrounds, only crazier and funnier. The double creation of Eleniak, with how flamboyant and exaggerated in the media she was – was a perfect match for the vibrant game.