Image via Complex Original
Oh, Marvel. Marvel, Marvel, Marvel. What don’t we love about you? Well, your movie-related video games, for one. While your comic books, feature films, and even those old hologram cards of yours are the shit, you have a pretty sketchy track record when it comes to taking those same characters from the big screen and putting them on the PlayStation or Xbox. We mean, besides Spiderman 2, everything else you’ve given us has either been mediocre at best (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Ghost Rider), or outright garbage (Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, Iron Man, Blade, etc). And with this week's Thor looking like something between the two, we’re not going to get our hopes up anytime soon.
But that doesn’t mean that good Marvel games don’t exist. In fact, lots of them do—well, at least 10 of them do. Here, then, are the 10 best Marvel games that have earned our quarters and orders over the years, from beat-’em-ups to fighting games to...beat-’em-ups. Hey Stan Lee, can we get an "Excelsior!"?
By Rich Knight
10. Captain America and the Avengers (Arcade, 1991)
To hell with Thor and the Hulk. Who needs ’em when you’ve got Vision (who?) and Hawkeye? With Iron Man along for the ride as well, Captain America and the Avengers stormed the arcades—and later the home consoles—with this beat-‘em-up classic in the early ’90s and we’re all better for it. Red Skull was of course the big, big baddie in the game, and all of the characters had their own special projectile attacks and hover vehicles (Except for Iron Man and Vision, who could fly) to combat him with. Other Avengers like Quicksilver and Namor: The Sub-Mariner, would also make cameo appearances, so this was Marvel stuffing the whole Avengers concept down your throat way before the second Iron Man movie.
9. Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage (SNES/Genesis, 1994)
Coming in a black cartridge on the SNES, you knew that this game meant business right from the get-go. And with a soundtrack by Green Jelly, it only intensified the stage of battle.
Set with the backdrop of the epic Maximum Carnage series behind it, Spider-man and Venom teamed up to take on the creature that once went by the name Cletus Kassady. Lots of characters joined in for the Final Fight-esque battle—Iron Fist, Cloak and Dagger, and Morbius were just three—but only Spider-man and Venom were playable, which sucked. What also sucked was that it got a little repetitive after a while, but still, with both Spider-Man and Green Jelly on one cartridge, how could you possibly go wrong?
8. The Punisher (Arcade, 1993; Genesis, 1994)
You know what the Punisher does? He kills. And he kills a whole lot in this arcade beat-em-up, which we still prefer to the more recent Punisher game in 2005 (torture interrogations notwithstanding). In this game, the man known as Frank Castle teams up with the Nick Fury who looks more like David Hasselhoff than Samuel L. Jackson. Together, the two of them clean up the streets, one bullet to the brain at a time.
7. Spider-Man (Various, 2000)
The first Spiderman game that ever went into the third dimension actually got it right. It’s probably because this web-headed adventure features all of your favorite heroes (Daredevil, The Human Torch, The Punisher) and all of your favorite Spidey villains (Mysterio, Carnage, Doc Oc) all in one game. The web-swinging was fluid, the fighting was excellent (for the time), and the story mode was ridiculous in a very comic booky way.
And then there was the other stuff: alternate costumes like Spiderman 2099, and Ben Reilly’s Scarlet Spider get-up, and a "What If" mode that altered the game to reveal different tasks and events. This was a Spiderman fan’s wet dream. It’s so good that Shattered Dimensions, as good as it is,can’t even touch it. And that’s saying a lot, because Shattered Dimensions is the shiiiiit.
6. The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (PS2/Xbox/Gamecube, 2005)
You would think that the Hulk would have a lot of games on this list, but sadly not. Much like DC’s Superman, another character who could level an entire city if he wanted to, most Hulk games have shied away from the concept of Hulk being a destructive force of nature. But not Ultimate Destruction, which is pretty much GTA on gamma-radiated steroids. Hulk can pretty much rip apart anything that gets in his way in this free-roaming actioner, and we’ve never loved the big green guy more. Sure, Prototype is pretty much the exact same game. But is Alex Mercer green? We didn’t think so. So score one for Bruce Banner.
5. Spider-Man: The Video Game (Arcade, 1991)
A lot of beat-em-ups on this list, right? Well, this is one of the best. Spiderman, Black Cat, Namor, and Hawkeye (again?) team up to take on the likes of The Lizard, Venom, and even Dr. Doom as an end boss. We especially like the parts of the game when it essentially became a platfomer and you’d have to hop all over the place to survive. Top-notch stuff. The brawling sometimes got repetitive, but hey, that’s a part of the genre. Plus, we really liked picking Namor. Dude never gets any respect.
4. X-Men 2: Clone Wars (Genesis, 1995)
More than just sounding like a George Lucas side project, X-Men 2: Clone Wars took all of the best details from its predecessor and expanded upon them with its blast processing goodness. All of your favorite X-Men were there in this side-scrolling adventure—Wolverine, Cyclops, and Gambit—and even some of the characters that you weren’t even asking for but liked anyway, in the form of Nightcrawler, Beast, and Psylocke. Hell, even Magneto was playable after the third level. And the two-player mode was the icing on the mutated cake. We rarely ever have it this good. It’s almost as good as the next entry on this list.
3: X-Men: The Arcade Game (Arcade, 1992)
Everything about this game was absolutely legendary. The arcade cabinet came in either a four- or six-player mode, and mutant lovers around the world could come together and bust some robots and baddie skulls together. Each character had their own unique ability, from Nightcrawler’s screen cleaning teleportation move to Colossus’ electrocuting “ARRRRRGH!” attack, so everybody had something to lend to the battle. The only problem was that nobody wanted to be Dazzler. Come on, guys, she’s just like Jubilee. Or not.
2. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (Various, 2006)
What’s better than X-Men beating up bad guys together? How about putting it in 3D and letting Blade, Luke Cage, and Black Panther in on the fun? That’s pretty much Marvel: Ultimate Alliance in a nutshell. It’s a dungeon-crawlin’, Marvel-lovin’ actioner that’s all the better played with friends who know what they’re doing. And the only reason why this is on the list and its sequel isn’t is because the sequel didn’t have Moon Knight in it [Ed.—also because the sequel was FUCKING REPETITIVE and its Fusion Attacks got old fast.] Why did they take him out? We love us some Moon Knight.
1. Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds (360/PS3, 2011)
Honestly, we probably could have just filled this entire list with Capcom-related Marvel titles, but we wanted to be fair. With X-Men: Children of the Atom starting off the trend, the fighting games only got better and better until they reached the apex that is MvC3, which is as much a fan service to Marvel fans as it is to Capcom freaks. Many of your favorites are here and then some, including M.O.D.O.K, She-Hulk, and Taskmaster. Seriously, the Marvel characters have never been more alive and awesome as they are in this game, making it the best Marvel-related game ever. And really, was there any other choice in the matter?
