Simply Marvelous: The 10 Best Games Based On The Marvel Universe

Movie tie-ins are fine for the kids, but the fact is that most Marvel games are better than you think they are.

Not Available Lead
Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

Not Available Lead

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)

Not Available Interstitial

9. Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage (SNES/Genesis, 1994)

Not Available Interstitial

8. The Punisher (Arcade, 1993; Genesis, 1994)

Not Available Interstitial

7. Spider-Man (Various, 2000)

Not Available Interstitial

6. The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction (PS2/Xbox/Gamecube, 2005)

Not Available Interstitial

5. Spider-Man: The Video Game (Arcade, 1991)

Not Available Interstitial

4. X-Men 2: Clone Wars (Genesis, 1995)

Not Available Interstitial

3: X-Men: The Arcade Game (Arcade, 1992)

Not Available Interstitial

2. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance (Various, 2006)

Not Available Interstitial

1. Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds (360/PS3, 2011)

Not Available Interstitial

Latest in Pop Culture