Posted by Derrick Sanskrit
All his talk about Superman 64 and the upcoming DC Universe Online got me thinking, just how many truly worthwhile video games based on comic books have there been? Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage was fourteen years ago, and the X-Men arcade game was sixteen years ago. In recent history we've had Activision's surprisingly thorough X-Men Legends and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance games. Everything else has been decent at best.
Hold the phone, those good ones were all based on Marvel comics, not DC, Image, Dark Horse or even Oni (though we all want that Scott Pilgrim adventure game to come true)! While Marvel is responsible for their own share of far-from-fantastic games as well, there's been a solid amount of buzz building for them recently. This coming weekend's San Diego Comic-Con promises to bring a lot more info regarding the upcoming Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2: Fusion. Prolific scribe Brian Michael Bendis was recently quoted about the cancelled Marvel MMO he was working on:
I have my laptop here, and on it I have the "X-Mansion" level fully completed that only I and five other people have access to play. It's gorgeous and fantastic and no one will ever see it. So I feel bad, because I think that MMO was a phenomenal idea that was extremely well executed and it went away because some guy at Microsoft who we'll never know pulled the plug on it before it even got underway.
But most interestingly, Variety's Ben Fritz wrote yesterday about a discussion with Marvel's EVP global digital media Ira Rubenstein and walked away with these notes:
-He thinks Marvel should start making more games based on its heroes without necessarily tying and timing them to a movie
-When there is a movie, he wants to get to work earlier, even before a script is final. He said he's telling Sega to get started on the "Thor" and "Avengers" games (based on the movies coming out in 2010) now.
-He thinks Marvel should consider making more downloadable and casual videogames based on its properties.
This all sounds great to me. People always love Spider-Man, Captain America and the Fantastic Four, regardless of whether big name Hollywood talent is attached. In fact, all four of the great Marvel game franchises I mentioned above were big commercial and critical successes that had nothing to do with movies (well...maybe X-Men Legends, though the game resembled the comics much more closely). While I'm not too keen on game tie-ins for Thor and Avengers being worked on before the script and cast are set, longer production time means better games than the recent Incredible Hulk and Iron Man messes. As for casual games, I can already see "Fastball Special," an X-Men pinball action game where Colossus hurls a rolled-up Wolverine into the sky as he bounces off of Sentinels and frees captured teammates Jubilee, Cannonball, and Kitty Pryde to use their special bonus point techniques!
Hey, Metroid Prime Pinball worked with a whole lot less!
Related articles:
DC Universe Online and the Console MMO Conundrum
Where Is Joe Madureira?
Wow, Superman 64 Really Was Terrible
Up All Night: Ex-Mutants
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