There are a lot of Marvel games out there. Most of them are bad, but that’s not the point. It was actually hard to nail down which games to tackle for this feature. That is to say, there were too many choices for this broad subject.
However, these ten will surely give some insight into the bizarre world that is licensed based Marvel games from Spider-Man to the X-Men and everything in-between.
10 Samus And Link Avengers
Raven Software wanted to put Link and Samus into the Wii version of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. However, when they demoed it to Nintendo, the test kit they used was programmed on the PS2. Needless to say, Nintendo wasn’t very pleased by this so they were not implemented. It hasn’t been shown off yet, but hopefully, they will be secret characters in the new game.
9 Spider-Man 2’s Delay
Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro was delayed because of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. As one can imagine, this game took place in New York City with the World Trade Center being in the background. In order to stave off controversy, it was delayed a month. The towers were merged into one and not altogether removed though. However, there were discs already printed with this information. So if one finds a copy with both towers intact, it will probably be worth a bit of cash.
8 THQ’s Canceled Avengers
Prior to Square Enix snatching up the rights to making an Avengers game, THQ was developing one. It was going to be released in 2012 to coincide with the first Avengers movie, but it was also going to be its own thing. It was going to be a first-person brawler and would involve a Skrull invasion. Needless to say, it had problems. There is a lot to unpack here so in order to learn more, check out Unseen64’s feature on it.
7 In Japan Only
Bandai Namco both developed and published Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers-Ultimate Heroes, which release for the 3DS in 2014. It’s a tie-in game to the anime, Marvel Disk Wars: The Avengers, wherein ordinary kids can summon classic heroes, like Iron Man, and become them for a short time.
Think of it like Power Rangers meets Pokémon. Anyway despite the anime being localized for the West, the game never shipped outside of Japan. As weird as the concept is, crazy ideas can only go so far. That is to say, the game doesn’t look great.
6 Japan's Exclusion
In another bizarre twist for the nation, Japan received the arcade version, the original version that is to say, of Captain America and the Avengers. It was a mediocre early brawler starring, well, the Avengers. After its initial 1991 release, it was then ported to NES, SNES, Sega Genesis, and several other systems with some differing in content. Japan received none of these past the arcade version for whatever reason.
5 Dr. Strange Infinity
Disney Infinity 3.0 launched in 2015 and continuation of extra content was axed less than a year later. In that time period since leaked content has shown up through digital art depicting Star Wars: Rogue One figures, to someone data mining the PC version of the game to find Moana content. One of the first discoveries was a prototype toy of Dr. Strange, which looked amazing. Sigh, that series was deeply underrated.
4 X-Men Origins: Wolverine
X-Men Origins: Wolverine is an awful movie, but the movie tie-in game for PS3 and Xbox 360 was amazing. That’s a fun fact in its own right, but here is another, more interesting tidbit. It had a fun little secret for Lost fans, which really dates when this game came out.
In the first level, about halfway through, players can find a hidden hatch in the jungle, which will unlock trophies and achievements for each respective system. Why it was in there though is not certain, but again, Lost hype was still at a high in 2009.
3 Silicon Knights Lawsuit
Silicon Knights was revered for games like Eternal Darkness and Blood Omen, but Too Human and X-Men Destiny spelled the end for the company in many ways. See, there was a lawsuit filed in regard to the company copying code from Epic Games in order to make X-Men Destiny. This ultimately ended with Silicon Knights losing. They had to pay roughly $9 million in damages and were also ordered to recall copies of it and Too Human in order to be destroyed. That is just half of it, too. The whole story is much more fascinating.
2 The Fox Effect
One would think that Marvel has ultimate power on who gets to be in games, right? Well, due to the fact that for a long time Sony owned the movie rights to Spider-Man and Fox owned the rights to the X-Men, it made things complicated since a lot of these rights bled into merchandising as well. That’s why the X-Men couldn’t be in Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite even though they have always been a large part of that franchise. Now that Fox has been bought, hopefully, this snafu won’t happen again. Who knows? Maybe fans can finally get a game starring the X-Men akin to Marvel’s Spider-Man on PS4.
1 Spider-Man’s Girl Next Door
There is another Spider-Man game with some controversial cut content. In the PS2 tie-in game to the first movie, there was a cheat code players could enter: GIRLNEXTDOOR. In doing so, players could become Mary Jane. Pretty cool Easter egg, but this made it possible for Mary Jane to later kiss herself. Apparently, the developers never thought this scenario was possible. Anyway, it was later removed and the disc was reprinted. Again, if one has an earlier copy without this content removed, it may be worth some money.