Licensing agreements are the devil’s handshake. They are responsible for giving us and taking away from us, a number of games, music tracks, streaming programs, and so much more. Case in point, the X-Men arcade game from 1992. For years it was confined to arcades but eventually made its way to home consoles in 2010 on the Xbox 360 and PS3 digital store fronts. Then in 2013 it was delisted. But it’s coming back again with several other games in an upcoming collection!
The Marvel Maximum Collection is an interesting assortment of Marvel related titles from the early to mid 90s. Limited Run Games, in conjunction with Konami is bringing us six titles with different console variations. Some of these are fantastic, others are pretty awful. Here’s what we have to look forward to:
X-Men: The Arcade Game (Arcade)
This will reportedly be the variation that allows up to six players. It’s a fantastic title that gives people the choice to pick between Cyclops, Wolverine, Colossus, Storm, Nightcrawler, and Dazzler to kick-ass with Konami at the height of their arcade beat ’em up prowess. It also gave us the amazing voice clip of Magneto saying, “X-Men! Welcome, to die!”
Captain America and the Avengers (Arcade, Sega Genesis, NES)
Another side-scrolling beat ’em up where you can play as Captain America, Iron Man, Hawkeye, or Vision. This one doesn’t have the amazing sprite work of X-Men, but it’s still a lot of fun with some strong music and classic Avengers enemies. The NES version is COMPLETELY different than the Arcade and Genesis versions, so this is effectively two different games under the same banner. It also gratefully omits the terrible SNES port of the game.
Spider-Man & Venom: Maximum Carnage (Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis)
One of the better known Spider-Man games, and certainly the biggest of the 16-bit generation. The title is remembered for its strong graphics, banging soundtrack, and for being an adaptation of the comic book storyline, Maximum Carnage. This game is also brutally difficult, excessively repetitive, and may not be as good as people remember it being. Still nice to have it back on modern consoles.
Venom & Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety (Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis)
A sequel to Maximum Carnage, it’s graphically inferior but has co-op gameplay that was sorely missing from the previous title. Does that make it better? Well… it’s uh. It’s a judgment call.
Spider-Man & X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge (Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis, Game Gear, Game Boy)
Oh boy. So, this is certainly a game with various ports. Unlike Captain America & The Avengers where the NES version is a completely different game, this is an example of the Game Gear and Game Boy titles being lesser adaptations of the SNES and Genesis versions. That wouldn’t be too bad if it weren’t for the 16-bit titles being extremely rough themselves. It’s a game that’s great in concept as Spidey and the X-Men try to escape from Arcade’s death traps. In practice though, the level design is awful, it’s excessively difficult, and it squanders the powers of the heroes.
Silver Surfer – NES
This brutally, BRUTALLY, difficult shoot ’em up has a killer soundtrack. …That’s all there is to say.
Currently, a release date has yet to be announced, but we are very excited to get our hands on this, if not just for the X-Men arcade game!
