Marvel Comics has been making the most memorable and iconic characters since they came out with their first comic more than 80 years ago. The publisher behind superheroes like Captain America, Iron Man, The Fantastic Four, Deadpool, and X-MEN is a household name, in part because of steady blockbuster movies, and interconnected worlds.
The MARVEL Cinematic Universe (MCU), made many of its mainstream characters different from their comic book versions. The acquisition of Marvel by Disney in 2009, amplified its popularity and scope.
Marvel has been landing out for video games for much longer, racking up an impressive list of classic games from long before anyone identified Robert Downrey Jr. as Tony Stark (aka Iron Man).
From games like pinball, puzzle games, and beat-em-fighters, Marvel superheroes have appeared in just about every genre and type of video game. So here have taken efforts to list 21 Marvel games, including all the way from arcade games to modern games.
Table of Content
Captain America and Avengers Arcade (1991)
Captain America and the Avengers was one of the earliest beat-em-up games that brought together the Avengers long before they were a household name. The game later was ported to Super NES and Genesis, featuring Captain America, Iron Man, Hawkeye, and Vision as they battled against Mandarin, Ultron, and Juggernaut.
After facing all these villains you will face the arch-fascist Red Skull. One nice feature of this game was how it paid homage to some lesser-known Marvel Heroes and assisted with cameos of characters like Namor and Wonder Man.
Spider-Man: The Video Game Arcade
This arcade game boasts Spider-Man as its marquee character, it’s much more of a Spidey family game than you might expect. The 4 player arcade lets you select from the Wallcrawler himself along with Black Cat, Hawkeye, and Sub-Mariner.
This game introduced a new variety of move sets, as Spidey and Black Cat were more melees focused while Hawkeye and Sub Mariner relied on ranged attacks.
It even made use of Spidey’s web-slinging ability, in a way, by letting him swing above the battlefield to close a gap or get out of the jam.
X-Men Arcade (1992)
This X-Men game was a massive hit at that time, the deluxe version of this game allows you to play with six main characters at once across two scenes.
The roster included all your X-Men characters, each one using iconic power sets and screen-filling special abilities. In an era before pre-rendered cutscenes, this big beautiful spite artwork was as cinematic as it could get.
The Punisher – Arcade (1993)
The Punisher is known for beating up anyone who he thinks deserves to be punished. That made him the perfect candidate for the beat-em-up arcade game in 1993 when CAPCOM put out its classic.
In this game, you can play as Punisher or as Nick Fury as you punish street thugs and super criminals. True to its comic roots this game was an especially violent game, even by beat-em-up game standards, Punisher and Nick Fury would often use firearms in the course of combat.
Spider-man and Venom: Maximum Carnage
In the ’90s the Marvel comics have become so popular, that readers weren’t getting enough brooding heroes, which meant that some characters originally envisioned as villains made the jump to dark antiheroes.
That was the case for Venom, a Spider-Man villain, that later become the badass version of Spidey. But they still needed someone to fight even the dark character Carnage, that’s how carnage was born.
Just 2 years later this storyline was being adapted that let you pick Spider-Man or Venom to fight Cranage, along with some other villains like Shriek and Demogoblin. Brawlers were coined a dozen times in the mid-’90s but this one stands out from others due to its solid design and timely comic references.
Marvel vs Capcom (1996)
Capcom fighting game domination came out to be one of the finest fighting series of all time, all thanks to the mash-up of two franchises Marvel and Capcom. Capcom combined the roster of Marvel superheroes with some of its own well-known fighting characters, mostly from the most popular Capcom game Street Fighters.
This game was a faster-paced game with wide-screen filling effects and unique tag-team mechanics that added an extra layer of excitement to players. Though the first Marvel vs Capcom released in 1996 made the biggest mark, the series is still best known for the stellar Marvel vs Capcom 2 in 2000.
Things that made this game very popular were an expanded roster and refined mechanics that made it a mainstay in the fighting circuit.
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
Spider-Man web-swinging became such a mainstay in many Spider-Man Activision put throughout the 2000s that it’s so easy to forget a time when it was a comic book character.
Spider-Man 2 was the first game to actually make you feel like Spider-Man by letting you swing around the city through the realistic depiction of New York City.
Later repetition of the character would improve on their aspects almost in every game, but the original game earned a special place in every player’s heart by finally capturing the feeling of being Spider-man.
Hulk Ultimate Destruction (2005)
Hulk Ultimate Destruction game was the first to understand what Marvel fans really wanted to do as Hulk was simple: Smash. The game had an open-world design that did wonders for the character as it gave him an extraordinary level of freedom to wreck the place.
You’re a hero doing heroic things sure, but your surroundings are going to be decimated in this process. Unlike Spider-Man 2, this game nailed its title character, but the sad thing is that this game never got a sequel, leading to several years of fans pinning for ultimate destruction.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance (2006)
Years before the Marvel Cinematic Universe started mashing together heroes, Marvel Ultimate Alliance let you play with all your favorite heroes to build your dream team. Marvel Ultimate Alliance and its sequel, are being remembered for their unique gameplay and featuring 4 characters at a time, letting you build and swap them between favorites like Spider-Man, Wolverine, Daredevil, and Captain America.
They even featured some obscure characters like Black Panther long before he could become so popular thanks to MCU.
X-Men Origins Wolverine (2009)
This game was not that great, Raven Software took the liberty to make this game by combining movie script and comic books to create a semi-origin story of Wolverine.
The greatest feature of this game was the healing factor depiction on Wolverine, which let you see the muscles and other body parts while healing after that it became an ugly scrap.
In effect, it was just a flashing way of showing auto-healing, but seeing it on Wolverine just made it look so cool. Besides that, it was a decently fleshed-out game, with a full skill tree and a good variety of enemy encounters.
Marvel Pinball (2010)
Earlier in those days, every mega-successful franchises use to get physical pinball tables manufactured and distributed to arcades and bars across the country. Now Pinball is more of a niche hobby now, but Zen Pinball has still kept the trend ongoing with a wide variety of virtual variety of pinball tables.
Marvel Pinball is a hub for these inventive table designs, starting with a few heroes like Spider-Man and Wolverine and eventually expanding with DLC to include comic characters like World War Hulk and Infinity Gaunlet.
Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions (2010)
Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions was made by two gaming companies Activision and Beenox together they produced various series of Spider-Man that got very mixed results. Spider-Man Shattered Dimensions had the creative hook of bringing together the Spider-Man multiverse.
Rather than playing a single iteration of Spidey, you get web-sling as both the Amazing-Spide-Man and Ultimate versions, along with 2099 and Spider-Man noir.
That gave this game a nice variety of tones and scenarios that had been lacking in other Spider-Man games. If the pitch sounds familiar, that’s because it went on to inspire the Spider-verse comic books.
Marvel Puzzle Quest (2013)
Marvel Puzzle Quest had humble beginnings as a somewhat generic sword and sorcery epic, besides with a clever hook of adding RPG mechanics to a match 3 game. It’s spun off in several directions since then, but Marvel Puzzle Quest might be the most successful.
The live-service mobile game has continuously added new heroes and scenarios for players to tackle as they expand their roster of heroes. This game is a free-to-play game, players agree it’s a relatively generous one that allows you lots of playtimes.
Lego Marvel Superheroes (2013)
This lego series of the game lends itself to properties with plenty of playable characters and lots of unique environments to explore in that case Marvel was the perfect fit.
Marvel Superheroes and its sequel both have the most iconic characters like Star-Lord, Captain America, Spider-Gwen, and many more.
Like many Lego games, it sorts its roster of heroes into different skill sets of puzzle-solving and combat challenges, you can revisit stages with newly unlocked characters to uncover hidden secrets.
Marvel Future Fight (2015)
Marvel Future Fight is a 2015 superhero-themed mobile game developed by Netmarbel Games, which is directly affiliated with Marvel Entertainment under Disney.
In this game, there ]are more than 200 playable Marvel superheroes and villains. The characters are organized into 4 tiers: Tier 1 can go up to level 60 Tier 2 can go up to level 70 Tier 3 can go up to level 80 or potential transcendence for some characters, and Tier 4 can go up to level 80.
Each character in this game holds different battle types that have advantages over others except the universal type. A completely mastered character can move to the second tier, although some characters exist. Certain characters can have potential realized and level up to level 70, subsequently to Tier 3.
The player begins with a team of 3 characters, of which the player controls only one. They can be switched at any time by players’ choice. The player’s characters have a default attack mode which does substantial damage involving weapon attacks (based on the characters). The active character will lock onto a target and continue moving toward it for attacking.
Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series (2017)
The days when Telltale games, were very popular. Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series is an episodic graphic adventure video game series developed and published by Telltale Games. Based on the Marvel Comics Guardians of the Galaxy comic book series, the game’s first episode was first released on April 18, 2017.
The game’s plot centers around Guardians finding an artifact of great power called the Eternity Forge which each individual must protect from the malicious Kree Hala the accuser, who wants it herself.
Guardians of the Galaxy: The Telltale Series plays similar to other Telltale games, in which the player’s character talks to other characters, explore environments, and interacts with objects within it, and at times, completes action sequences made up of quick time events.
Players make choices such as dialogue selection, that create determinants within the story affecting later actions within the episode and in future episodes. Within the series, the player primarily plays as Star-Lord, but from time to time players can briefly take the role of other Guardians.
Marvel’s Spider-Man (2018)
Marvel’s Spider-Man is an action-adventure game, developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Based on the Marvel Comics character Spider-Man, tells an original story that is inspired by long-running comic book mythology.
In the main story, the super-human crime lord Mr. Negative plans to seize control of New York city’s underworld, by threatening to release a deadly virus ‘Devils Breath or GR-27. Spider-Man must protect the city while dealing with Peter Parker’s Problems.
This is an open-world action-adventure game set in Manhattan in a fictionalized version of New York City. It is presented from a third-person perspective showing the playable character and allowing the camera to be rotated freely around them.
The primary playable character is Spider-Man and in between, you might also be switchable to other characters Mary Jane or Miles Morales according to the story. You can navigate the world by jumping, using his web shooters to shoot webs that allow him to swing between buildings, run along walls, and automatically vault over obstacles.
Iron Man VR (2020)
Iron Man VR game is a virtual reality shooter video game developed by American Studios Camouflaj and Darkwind Media and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for Playstation 4 and Playstation VR Headset.
Iron Man is an aerial shooter played from a first-person perspective, taking place across various global locales as Iron Man attempts to take down his enemy Ghost, and various combat drones she employs to bring ruin to Tony Stark and his company.
As a virtual reality game, it is played from a first-person perspective, employing the use of one Playstation Move controller in each of the player’s hands to allow control of Iron Man’s palm-mounted repulsor weapons and flight stabilizers.
Marvel’s Avengers (2020)
Marvel Avengers is a 2020 action-adventure brawler game developed by Crystal Dynamics and published by Square Enix and Bandai Namco Entertainment co-publish the Asian version of the game. The game is based on the Marvel Comics superhero team the Avengers, it is mainly inspired by Marcel Cinematic Universe (MCU).
The game is played from a third-person perspective and has both single-player and multiplayer modes: it features an online co-op mode, allowing players to assemble a team of their own. The initial roster includes Tony Stark/ Iron Man, Steve Rogers/ Captain America, Bruce Banner/ Hulk, Thor, Natasha Romanoff/ Black Widow, and Kamala Khan/ Ms.Marvel.
Each hero possesses a variety of costume customization features, as well as the capacity to upgrade their powers and abilities using a skill tree.
Marvel’s Spider-Man Miles Morales (2020)
Marvel’s Spider-Man Miles Morales is a 2020 action-adventure game developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment. It is inspired by both the character’s decade-long comic book and the 2018 animated Spider-Man into the Spider-Verse – which helped this character to get more popular among spidey fans.
The gameplay is presented in a third-person perspective with a primary focus on Miles’s journey as the new Spider-Man and facing new threats to New York City. Miles can freely move around the city, interacting with other people, undertaking missions, and unlocking new gadgets and suits by progressing through the main story or completing tasks.
Guardians of the Galaxy (2021)
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy is a 2021 action-adventure game developed by Eidos- Montreal and published by Square Enix. After the mixed reaction to Marvel Avengers, expectations were very high from Square Enix to produce another Marvel game.
Similar to Avengers, Guardians of the Galaxy from Eidos-Montreal created their own universe of Guardians, different from the MCU, and they told their own story which was inspired by comic books.
But this version of Guardians actually had a much storyline with tons of hearts across the cosmos, the players actually got more experience with this Galactic team.
In Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, the player assumes control of Peter Quill (aka Star-Lord) from a third-person perspective. The player can utilize Star-Lord’s elemental guns to defeat enemies. Other members of the team, include Gamora, Rocket Raccoon, Groot, and Drax the Destroyer.
