Mike's Top 5 Comic Book Video Games!
uhhhh...it's BBQ sauce....
by Mike Lunsford
I read Andy's article about his top 5 comic book video games and thought that I had to voice my opinion, too (here's Andy's article right here clickers!). Most of my choices are old school, but that's because I really don't play the new games. Now...as I've mentioned I gave up the console gaming scene, but recent previews for Batman: Arkham Knight and Star Wars: Battlefront have made me regret this decision...but that's a hard expense to justify as a grown-ass man to your wife.
So...without further ado...
Mike's Top 5 Comic Book Video Games
Marvel Ultimate Alliance (Xbox 360)
This game kept my 360 from getting returned. I enjoyed it that much.
This is how my love for Ultimate Alliance started: I got the Xbox 360 as a Christmas gift from my at-the-time-girlfriend. I honestly expected us to be done within a month or two, but then she got me that...so I guess I had to stay with her for a little bit no matter how crazy or how much of a drug addict she was?
Well...I stuck it out until January and we broke up. I was ready to return this giant, red-ringing pain in the ass to Best Buy and get some store credit or something. Then I rented Ultimate Alliance. This was what they touted the 360 as being: a graphic experience that blew your mind with easy to pick up game play. Every single super hero looked AWESOME! The game play was pretty basic dungeon-crawler style, but damn it was fun! All the characters were voice acted and they were done expertly! The story was cool, too and you could play co-op with your friends!
So I ended up keeping my 360 because of Ultimate Alliance. I played plenty more games that were fantastic and even a few that are now ranked in my top 10 of all time. That'll show you ex-girlfriend! Buy me something that I actually enjoyed!
X-Men and X-Men 2 (Sega Genesis)
The first X-Men game changed the way we thought about comic book video games. It was so good, AND IT WAS SO HARD! I managed to tough my way through to Mojo-verse only to be crippled by the "reset the computer" command. WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN???? It meant actually hitting reset on your Sega, but be careful! Only lightly tap. If you hold it down, you will actually reset the game and not just "reset" the game. It was gimmicky but still cool as sh*t. Granted, I risked a potential grounding over calling the Sega 1-900 # to find this out...but it was totally worth it when I was the only one in 5th grade that knew how to beat the game.
X-Men 2 was pretty sweet: it took everything that was cool about the first game, but gave you more characters to play as AND you got to play as Magneto, too! Trend setters for sure.
Spider-Man: Maximum Carnage (Sega Genesis)
Are there better Spider-Man games that have come out since this one? Yeah. Were there any that came with a red cartridge AND a CD of the soundtrack by Green Jelly??? No...hang your head in shame for talking smack about Maximum Carnage.
You got to play as Spidey OR Venom! There were tons of other heroes who made cameos! Even the bad guys had a bunch of cameos, too! It was a giant crossover way before we had things like Avengers!
Back in these days, there were no settings to change difficulty. There were no cheat codes, no GameFAQs.com, and this game didn't pull punches. It was not an easy game so it made it that much more gratifying when you knocked Cletus Cassidy on his ass.
I wasted so many quarters playing this game. COWABUNGA!
Just seeing this image made me find an old NES controller online, purchase it, get it in the mail, and then break that piece of sh*t. I HATE THIS F***ING LEVEL!!!!
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game
The 80's and 90's were awesome for gaming, especially for arcades. The Turtles owned the late 80's- early 90's in print, television, movies and the arcade (You damn kids don't even know what an arcade is!).
I've always been partial to this side scrolling, team-based quarter muncher but it was not the original. As far as I know, that belongs to the X-Men in the 80's. This game had many other versions we all played (Captain America and the Avengers, Bucky O'Hare, even the Simpsons) and all of them were great, but the Turtles were king. This game was able to take the bad taste out of our mouths from that maddeningly hard TMNT game for NES.
Batman: Arkham Asylum (XBox 360, PS3, etc)
This was the game that we had ALL been waiting for. When you played this game, you WERE Batman. You became the ninja-detective-spy with the gravelly voice who had a plan for everything. The story was fantastic, the voice acting was terrific, and you got to interact with the majority of the pantheon of Batman villains. I mean, there was no Egghead, King Tut, or Arnold Schwarzenegger hamming it up as Mr. Freeze but still, it was pretty complete. Kicking ass as Batman is pretty much the greatest video game experience you can have.
Alright kids, there you have it! There's my list of my favorite video games based on comic characters. In talking to my other GGR writers, this has started an avalanche of video game discussion. Be prepared for more articles and podcasts about this endless subject.
Mike Lunsford is the creator and editor-in-chief of GGR: The Great Geek Refuge.
