Video Game Month: A Brief History of the Avengers in Gaming

By Troy-Jeffrey Allen

As PREVIEWSworld strafes through our month-long celebration of video games, we’re taking a look at those notable moments when comics and games collided. Both mediums are the harmless, interactive distraction of choice for the adolescent and the adolescent at heart. But when the the morality play of superhero comics meets the plug and play of video games, fans suddenly find themselves harnessing the power of their favorite characters. This go-round, those characters are Marvel’s The Avengers.

While Marvel’s popular super-team wouldn’t receive a game until 1991’s Captain America and The Avengers, individual members of the squad have had consistent opportunities to shine — none more so than Spider-Man, who has lead over 20 titles. Most notably, Maximum Carnage (based off the 1990s comic crossover of the same name), an open-worlds movie tie-in for Spider-Man 2, and the critically-acclaimed multiverse-hopping Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions. However, it was 1982’s Spider-Man for the Atari 2600 that ignited the Marvel U.’s foray into gaming. The wall-crawler would return to Atari again in 1984 in Quest Probe featuring Spider-Man, which was part two of a proposed twelve-part series of games conceptualized by Scott Adams (creator of Dilbert).

The first game in the Quest Probe series starred The Hulk. True to form, the jade giant would inevitably strike out on his own from there. Smashing his way out of the 8-bit era and through future console generations with games like 1994’s side-scrolling The Incredible Hulk (SNES, Sega Genesis), Pantheon Saga (Sega Saturn, Playstation), the “open-worlds” Ultimate Destruction, and a handful of movie tie-ins.

The surge in the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s popularity seems to have had the largest hand in providing playable options for Avengers mainstays like Captain America, Thor, and Iron Man. Thor, in particular, was only allowed a solo game (Thor: God of Thunder) in time for his 2011 film. Captain America led the aforementioned Captain America and the Avengers arcade brawler (which included Hawkeye, Iron Man, and Vision), but wouldn’t take center stage again until 2011’s Captain America: Sentinel of Liberty. As for Iron Man, his biggest claim to fame remains Iron Man/X-O Manowar in Heavy Metal. Made for Sega Saturn and Playstation, Heavy Metal was unique in that it was a comic book crossover in game form — bringing shellhead up against Valiant’s X-O Manowar.

It was the insanely popular Marvel Vs. series that seemed to resonate the most with gamers. Pitting Earth’s Mightiest Heroes against Capcom’s colorful cast of classic combatants, Marvel Super Heroes, Marvel vs. Street Fighter, and Marvel vs. Capcom 1-3 would serve as the best display of the Marvel Universe’s unique powers and abilities. But it was Marvel: Ultimate Alliance in 2012 that was so well-regarded that elements of its combo system were recreated for the big screen in 2012’s Marvel The Avengers and in 2015’s Avengers: Age of Ultron.

Video Game Month Fun Fact: In the 1987 version of Sega’s The Revenge of Shinobi, Spider-Man appears as a boss. Due to licensing issues, later versions of the games had the character recolored from Spidey's trademark red and blue to pink.