Marvel brings back its arcade-era games in new collection

In a massive announcement for retro enthusiasts, Limited Run Games has officially revealed the Marvel MaXimum Collection during the IGN Fan Fest. Developed in collaboration with Marvel Games and Konami, this compendium is far more than a basic port of 8-bit and 16-bit classics. It's a curated archival project aimed at preserving the “Golden Age” of Marvel gaming for PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.

The collection stands out by refusing to choose favourites among hardware history, instead including every major console and handheld iteration for its featured titles, resulting in a total of six games.

The headliner of the package is the return of X-Men: The Arcade Game. This definitive mutant beat-'em-up is being reborn with full online multiplayer support for up to six players, bolstered by rollback netcode. Alongside the arcade legend, fans can experience the original and unique NES platforming spin on Captain America and The Avengers, as well as the SNES and Genesis versions of the symbiote classics Spider-Man/Venom: Maximum Carnage and Separation Anxiety. The collection also delves deep into handheld history, including the Game Boy and Game Gear ports of Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade's Revenge.

For those who remember the crushing difficulty of the 8-bit era, the inclusion of the challenging Silver Surfer on NES comes with rewind functionality and save states. Beyond the gameplay, the collection serves as a digital museum, featuring a music player with iconic chip-tune scores, including new tracks from legendary composer Chris Huelsbeck, and an archive filled with high-resolution scans of original box art, instruction manuals, and vintage advertisements.

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KitGuru says: This is the kind of treatment these licences deserve. By including a collection of retro games such as these, Limited Run and Konami are treating them as historical artefacts rather than just old games. 

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