- Joined
- Feb 19, 2017
As much as I dislike the modern age of comics and capeshit in general nowadays, I admit I do have a soft spot for a lot of the older pre-MCU adaptations of Marvel Comics in the 1990's and 2000's like the Sam Raimi trilogy or the first two X-Men movies.
Most of all, I especially liked the "Marvel Animated Universe" of the 1990's. The X-Men cartoon and the 1994 Spider-Man cartoon are the most well-known and well-liked examples, although there's also Spider-Man Unlimited, the Silver Surfer, and the short-lived Avengers cartoon from around the same era as well.
At the tail end of the 90's, Activision had licenses with Marvel and they made several games based on Spider-Man and X-Men that were ported to other systems of the time at the very start of the new millennium. Specifically, they had two Spider-Man games that were a mix of beat 'em ups and platforming and used the Tony Hawk engine and three X-Men fighting games, listed below.
Spider-Man (2000)
X-Men: Mutant Academy (2000)
X Men: Mutant Academy 2 (2001)
Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro (2001)
X-Men: Next Dimension (2002)
Most of them launched on the PS1 and were ported to other systems although Next Dimension was a PS2 title.
The games were all pretty good and seemed to be set in a universe that was a weird mix of the 90's animated shows on Fox Kids and the mainline comics.
Spider-Man is probably the most famous of these games since it was a best-seller and got a big nostalgia boost when the PS4 game came out, and it had a lot of cool things like extra costumes that could be unlocked along with a special "What If?" mode that was unlocked if you entered a secret code. The What If Mode was basically a joke mode where dialogue would be changed in certain scenes for humorous effect and there'd be things like sight gags and even some of the bosses being altered by the fight in terms of gameplay.
Enter Electro is also well-liked but more obscure and the gags in What If? mode are a lot less funny and more repetitive compared to the first.
The X-Men titles are criminally underrated and forgotten now despite the initial acclaim.
Mutant Academy in particular was fun even if it had little plot and was meant more as a tie-in for the first movie that year, and they even had alternate costumes that were based on the movie. Even characters that weren't in the movie like Gambit had costumes in the style of the dark outfits worn in the movie.
Mutant Academy 2 had a bit more plot but was more about the better gameplay and increased roster of characters and stages with Spider-Man as an unlockable character.
X-Men: Next Dimension took everything that was good about Mutant Academy 2 and improved upon it, complete with a story mode where you could only play as certain characters in certain parts of the game. That's kind of the norm now for the story mode in fighting games but it was kinda novel in the early PS2 era.
At the risk of sounding like a bearded widemouth four-eyed bugman, I did enjoy those games a lot back in the day and have some nostalgia for them.
Most of all, I especially liked the "Marvel Animated Universe" of the 1990's. The X-Men cartoon and the 1994 Spider-Man cartoon are the most well-known and well-liked examples, although there's also Spider-Man Unlimited, the Silver Surfer, and the short-lived Avengers cartoon from around the same era as well.
At the tail end of the 90's, Activision had licenses with Marvel and they made several games based on Spider-Man and X-Men that were ported to other systems of the time at the very start of the new millennium. Specifically, they had two Spider-Man games that were a mix of beat 'em ups and platforming and used the Tony Hawk engine and three X-Men fighting games, listed below.
Spider-Man (2000)
X-Men: Mutant Academy (2000)
X Men: Mutant Academy 2 (2001)
Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro (2001)
X-Men: Next Dimension (2002)
Most of them launched on the PS1 and were ported to other systems although Next Dimension was a PS2 title.
The games were all pretty good and seemed to be set in a universe that was a weird mix of the 90's animated shows on Fox Kids and the mainline comics.
Spider-Man is probably the most famous of these games since it was a best-seller and got a big nostalgia boost when the PS4 game came out, and it had a lot of cool things like extra costumes that could be unlocked along with a special "What If?" mode that was unlocked if you entered a secret code. The What If Mode was basically a joke mode where dialogue would be changed in certain scenes for humorous effect and there'd be things like sight gags and even some of the bosses being altered by the fight in terms of gameplay.
Enter Electro is also well-liked but more obscure and the gags in What If? mode are a lot less funny and more repetitive compared to the first.
The X-Men titles are criminally underrated and forgotten now despite the initial acclaim.
Mutant Academy in particular was fun even if it had little plot and was meant more as a tie-in for the first movie that year, and they even had alternate costumes that were based on the movie. Even characters that weren't in the movie like Gambit had costumes in the style of the dark outfits worn in the movie.
Mutant Academy 2 had a bit more plot but was more about the better gameplay and increased roster of characters and stages with Spider-Man as an unlockable character.
X-Men: Next Dimension took everything that was good about Mutant Academy 2 and improved upon it, complete with a story mode where you could only play as certain characters in certain parts of the game. That's kind of the norm now for the story mode in fighting games but it was kinda novel in the early PS2 era.
At the risk of sounding like a bearded widemouth four-eyed bugman, I did enjoy those games a lot back in the day and have some nostalgia for them.
