5 COMICS!
VIDEO GAMES BASED ON COMICS, THAT
USUALLY SUCK,
BUT SOMETIMES DON'T
(tentative title)
by Carl Schafer
Here at The Gameroom Blitz, we pride ourselves on informing you, the reader, on what entertainment is so great that there could be potential for a trouser-tearing erection and a possible need for clean up on Aisle 4, and what is so terrible that by simply playing it, you’re ready to move out of your parents’ basement, swear off that GameCube controller forever, and repeatedly slam your hands in the car door until your fingers break for even thinking about it. This article is absolutely no different.
In this particular article, we’re going to take a look at how the comic book media has faired when some game developer with a twinkle in their eye and a dream in their pocket decided to make a video game based on it. Now you see, I love comic books. I also love video games. When you smash the two of them together, it is possible to achieve fantastic results... something so great, you'll wonder how you managed to live without this great combo. Then you try mixing other things you love, such as orange soda, a jack-in-the-box, monkeys, and your sister’s underwear. And just like your sick, sick experiments, game companies have also come up with results that are... well, far less than stellar, except not nearly as disturbing. After consulting with a crack team of reviewers who are destined to die alone and never change their Venom t-shirts, we have come up with this list of the top-of-the-line comic to video game transitions and the ones that make you wish the developers’ parents were killed in an alleyway, making them decide to take up a life of fighting crime instead of making you play their assloaf of a game.
We’re going to start off with the best ones. The ones that made you happy to be a comic book fan and which made you believe these heroes will never die in your imagination. Following that, we’re going to take a look at the ones that could only be made worse if Rob Liefeld made the games himself.
We’ve come up with this unique rating system. The scale is set from zero to five comics. Each rating represents a specific moment, event, or character in comic book history, with five being comic nirvana and zero being pretty much anything that had to do with the Spider-Clone from the mid-90’s.
Here’s the breakdown:
5
COMICS!
This is roughly the equivalent of the Spider-Man movie and Captain America. It’s something that will stand the test of time for generations to come. It’s something that is virtually flawless in just about every way.
4
COMICS!
This is pretty much what the Marvels series and Batman equate to. A bit rough around the edges, but still great in their own way.
3 COMICS!
Much like Daredevil and the Image company in the early 90’s, you can tell they tried hard to do something with it, but not everything fell into place. However, there’s still a couple nice moments to be had, after all is said and done. Pretty much middle of the road.
2
COMICS!
This is where things start going downhill, like the idea to turn Superman into an “energy being” (or whatever) and Spawn. There were good things the developers wanted to do with the game, but it all ended up buried in a pile of crap, forcing you to to dig deep to find the good stuff. But hell, at least it’s there. You just have to have the patience to wade through everything else that sucks first.
1
COMIC!
You can just look at this and tell it’s a bad idea, like the Heroes Reborn line and the Punisher as a demon hunting angel. It may not be the worst thing you’ve ever seen or played, but by god, it’s right up there. All you know for certain is that this idea should have been stopped long before it even started.
0 COMICS!
Ugh. Just... ugh. That's what you can say about the storyline which revealed that Spider-Man was really a clone, Wolverine beating Lobo in Marvel vs. DC #2, any of those “cool” dark vigilante-type characters, and so on. There’s absolutely no redeeming value whatsoever and needs to be thrown into a volcano or destroyed in a similar fashion. Nothing will ever be good about it. EVER.
Now that we’ve got that out of the way, it’s time to get underway with The Gameroom Blitz’s feature article...
The Greatest Comic Book Video Games... OF ALL TIME!!!
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BATMAN
NES
Sunsoft
Released around the same
time as the Batman movie from 1989, this game tied into the
movie with enemies and stages from it and added other random
nonsense, like fighting giant rats in the sewers and stuff, because
it was an NES game after all. I guess just be thankful there wasn’t
any kind of “Ice Level” or anything. But it was cool since it was
probably the closest thing you were going to get to a super-hero
Ninja Gaiden. Batman could climb walls by jumping back and forth
between them and select a load enemy dispatching weaponry, like his
batarangs, some kind of gun, and a ninja star that split into three
stars. It might not have been exactly like the comic or movie, but
hell, it was still damn sweet. Not to mention, the graphics for the
time were outstanding (“Oh my god! That looks JUST LIKE Joker from
the movie! Except not as green.”). If there was anything bad about
it, it was just the case of “NES syndrome” it had, which means the
game got retardedly difficult at the end and the only way to beat it
was break out the handy-dandy Game Genie or smash the game to
itty-bitty pieces and admit that you’re a failure for the rest of
your life.
SPIDER-MAN
Playstation, N64,
Dreamcast
Activision
In an age where practically anything that was
licensed was guaran-damn-teed to be crap, Activision picked up the
right to Marvel Comics characters and put Neversoft to work right
away and make a kick ass game... or ELSE! Well, lucky for them,
Spider-Man turned out awesome. A great game was made even better by
a number of things. One, Spider-Man’s commentary and wit was
actually funny. Two, all sorts of sweet extras were packed in, like
the Fantastic Four’s Baxter Building in the background of the first
level. And three, the secrets and hidden costumes were really cool
and ranged from neat to obscenely obscure (like Spidey’s Captain
Universe costume). Web swinging may have been a bit more tough than
it needed to be and sometimes the camera didn’t exactly cooperate,
but neat levels, like the helicopter chase along the roof tops and
fighting Scorpion who’s holding J. Jonah Jameson hostage, easily
made up for it. Just about everyone and their momma has a
Playstation these days and you can easily find Spider-Man in the
Greatest Hits line. Twenty bucks is all you need to experience some
great super-hero
action.
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X-MEN: MUTANT
APOCALYPSE
Super
NES
Capcom
Along the
same lines as the Genesis X-Men game, this was a side-scrolling
action game. But what made it different from the Genesis version,
instead of simply hitting A so Cyclops could shoot his optic blast,
you had to push Down, Down/Forward, Forward + Y, like in Street
Fighter. It was neat idea that worked pretty well and because of it,
you didn’t need to rely on a power meter to tell you how much
“juice” you had to use your powers. You could just do them whenever
the hell you wanted, just as long as you could remember your Street
Fighter basics. What was also neat was the way each X-Man (Cyclops,
Wolverine, Beast, Gambit, and Psylocke) had their own level to
complete and make use of their powers in their own special way. The
only problem with it was each character had two lives and when they
died, it was game over for the rest of team. Meaning, if you beat
Gambit’s, Psylocke’s, Cyclops’, and Wolverine’s levels, but you
couldn’t pass Beast’s level... well, you were screwed. Another
problem was the fact that since it was a side-scroller that played
like a beat ‘em up like Final Fight, you were EASILY surrounded and
could be wasted pretty quick if you weren’t careful. But the diverse
cast of characters and the sheer amount of X-Men villains you could
fight made it worth it.
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CAPTAIN
AMERICA AND THE AVENGERS
Arcade,
Super NES,
Genesis
Data East
This game has always been a
personal favorite of mine. Easily the best part about the game was
the fact that Cap and his pals were so over-the-top heroic that you
just NEEDED to play through the game to see what they were going to
say next. Of course, everyone remembers the classic, “I CAN’T
MOOOVVEE!!!” when you bought the farm. My favorite line from the
game was when Namor, The Sub-Mariner jumped out of the water when
you fought a bad guy on the aircraft carrier who jumped into the
water moments before, to tell you, “HE WENT (dramatic pointing
towards the water) THAT WAY!!!!!!” and then Cap’n and his friends
fearlessly jumped in the water, but not before shouting, “THANK
YOOUUU, SUB-MARINER!!!!!”. That Captain America! Not only does he
beat the asses of Nazis and Communists everywhere for you and me,
but he’s also so polite! While the characters were so over-the-top,
the gameplay wasn’t however. The movement of the characters was
strange and the animations were done in such a fucked up way that it
was really hard to hit anything. Not to mention, it just simply
wasn’t all that fun either. Not horrible, but just sort of...
there.
Now that we’ve covered the best comic book games of our time, it’s time to talk about...
The WORST Comic Book Video Games... OF ALL TIME!!!
SPIDER-MAN AND
VENOM: MAXIMUM CARNAGE
Super
NES,
Genesis
Acclaim
This game could have been
alright if it weren’t for the fact that Acclaim made it. And from
the start, you could tell from a mile away that this had Acclaim’s
horrid stank all over it. As a common rule for beat ‘em ups, they
should be a comfortable length so you might be able to beat them in
a light sitting. You know, an hour or so, meaning the game should
have about 5 or 6 levels. Maximum Carnage has 27. Twenty seven
goddamn levels that do nothing but to constantly remind you that you
are in Hell. And through out these 27 levels, you fight nothing but
generic thugs, guys who can kill you with umbrellas, and regular
high school girls that can kick both Spider-Man’s and Venom’s
collective asses. Not to fear! Because you can get power-up icons
for your backup helpers like Morbius, Firestar, and Iron Fist who do
absolutely fucking nothing! The action will stop on the screen, they
will miss practically all of their targets, and then just fly away.
Meanwhile, the enemies surround you, beat the living shit out of you
and rape your life bar dry. And there’s TWENTY SEVEN levels of this!
If there’s a good side to this game whatsoever, it’s the fact that
the characters had nice animation when they stood in one spot. As
long as they didn’t move, it was good. But when they started
walking, it was like the frame-rate dropped into the single digits.
Not to mention, Spider-Man had a head shaped like a fucking lima
bean. I hate you,
Acclaim.
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TUROK:
EVOLUTION
Playstation 2, GameCube,
XBox
Acclaim
Despite the fact that soon after Acclaim bought the
rights to Valliant Comics and folded practically over night, they
still seemed set on producing games based on their Turok comics.
Like usual though, Acclaim still just doesn’t get it. The comics
weren’t even really that good to begin with and the games are even
worse. Out of all the Turok games though, this one has got to be the
absolute, end all, most terrible one. Horribly plain, ugly graphics,
a collision detection system that might as well not even exist, one
of the most truly ass backwards control schemes ever known to man,
and the fact that Acclaim made it. That alone should be your biggest
warning sign
there.
BATMAN FOREVER
Super
NES,
Genesis
Acclaim
Ok, so Batman Forever
the movie wasn’t so great. But hey, Jim Carrey wasn’t so bad as
The Riddler, some of the fight scenes weren’t too awful, and Val
Kilmer made a decent Batman. Now imagine all of that removed. Next,
imagine everything you hated about the movie and make it doubled...
No no, tripled! Add in other things that make you hate
humanity for even considering this game such as a control scheme
lifted directly out of Mortal Kombat (which makes zero to negative
sense for a side-scroller like this), a grappling hook that is fired
with, of all things, the SELECT button, and load times which makes
no sense since it’s a 16-bit cartridge game. Now wrap up the whole
package with a nice big Acclaim logo, which makes you wonder why you
even want to keep living in the first place.
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SUPERMAN
NES
Sunsoft
Instead
of giving you reasons why you shouldn’t play this game, I just tell
you this: This game sucks. Don’t even bother.
FANTASTIC FOUR
Playstation
Acclaim
Who knows what the fuck even happened
here! Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, about this game is
terrible, worthless, and needs to be shot into the center of the
sun. Even Reed Richards himself still to this day cannot, for the
life of him, figure out how something turns out to be this horrible.
But once again, leave it to Acclaim, the masters of their craft, to
somehow make it
possible.
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And those are the picks for both the greatest and worst of comic book videogames. But there’s more out there that will someday be covered in this section, as I plan to update it from time to time in the future with new material... and that’s where you come in, dear reader! I need two things from you:
1) FEEDBACK!!! If there’s anything you want to see reviewed here on this page that I haven’t covered or if you have comments concerning games that are on here, by all means, drop me a line. I’ll do my best to make sure all of your suggestions are taken care of and hell, I’ll even give ya props here on the pages of The Game Room Blitz!
2) I’m thinking this little section could use a good name... But I haven’t the foggiest idea what to even call it. I mean, “The Gameroom Blitz’s Greatest and Worst Comic Book Video Games of All Time” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, does it? So that where you come in again! You readers out there in internet land do your best to come up with a new name for this section and once again, you’ll get props for doing so. I’ll listen to all suggestions, so go ahead and drop me a line if you’ve got ANY ideas at all!
Oh, and one more thing. If you’re going to send a message of any kind, make sure you label the subject as something like “GRB Comics article” or something like that. Otherwise it might get lost amongst the “FREE BARNYARD SEXXX!!!” and “Click here for the best mortgage, loans, and cell phone time!” ads that clutter my mailbox on a pretty regular basis.
Here’s the magic address where you can reach me:
And last but not least, thanks for joining us here at The Gameroom Blitz. We learned a number of things today, like how super-heroes get their kicks by walking back and forth hitting whatever street urchins cross their paths, or how Capcom can work wonders when given a good license, and as always, that Acclaim is completely worthless and a good game coming out them means the second coming of Jesus is near. Goddamn, Acclaim.
If there’s
one thing we know, it’s that Capcom is pretty much the masters of
their craft. Pretty much everything they put their paws on, they
make work (with a couple of exceptions, which we won’t get into
here...). Starting with X-Men: Children of the Atom, Capcom made a
new series of arcade fighting games different from what they offered
before with Street Fighter. Capcom offered beautiful animation and
hyper fast play to simulate the action you would see if an X-Men
comic sprung to life. X-Men was a great fighting game, but things
got even better when Capcom put out another game based on the entire
Marvel Universe using the same engine, Marvel Super Heroes. Then
everything just melted and came together like butter. Delicious
butter. With minor touchups to the animation engine and a brilliant
cast of fighters, it became THE definitive super-hero fighting game
and shows how a real super-hero throw down would take place.
Everything from Spider-Man’s taking a picture of his defeated foe
for his boss, J.J., the eagle landing on Captain America’s arm after
the fight, to Iron Man’s weaponry and power armor. Marvel Super
Heroes does it just right. If there were any problems, it would
probably just be the fact that the X-Men characters, Wolverine,
Psylocke, Magneto, and Juggernaut, were just simply lifted out of
Children of the Atom and put into MSH, but no biggie. Oh, and maybe
the choice of evil-doers could have been a bit better. But hell,
they had Dr. Doom, so that instantly makes everything all better,
doesn’t it? Bottom line, if you come across this game at the arcade,
drop a couple quarters in it and give it a run. You’ll remember what
2D fighting was like before it crossed into all this “Versus” series
nonsense.
I’ll
admit, I never owned a Genesis. I was never crazy about owning one,
since I had my Super Nintendo and all. But once I saw my friend’s
copy of X-Men that he had rented, I instantly fell in love with it.
The game featured great graphics, decent sound, solid control, and
some really fun side-scrolling action which was only made better by
the addition of a second player. The ability to summon other X-Men
buddies was a nice touch too and it helped because they were useful
too. For instance, Iceman would slide in and create a bridge of ice
so you could walk over a pit filled with acid or Storm would fly
down to blast all the enemies on the screen with DEADLY hail. But
the game did have a few faults that keep it from grabbing that
elusive perfect 5 rating. One, your meter for your mutant powers was
too quickly drained and it also didn’t make sense. Like, why can
Wolverine only have his claws extended for about 30 seconds and then
not be able to use them again? Come on, they’re mutants! I mean,
there’s a guy that can turn into steel and a huge fat guy that
becomes immobile whenever he wants to, among others. Their powers
don’t just “turn off” because some little meter runs out. But
perhaps the thing I hated most about the game was at the end where
you had to “reset Cerebro”, where you actually had to RESET THE GAME
to get to the next level. I cannot count the number of times my
friends and I thought the game had just frozen up or something at
that point and just turned it off to do something else. Aside from
that ridiculous idea, the game is great. Dust off the ol’ Genesis,
pick up an old used copy, and give it a whirl. If need be, download
the ROM for your favorite Genesis emulator and have a blast... you
know, up until the part where you need to reset the game to beat
it.
Do-do-do-DO-do-do-doooo! Do-do-do-DO-do-do-doooo!!!
Possibly the catchiest theme song Spidey had until that dumb “weaves
a web!/Any size!/Catches criminals just like FLLIIIIEESSSSSS!!!”
tune came along. The mission was simple. All you had to do was get
Spider-Man to the top of the building to stop the Green Goblin from
doing whatever the hell bad guys did in the Atari days. Sound easy?
Well, not when you have residents in the building you’re trying to
climb up throwing shit at you and bombs littered about the area! But
alas, it’s all part of the hero’s job! And when you finally get to
the top of the building to face off against Green Goblin!... You get
to do it all over again. Err, yeah. Oh well. It was fun for the
time.
This game
is a pain in the ass. But still, as frustrating as it can be
sometimes, there’s no denying that it’s a great game. As you could
probably tell, the game is based on the old animated series of the
same name and Konami did a bang up job with it. It seemed like back
in the 16-bit era, they were the only ones who could take a licensed
game and make it work. Konami managed to get the graphics to look
perfect, just like the show and for each level, you had to fight a
different member of Batman’s rouge gallery. It was also cool how
Konami incorporated different gameplay styles into the game, like
side-scrolling (like chasing Joker through his fun house), top-down
car chases (Two-Face just robbed a bank and you gotta chase him!) ,
and stealthy sneaking around (In the Gotham City Museum, Robin is
captured by Penguin and if you want him back, you‘re going to sneak
around and find him). The game would have been much cooler
two-player with Robin at your side and not to mention, it would have
made things much easier since sometimes the game got to be pretty
frustrating for no good reason (like swinging on your grappling hook
was stupidly hard or sometimes enemies would hit you no matter
what). But hell, it’s STILL better than those new Batman games
they’re putting out for the current crop of systems.
When beat
‘em ups were all the rage back in the 16-bit days, Sunsoft thought,
“What do kids like better than Superman? SUPERMAN HITTING
PEOPLE!!!”. So they made a Final Fight inspired game based on the
comic book storyline of The Death of Superman. The first part of the
game has Superman fighting his way through levels and beating up
common street thugs until he comes across Doomsday as the level
boss. And in a really weird moment, after you beat Doomsday
senseless and his life bar is empty, he gets back up while Superman
just stands there and then they hit each other at the same time and
fall down, presuming they’re both dead. And then a big symbol
flashes on the screen saying “LEVEL CLEAR!!!”. It was like, “So,
uh... did I win?”. Well, you do win and then end up having to
control Superboy, Eradicator, Cyborg Superman, and Steel. From that
point on, it gets to be a pretty standard ass kicking fest. It’s not
a bad game, but the only problem is that the game is a bit long for
its own good. The game has somewhere around 15 stages or so
(possibly more) and there’s not many continues to go around. Also,
there’s no two player mode! How in the big blue hell do you have a
beat ‘em up and no two player option?! For shame, Sunsoft. For
shame.
This game
was fun if only for the fact that chances are, this was the ONLY
place you would ever see Nick Fury as a playable character in
any game. Player one took control of Frank Castle himself and
player two was Nick. The game was released during a period when
Capcom hadn’t really been really doing much Street Fighter stuff and
put out a crapload of side-scrolling beat ‘em ups. The game is
pretty much standard fare of hitting people, moving down the screen,
hitting more people, pick up a bat, and then hit even more people.
But what was a cool change was the fact that from time to time,
Punisher and Nick would take out their guns and you could blast away
anything that moved, so when you fought Kingpin at the end of the
game, you take out your piece and blast the living shit out of that
fat bastard. Some things are far more satisfying than they should
be, really.
In true
Acclaim fashion, when people said their games were absolute shit and
said in a big collective, “STOP MAKING GAMES!”, that obviously means
keep puttin’ them out! So now we have Arcade’s Revenge. This is
another side-scroller that sucks because it’s probably one of the
most goddamn hardest games ever made. It’s not hard in the “Man,
this is challenging! I’ll have to try again!” kind of way. It’s hard
in the “What the fuck? Why did Cyclops just suddenly fall through
that mine cart he was just riding in?!” kind of way. I don’t think
anyone has ever beaten this game since Juggernaut in Wolverine’s
level was impossible, Cyclops would suddenly forget how to fire his
optic blasts when you reach his boss since pushing Y does nothing at
that point, and also because it just plain sucks too.
What
makes the sub-par fighter stand out is the fact that your characters
have pretty everything done for them by the CPU (like for instance,
after you use Wonder Woman’s magic lasso to draw an opponent towards
you, the computer automatically does a standing high kick, since I
guess they assume you want to use the damaging move she has to
follow it up without trying to piece together an even more damaging
combo) and the fact that the storyline is ridiculously stupid. The
point is Darksied is coming to Earth and you, as your respective
character, need to get the help of the Justice League... by kicking
their asses! This is wrong for many reasons. First, who in the hell
is going to help the guy that just whipped their ass? Second, after
Superman gets through beating you up, are you going to be any
condition to fight a cosmic overlord? Hell no! You’re lucky if you
can even eat food through a straw and crap in a plastic bag.
This has
got to be possibly the worst game ever. I don’t mean the worst comic
book game ever either, although it is. No, I mean this has to be the
single biggest crime against humanity since man learned to walk
erect and develop games. You pick one of six Lego characters that I
think are supposed to represent the X-Men and fight against random
household objects, out of control construction equipment, and
pigeons that have dreams to conquer our fine planet! Each character
makes fantastic use of their mutant powers to complete this task.
For instance, Storm moves up two pixels on the screen to represent
she’s flying, or Colossus with his super tough skin made of steel
can now die in three hits instead of two, and Nightcrawler who uses
his teleport powers to walk through walls, but since it drains his
life and he walks too slow, he’s killed practically right away.
Meanwhile, the rest of your team your team is being beaten to death
by garbage cans or having their eyes pecked out by birds. Believe
me, it’s a sad day when Cyclops, Wolverine, and Iceman are
collectively overpowered by a runaway
jackhammer.