‘Marvel MaXimum Collection’ Review – Newsweek

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The centerpiece of this collection is the original “X-Men” arcade game, in both 2, 4, and 6-player variants. The six–player version is particularly notable, since the original arcade version featured two CRT monitors side-by-side to facilitate widescreen play. In this version, that manifests as an ultra-wide, letterboxed presentation, and it’s gorgeous. “X-Men” is a delightful exercise in dumb fun, with its goofy, poorly translated lines (“Welcome to DIE” and “I am Magneto, Master of Magnet!” spring to mind), and simple gameplay allowing for an hour or so of drunken fun, especially with friends. Locally, you’re limited to just four players, but if you take the battle online, you can get the full, six-player experience, allowing for Cyclops, Dazzler, Wolverine, Cyclops, Colossus, and Storm to kick butt together.

However, “X-Men” is just the tip of the iceberg here. Next, we have “Captain America and The Avengers,” which, for my money, is actually superior to “X-Men,” at least in its arcade incarnation. While it’s limited to just four players, it has more variety in its gameplay (gotta love those shooter-style levels!) and features a host of cameos from characters like Wonder Man, Sub-Mariner, and more that I won’t spoil for newcomers, as well as its own instances of poorly-translated dialogue. The roster of playable characters in this one is a curious mix, featuring Captain America, Iron Man, Hawkeye, and Vision, who looks like a stick of butter for some reason.

While the arcade version is an all-time classic, the two home console versions of “Captain America and The Avengers” don’t fare as well. The Sega Genesis version is a surprisingly faithful translation of the arcade experience, just worse in every way. The animations are clunky, the gameplay is stiff, and multiplayer is limited to just two players. If you grew up with this version, you’ll surely have a grand, nostalgic time, but if not, you’ll probably ‘nope out’ after a level or two. As for the NES version, it’s an entirely different game. While it includes a disposable 2-player battle mode, the main experience is a single-player affair, with players proceeding through linear stages as either Cap or Hawkeye, searching for both the exit and the key to the next stage. It’s not entirely charmless, but it’s not particularly fun, either.

Next, we have a pair of Spider-Man games, “Maximum Carnage” and “Separation Anxiety.” Both SNES and Genesis versions of both games are included. The SNES version is better all around, but if you grew up with the Genesis version, nothing anyone says can offset your nostalgia, nor should it. Both games are very similar, though “Maximum Carnage” has larger sprites, a bettter, comic-book style presentation, and branching paths in the storyline, while “Separation Anxiety” more than makes up for it with two-player co-op play, allowing players to take down Carnage and the Life Foundation as both Spider-Man and Venom. Both games benefit from the “infinite lives” setting, which offsets the brutal difficulty curve, particularly in “Maximum Carnage.” Mercifully, enabling this cheat doesn’t disable PlayStation Trophies or Xbox Achievements.

We also have the NES game, “Silver Surfer.” Thanks to the godsend that is the ‘rewind’ feature, this notoriously difficult auto-scrolling shooter is much more manageable, and it’s actually quite fun. You play as Silver Surfer (duh) on a quest to… It doesn’t matter. You shoot a lot of stuff and a single hit from anything, including the static walls of the environment, kills you, with no mid-level checkpoints. Seriously, if you’ve ever beaten this game on original hardware without save states, I thank you for your service.

Finally, there’s “Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge.” This one sucks. It’s only here to serve as nostalgia for those who had it on NES, Game Boy, Genesis, or Game Gear when they were kids. While it’s impressive that all these versions are included here, none of them are fun to play. The tutorial level with Spider-Man is a slog to get through on all systems, and none of the additional playable characters (Storm, Wolverine, Cyclops, and Gambit) are any better, with stiff, awkward controls (you will never, ever, get used to the crouch mechanic) and blistering difficulty. Even with the rewind function, it’s just not worth playing through this one on any of the four versions included here.

While only a couple of games here are truly great (the two arcade titles, natch), some of them are pretty good (“Maximum Carnage” and “Separation Anxiety”), even the bad ones are worth a look, if not a full playthrough. In addition to the games themselves, there’s a reasonable selection of bonus, behind-the-scenes stuff, like scans of instruction manuals, the original box artwork, and even print advertisements that you would find in magazines of the era. It’s not exactly on par with the “Atari 50” collection, and there’s no bonus feature crown jewel like the animated TV pilot from the “Bubsy” collection, but I suppose you don’t need one when you’ve got “X-Men” and “Captain America and The Avengers,” which are on a decidedly higher tier than “Pac-Man 2600” and “Bubsy 3D.”

All in all, the “Marvel Maximum Collection” doesn’t do much to justify its status as a stash of old ROMs, but when the ROMs include an online-enabled version of “X-Men” and some prime nostalgia bait, video game enthusiasts of a certain age simply can’t argue against that.

Newsweek Score: 7/10