In honor of the Iron Man movie released this past weekend, I would like to dedicate this episode of Game On to the best comic book video games of all time.  Unfortunately, the new Iron Man game will not be on the list.  My quick review of the game is: they did a great job with the look and controls of Iron Man himself, but the game itself didn’t seem to be as well developed.  The environments and enemies were a bit of a let down and, after a few hours of playing, I really wish they had paid Robert Downey Jr to record a few more one-liners because the limited number they had in the game got old real fast. 

That being said, it might be worth a rental from Gamefly if you enjoyed the movie like I did (more on that tomorrow).

Here were go with the Nifty Nerd’s Top 10 Comic Book Video Games of All Time:

10.  Punisher - Capcom (1993):  Easily one of the coolest arcade side-scrollers produced by Capcom, the Punisher was built around game play similar to that of the Final Fight series and Capcom’s other comic book arcade release at the time, Cadillacs & Dinosaurs.  In this arcade gem, you were able to play either the Punisher or a cigar-smoking Nick Fury as you fought your way through six levels of mayhem and destruction.  Wielding guns, knives, swords, bats and grenades, you encountered faces familiar from the pages of Marvel Comics, including Bushwacker, Bone Breaker and the Kingpin…oh, and don’t forget a whole gaggle of canon-fodder goons, thugs and ninjas. 

The Punisher arcade game was great fun to play and was loaded with some truly spiffy comic book style cut scenes.  Now, there was a port of the game to Sega’s Genesis/MegaDrive console, but it really wasn’t the same due to some silly censorship.  If you can find one of the old arcade cabinets for sale online, or have an X-Arcade Mame Cabinet, Capcom’s Punisher game is a ton of fun.

9.  The Adventures of Batman and Robin - Konami (1994):  To say that The Adventures of Batman and Robin was one of the best Batman games of all times is not an exaggeration.  A fast and furious side-scroller, the game was based on the Batman: the Animated Series cartoon which ran for most of the 1990s and allowed gamers to play through levels faithfully based on episodes of the show. 

Strangely enough, there were two very different versions of this game released in the early 1990s, one for the SNES and the other for the Sega Genesis.  The SNES version was a bit long but the Genesis port allowed for a second player to take on the role of Robin for some cool co-op crime-fighting action.  Whichever console you picked to play on, you were in for a lot of fun as Gotham’s Dark Knight Detective.

8.  Marvel Ultimate Alliance - Activision (2006): The third Marvel Comics-based game developed by Raven Software for Activision, Marvel Ultimate Alliance is also the best of the bunch.  Which its game engine is beginning to show its age a bit, the storyline and in-game cinematics are simply mind-blowing.  I would love to see the cinematics team from Raven develop a movie or series using the animation style found in their cut-scene animations.  This game (and the two X-Men Legends games before it) offers one of the best designed look at Marvel Comics characters I’ve ever seen.

Enough about the cinematics, the game is built from the same engine as the two X-Men Legends games and is a lot of fun to play, either alone or co-op with a friend.  Even better than the game play is the sheer number of playable Marvel characters available in a video game anywhere.  If you are a fan of Marvel Comics and you haven’t played this game, then you are just a lame poser.  Get the game…all the cool kids are playing it.

7.  X-men Mutant Apocalypse - Capcom (1994):  Comic book games and sidescrolling action seemed to go hand-in-hand in the 1990s.  X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse was no exception.  Yet another great side-scroller from the folks at Capcom, X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse was an outstanding game for its time.  With the ability to play Cyclops, Wolverine, Psylocke, Beast or Gambit, the game takes fans on a journey to fight a huge array of X-Villains, including: Sentinels, the Brood, Tusk, Apocalypse, Omega Red, Juggernaut, the Acolytes, Exodus and Magneto. 

X-Men: MA had fantastic designs, slick animation and a story taken right from the X-men comic books of the time.  This should be on the top of any X-Fan’s must-play list of games.

6.  Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (and Turtles in Time) - Konami (1989):  Ok, so the number 6 entry in our list is actually 2 games.  Work with me here, it’s my list and I can do whatever the hell I want.

The two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle arcade games (from 1989 and 1992 respectively) were played by anyone and everyone who frequented an arcade during the late 80s and early 90s.  You’d often see 2, 3 or even 4 friends battling the forces of Shredder and the Footclan…well, for at least as long as their quarters held out.  The up to 4-player co-op system and tie-in to the mega-popular cartoon, made the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle games some of the most popular arcade games ever created.  It didn’t hurt that they were a hell of a lot of fun to play either. 

While later TMNT games would bring along technological advances, none were ever as popular as the two original arcade games.  Kowabunga, dudes!

5.  Marvel vs Capcom 2 - Capcom (2000):  There is nothing more viscerally enjoyable than a head-to-head fighting game and Capcom have been masters of the genre for nearly 2 decades.  As with all of the Capcom fighting games, there is a story behind the arena-battle gameplay, but no one really cares.  All that matters in this final installment of the Marvel vs. Capcom series of games is that you get to play more Marvel Comics characters than any other game out there and that, my friends, is a wonderful thing. 

Sure, there isn’t much meat to the game, but the replayability is enormous in every episode in the Marvel vs Capcom series.  This game is great to toss in when you’ve got a bunch of friends over and gives everyone tons of opportunity to shit talk as they have their favorite Marvel character pummel their buddies.  Want to know who would win in a fight between Iron Man and Doctor Doom?  Now you can finally power up your favorite home gaming console and find out.  Ah, isn’t random, meaningless video game violence a wonderful thing?  Shit talking and street fighting superheroes gives Marvel VS Capcom 2 the number 5 position in my Top 10 Comic Book Games of all time list.

4.  Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu - Ubisoft (2003):  I’ll probably be reamed for including this game in my top 10 comic book game list, but damn it the game was a buttload of fun!  Based upon the legendary Batman: The Animated Series, Batman: Rise of Sin Tzu was a bit of a reworking of the Knightfall storyline from the early 1990s Batman comics, with a new villain taking the place of Bane.  The story, for those not “in the know” about all-things comic book, has a new villain come to Gotham to take down the Dark Knight by releasing every nutjob imprisoned in Arkham Asylum and sending them after Batman and company. 

While the game was a fairly straight-forward, linear platformer (as opposed to the more open, free-roaming environments of Ultimate Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction), the animated-Batman inspired designs and slick game play made for a highly enjoyable gaming experience.  As your experience increases in the game, you are able to not only purchase new moves, gadgets and combos, but you are also able to buy different costumes for each of the 4 playable characters — Batman, Robin, Batgirl and Nightwing. 

In addition to the story mode, there is also a challenge mode which has the player (or players) fighting against increasing numbers of foes in an effort to survive a specified time limit.  The challenge mode, and the entire game itself, can get a bit hectic due to large numbers of enemies and some painfully short time limits…of course, those things are nothing the Batman can’t handle, right?

For me, this is the single-best Batman game ever produced and one that has been highly underrated by the game press.

3. X-Men - Konami (1992):  Another great arcade side-scroller from the early 1990s, the X-Men from Konami took more money from me than almost any other game.  Heck, I loved it so much I own one of the original arcade cabinets and display it proudly in my office here at Nerd-Central.  The interesting thing about this particular X-Men game was that it was based heavily on a failed pilot for an X-Men cartoon from the late 1980s, called “Pryde of the X-Men.”  The game itself features some fantastic in-game animated cut-scenes pulled from the cartoon, great sound and fantastic game play.  The line-up was pulled directly from that cartoon and includes six playable X-Men who are on a mission to save Profession Xavier from Magneto and his Brotherhood of Evil Mutants.

Playable characters include Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus and, strangely enough, Dazzler.  From what I remember the game came in 2-player, 4-player and the ultimate, 6-player version with double-monitors.  As a comic book fan in the early 90s who was in the midst of becoming a pro comic book artist, this game kicked a whole lot of ass for me.  If you haven’t had a chance to play it, load up a copy on your favorite MAME arcade machine and have a blast.  I have to say, Konami’s X-Men Arcade Game was one of the best combinations of game play, graphics and cut-scenes found in any comic book game.

2. Ultimate Spider-Man - Activision (2005):  Following on the heels of the Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Ultimate Spider-Man adapts its comic book source material more faithfully than any other comic book video game to date.  The storyline is even being adapted back in to comic book format in upcoming issues of Ultimate Spider-man.

In the game, players will jump back and forth between playing heroic Spider-man and the villainous Venom.  The best part of the game is the completely open dynamic environment, which includes an incredibly accurate rendition of the island of Manhattan and the city of Queens where Peter Parker lives.  In addition to real-life landmarks like the Queensboro Bridem Metropolitan Museum, Times Square and Empire State Building, comic book fans will also stumble across the Daily Bugle, 4-Freedoms Plaza, Midtown High School and Peter Parker’s house.

Ultimate Spider-man features a ton of appearances from Marvel Comics’ characters such as the Human Torch, Silver Sable, the Shocker, Carnage, Wolverine, Electro, the Green Goblin, Beetle, the Rhino and more.  With the faithful comic book storyline, free-roaming city environments and fantastic controls, Activision put together easily one of the best, and most fun, comic book video games of all times.  Years after its initial release, I am still able to pop a copy of the game in to my old X-Box and have a blast of a time playing.

1.  The Incredible Hulk Ultimate Destruction - Vivendi-Universal (2005): It isn’t often that a video game company gets a game adaptation absolutely perfect, but that was the case with Vivendi’s Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction game in 2005.  I could go on and on about the coolness of the game’s story or the appearances by long-time Hulk comic book mainstays such as General Thunderbolt Ross, the Abomination, Doc Samson, Mercy or Mr. Fixit, but that isn’t what the game is really about.  If you pick-up a copy of the Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, there are only two things you need to know. 

First off, the game allows you to roam around a completely open and dynamic “sandbox” type city that reactions to everything you do to it in a way similar to the Grand Theft Auto series.  You can run amuck, causing damage at will and fighting both the military and police, as well as running dynamic missions which pop up based on your location.

Second, the control set is the absolute best ever found in a comic book video game adaptation.  There are none better.  Period.  You can do everything you could imagine the Hulk doing in a video game - climbing buildings, taking mile long leaps, tearing cars in half to form giant metal gloves or even grabbing the round sign of a nearby gas station and using it as a bowling ball.  And, the futher along you go, the more moves you are able to add to your rampaging Hulk.  This, in addition to the Ultimate Spider-Man game, was one of the very few cases where I thought a video game developer had understood the property they were adapting and had “gotten it.”  The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction is a MUST-HAVE for anyone looking for a perfect game based on a comic book.

That brings this episode of Game On to a close here at the Nifty Nerd.  Write in and let me know what you think…were there any games I missed?  Tell me what your favorites were and why.

Until next time, take thee to a nerdery.

-Mat N., the Nifty Nerd
http://www.TheNiftyNerd.com