The rich history of Marvel Comics became attractive sources of inspiration for video games, with most gaming consoles having a game or two based on a Marvel Comics character or team that was popular at the time. With hits such as Marvel vs. Capcom and recent successes in Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, fans of the comics publisher might be wondering if there are Marvel Comics games that don’t take characters through an original story and instead recreate an existing storyline in a video game format.

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While recent games like Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy and Marvel’s Avengers boast unique stories, older Marvel Comics video games were built on the backdrop of a story that already happened in the comics. While these games didn’t follow these stories to the letter, fans who try these experiences may recognize familiar faces and plotline Easter Eggs that enhance the experience.

10 Marvel Future Revolution

Secret Wars Reference In A Remixed Story

Touted as Marvel’s first fully open-world action RPG, Marvel Future Revolution is set on Primary Earth where players join the Omega Flight as a superhero from different Earths. As with other mobile RPGs, Marvel Future Revolution emphasizes both unlocking and upgrading characters. The game also features an auto-play option, allowing players to repeat missions with ease should they have powerful enough characters.

While it’s true that Marvel Future Revolution ended up having an original story, its premise takes cues and concepts from 2015’s Secret Wars crossover storyline. In the original comics, Doctor Doom becomes the god of Battleworld, a patchwork of universes that he managed to salvage during the Beyonders’ plan of destroying the multiverse via Convergences. Meanwhile, Future Revolution has Primary Earth, an amalgamation of universes from Vision’s sacrifice after the heroes also fail to stop the collision of different realities. Both stories feature heroes working to “restore” order across the multiverse, but each game features Battle-eseque worlds with different types of Earths.

9 Marvel Super Heroes In War Of The Gems

Stop Thanos From Acquiring The Infinity Gems

While playing mostly like a traditional beat-em-up title, Marvel Super Heroes in War of the Gems gives gamers the opportunity to use up to five characters to tackle its many levels. Starring Captain America, the Hulk, Iron Man, Spider-Man, and Wolverine, War of the Gems will have the unlikely alliance team up under orders from Adam Warlock to secure the Infinity Gems before they fall into the wrong hands.

As players unlock Infinity Gems at the end of each stage, they can use them to receive gameplay perks when playing other stages. While the heroes having to defeat Thanos resembles The Infinity Gauntlet saga, characters such as Adam Warlock and his evil counterpart the Magus taking center stage also make the story similar to the evolved conflict involving the Gems in The Infinity War.

8 X-Men: Children Of The Atom

Stop A Familiar Magneto World Domination Plan

It’s X-Men: Children of the Atom that laid the foundations for X-Men vs. Street Fighter, with its improved mechanics becoming the basis for the hit Marvel vs. Capcom series. While taking Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo’s six-button layout and supers system, Children of the Atom boasts longer combos and a multi-tiered stage system. This X-Men game lets players control the X-Men or the Brotherhood of Evil mutants, with Juggernaut serving as the sub-boss and Magneto as the final boss.

The main plot of the game involves Magneto controlling humanity after releasing a powerful EMP to cripple the world’s electrical systems. This story is loosely based on the second half of the Fatal Attractions storyline of the X-Men, where Magneto uses the same plan to stop the UN Security Council from prohibiting him from using his powers. In the larger scheme of things, the X-Men also stop Magneto-worshipping Acolytes from killing all humans in Avalon, their space station.

7 Marvel Super Heroes

Gather The Infinity Stones And Use Them In Combat

Building upon the core mechanics of Children of the Atom comes Marvel Super Heroes, this time featuring more iconic Marvel characters like Spider-Man, Iron Man, and Captain America alongside smoother visuals and a more refined combo system. Moreover, Marvel Super Heroes further diversifies playstyles with Infinity Gems that spawn randomly throughout matches. Based on the Infinity Gems that players acquire, their characters may become faster (Time Gem), get super armor (Space Gem), stronger attacks (Power Gem), attack effects (Reality Gem), and recovery (Soul, Mind Gem).

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The inclusion of the Infinity Gems alludes to the main story of Marvel Super Heroes, where Thanos aims to collect all Infinity Gems within his Infinity Gauntlet to conquer the world. This plot is largely based on 1991’s The Infinity Gauntlet crossover event, where Thanos wants to eradicate half of the universe’s life to impress his love interest, Mistress Death.

6 Marvel Avengers: Battle For Earth

Secret Invasion Is The Perfect Excuse For Fights

Despite the mediocre reviews for Marvel Avengers: Battle for Earth, it does a decent job integrating a comic book storyline into giving popular Marvel characters reasons to fight with each other. Adapting the Secret Invasion storyline, Battle for Earth depicts the struggles of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes in identifying and eliminating the Skrull impostors before they begin their invasion from a portal above New York City.

While the game possesses motion-based gameplay expected from its Wii U and Kinect compatibility, its plot points deserve exploration by avid comic book fans. The storyline detail of a portal above New York isn’t from Secret Invasion but rather from the 2012 Avengers film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, which was possibly a reference for Battle for Earth’s development after the cancelation of a tie-in Avengers game for the team-up film.

5 Marvel Puzzle Quest

Stop Norman Osborn's Schemes With Match-Three Mechanics

Contrary to other Marvel games, Marvel Puzzle Quest plays like a casual match-three puzzle combat title. When players assemble a team of three Marvel characters, they need to match color-coded stones to deal damage and accumulate action points to perform special skills. While the game’s multiplayer option can be challenging for puzzle enthusiasts, it’s the Marvel Puzzle Quest story that comic book fans may enjoy.

The arrival of Isotope-8 as an upgrade material in 2012’s Avengers Alliance made its way across various Marvel video games as a plot point, this time becoming the crux of Norman Osborn’s attempts to control SHIELD in Marvel Puzzle Quest. Minus Iso-8, this premise is largely based on Dark Reign, the 2009 miniseries where Osborn’s defeat of the Skrulls becomes his argument for replacing Tony Stark as SHIELD Director. This storyline would lead to the creation of the villainous Cabal and the Dark Avengers.

4 X-Men 2: Fall Of The Mutants

Re-Explore A Rescue Mission As Different Characters

Despite its age, X-Men 2: Fall of the Mutants as an MS-DOS title becomes a dynamic exploration of the strategy, RPG, and action-adventure genres. In Fall of the Mutants, players select a team of five from a 15-person roster that includes members of both X-Men and the Brotherhood of Evil mutants. Players then explore an overworld littered with items and obstacles, where each level only ends when they encounter and defeat a villain in the game’s top-down strategy mode and side-scrolling combat mode.

When X-Men Storm and Forge go missing, Xavier’s pupils run into the Freedom Force, who want to catch them for not following the Mutant Registration Act. While this premise follows a large portion of the Fall of the Mutants crossover event for the X-Men, Uatu the Watcher appears at the beginning of the game to hint at a “What If?” scenario. In it, he asks what could happen if a different mutant team rescued the two missing X-Men, hence the justification of players choosing their own team.

3 The Punisher

Gory Action Thrills Loosely Based On Specific Stories

Being a video game adaptation of the eponymous Marvel anti-hero, it’s no surprise that the third-person shooter mechanics of The Punisher have a heavy reliance on violence and gore. Armed with an assortment of lethal weaponry, the Punisher constantly attacks enemies, tortures them for information, and brutally executes them to finish his mission.

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However, while the game has a rather “generic” antihero versus criminals storyline shared with other action titles, The Punisher becomes a deeper experience for comic fans when they start connecting the dots with its storyline inspirations. On top of taking inspiration from the basic storyline of the 2004 The Punisher film, Frank Castle’s encounters with villains such as Bushwacker, General Kreigkopf, the Russian, and even Bullseye resemble narratives from Volumes 5 to 6 of his recent comic book runs at the time.

2 Marvel Contest Of Champions

Contest Of Champions Is A Canon Tournament

In a bid to compete with mobile fighting games such as Injustice: Gods Among Us and Mortal Kombat X, it’s unsurprising for Marvel Contest of Champions to also feature team-based matches involving a straightforward three-button control scheme. All characters in the game’s roster of 250+ combatants possess unique abilities and special moves across unique classes and traits, with bonuses when paired according to popular comic book teams.

However, where Contest of Champions raises the bar is its narrative foundation. Both the name and its main story are based on the 1982 limited series Marvel Super Hero Contest of Champions, where the Grandmaster and Death use Marvel characters as pawns to fight for the life of the recently deceased Collector. While the 1982 miniseries had a short run, the ongoing gameplay of Contest of Champions expands on its initial premise, eventually including original characters with different agendas that affect the multiverse.

1 Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2

A Decent Fusion Of Secret War, Civil War

Unlike the original narrative of the team-up crossover prequel, the plot of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 connects two Marvel stories: 2004 to 2005’s Secret War, and 2006 to 2007’s Civil War. The game also adapts Ultimate Alliance’s team-building system to let players experience the separate stories of Anti-Registation and Pro-Registration superhumans.

Ultimate Alliance 2 begins with a covert “invasion” of Latveria as depicted in Secret War in a bid to stop the country’s new prime minister from supplying supervillains with weapons. The game follows up with a unique connection to the events of Civil War, this time with Latveria’s attack on New York City motivating the consideration of the Superhuman Registration Act, followed by its immediate passage with the comics-accurate fatal attack involving the New Warriors. Events afterward differ due to the game’s separate endings, but the core themes and narrative of Civil War remain intact throughout the experience.

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