The Marvel MaXimum Collection assembles a who’s who of arcade-y Marvel gems. Each game comes with a healthy suite of options and settings that do their best to painstakingly preserve every pixelated frame in the batch. From the arguable crown jewel, X-Men Arcade, to the cult classic Silver Surfer, it seems like the preservationists at Limited Run Games are living up to their reputation with yet another museum-like collection.
I stopped by the Limited Run Games booth at PAX East last week to check out their latest collection, mess around with its tools, and punch some baddies as various Marvel heroes in the Maximum Collection. Packaged with X-Men: The Arcade Game, Captain America and The Avengers, Spider-Man/Venom: Maximum Carnage & Separation Anxiety, Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge, and Silver Surfer – all playable in their respective original forms, including different platforms for some.
While the X-Men Arcade game holds a special place in my heart, I was never around to play it in its heyday. Its legacy as a Mount Rushmore-level arcade classic remains, though, and it still carries that reputation in most arcades and arcade bars. But not every Marvel game from this era is so accessible, nor were all of them even playable in arcades, so the prospect of getting all of these games together is incredibly exciting. Sprinkle in the opportunity to explore differences between, say, the Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo versions of Maximum Carnage, all with their respective cheats and unlimited arcade credits where available, and you have a recipe for success.
I love nerding out over the differences between sound cards from the 16-bit generation. There’s some kind of magic in that hardware that rarely gets captured in the retro revival stuff we see today, so getting a rare opportunity for side-by-side comparison without YouTube’s iffy compression is a great way to save myself the hundreds of dollars I’d need to spend to compare using original hardware. Re-captured in bright, arcade-y neons and the 32,000-ish color palette of the SNES, each game looks great too, letting the detailed sprite work of the originals shine.
But the preservation isn’t just for cosmetic flair. I dabbled in a handful of games across the collection, and each one felt smooth. From shield throws in Captain America and The Avengers to web-swinging through the streets of New York in Maximum Carnage, each attack felt snappy and responsive.
As cool as it is to revisit games from this era, though – especially from a franchise that’s much more guarded and restricted in what does and doesn’t get included in official material – game design was different back then. Games made for arcades, especially ones like the beat-’em-up-heavy team assembled here, were designed to vacuum up quarters. Even home console games sometimes have difficulty spikes made to pad their replayability. It’s no secret that some of these games show their age. Annoying, charming, or obtuse, the MaXimum Collection doesn’t editorialize these eccentricities and difficulty spikes, and still lets them exist as they do in their original formats.
Instead, it provides means of bypassing them or outright steamrolling them without changing the original games. The main menu, where you select different games in the collection, gives you access to the cheats found in the originals and an option for unlimited credits where available. There’s even a rewind option! If the options I messed around with are reflective all the way through each game, this super-stacked anthology should deliver on its promise without missing a mark.
Plus, as history has shown, no Limited Run collection is complete without a smattering of digital artwork. Complete with scans from design documents, concept art, and other glimpses into the creation of these games, this compilation seems like it’s going to wind up offering a museum-caliber smattering of new art.
My only real cause for concern with this anthology is its multiplayer. While I understand that some platforms might have a harder time than others doing 6-person local co-op in X-Men Arcade, and I’m happy it’s included where possible, I’m concerned about online multiplayer. I didn’t get to try its rollback-based online play for myself, so this is speculation, but inserting online play into ROMs of older games can sometimes shake out poorly. While I certainly have faith in Limited Run’s ability to make it work, I’m especially dubious about rollback’s viability between more than two players. It’s one key piece of MaXimum Collection’s puzzle that has yet to be proven out.
Still, based on what I’ve seen so far, it seems like Limited Run Games may have done it again as they aim to deliver a respectful, loving restoration of super-heroic classics with an archaeological reverence for their legacy. If you’re looking for some nostalgic fun in Marvel’s colorful ‘90s arcade-y adventures, Marvel Maximum Collection is out now on PC and consoles.
Charlie is a freelance contributor for IGN. You can reach them via Twitter or Instagram at the handle @chas_mke.
