Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and its 2009 sequel are both coming to PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on Tuesday. If that matters little to you then you're either not a fan — OK, that's fine — or Ultimate Alliance is old enough that you don't know what it is.
Think Diablo, a fantasy action game driven by the ever-present lure of sweeter, more powerful loot, only replace the magic and monsters with Marvel heroes and villains.
That's Ultimate Alliance. Choosing from a pool of 20-plus Marvel heroes, you form your own super-team and take on a massive roster of super-villains and their cronies. As you punch your way to justice, you pick up baubles and alternate outfits that further power you up.
The two re-releases are complete versions of each game. Marvel's confirmed that minimal enhancements were made to the graphics, interface and overall performance of each — mostly, the games are just optimized for new hardware.
The thing that makes the Ultimate Alliance games cool is their unrestrained nerdiness. Each game is filled with deep cuts that reference the furthest corners of Marvel lore.
You play as all the heroes you know — Cap, Spidey, Deadpool, Wolverine, etc. — but you meet Karnak, you unlock Beta Ray Bill's outfit, you fight Fin Fang Foom. If you don't get the reference, it's fun nonsense. But if you do, it's gratifying.
That nerdiness extends to the gameplay as well. Hero powers can be combined to recreate comic book contrivances like Colossus and Wolverine's Fastball Special. There are also bonuses for forming known super-teams using the available heroes.
The game doesn't tell you what the lineups are, but fandom is its own payoff. If you know that Daredevil, Black Widow, Moon Knight and Luke Cage (among others) formed the Marvel Knights then you can get a secret stat bonus for grouping them all together.
You can also play with friends. Just like the earlier versions, the Ultimate Alliance re-releases allow up to four players to group up, either online or in front of the same TV.
It's increasingly weird that Marvel has almost no presence in present-day video games despite the fact that its movie and TV offerings are exploding. The Ultimate Alliance games may not be new, but their resurfacing highlights what we're missing.
Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2 will be sold individually for $39.99 or together as a bundle for $59.99 on each of the three platforms.
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