Way back when the Marvel Cinematic Universe was still in its first phase, Sega had been given the rights to make a series of tie-in games to act as companions to the movie. As anyone who's ever played a movie tie-in game before would expect, these games did not receive critical acclaim, being largely maligned by players and critics alike.
However, with many critically acclaimed Marvel games being released in recent years, and with more on the way, it's worth looking back and examining the ways these old MCU tie-in games weren't quite as bad as they were originally believed to be.
10 People Get To Play As Their Favorite MCU Heroes
For many people, the MCU was their first introduction to the many heroes of Marvel beyond the ever-popular Spider-Man. For those people, games allowing them to play as these versions of the heroes would be an exciting prospect. Many of the Marvel games that exist, though, are either based off the comic versions of these characters or put their own spin on the classic heroes.
While the MCU tie-ins may not be perfect, they do provide players the ability to take control of what have rapidly become the most recognizable versions of these characters to a mainstream audience.
9 The Gameplay, While Unambitious, Is Fun And Fits The Characters Well
It goes without saying that gameplay is the most important part of a videogame. If a game doesn't play well or isn't fun to play, there's almost no point in playing it. By this logic, then, it's worth noting the fact that the MCU games do actually have fun gameplay that fits in line with the characters of each game. From Captain America: Super Soldier's Arkham Asylum-style combat system, to the Iron Man game having different attacks for each suit, these games actually had decent gameplay to go along with their recognizable heroes.
While the gameplay was by no means groundbreaking, it was still solid and varied from game-to-game, which is more than most people would expect from a series of movie tie-in games.
8 The Stories Of These Tie-In Games Are Often Different From The Movies
While they weren't necessarily great, the tie-in games often told different stories from the movies they were based on. Captain America: Super Soldier, for instance, saw Captain America fighting Hydra as Arnim Zola attempted to unlock the secrets of immortality for the Red Skull. Meanwhile, Thor: God of Thunder saw Thor facing off against the Mangog as it rampaged across Asgard after Thor was left stranded on one of the other Nine Realms.
These stories weren't Shakespeare, but they did make the games just that little bit more worthwhile to play for having original stories instead of movie retreads.
7 Thor: God of Thunder Allows Players To See The Nine Realms Outside of Asgard & Midgard
A particular merit to the Thor game is that it had players spending more time in Vanaheim than Asgard or Earth. Muspelheim— the home of Surtur, who would later appear in Thor: Ragnarok— also gets briefly explored in the game. The MCU movies wouldn't give more time to these other realms until Thor: The Dark World and the previously mentioned Ragnarok, so seeing these realms get introduced to MCU fans as early as Phase One is a surprising draw for the game.
While the other parts of the Nine Realms would get more time in future Thor films, this game offers players a peak at what these realms looked like before they ever got proper screen time.
6 The Iron Man 2 Tie-In Has An Arguably More Intimidating Villain
At the time of its release, Iron Man 2 was not the most successful or beloved MCU film, in part because of villain problems. Whiplash was set up and could have been an interesting antagonist but was quickly pushed to the side for Justin Hammer, a sort of "Anti-Stark" which left Whiplash as more of a sidekick. In the Iron Man 2 videogame, players are introduced to Kearson DeWitt, the leader of A.I.M. who wants to complete several theoretical weapons he had been making for Stark Industries before Stark shut down the weapons division.
While somewhat derivative of Iron Man 2's Justin Hammer, the game at least gives DeWitt a sort of menace and has him be the one acting as the true final boss, which is more than can be said for the game's movie counterpart.
5 The Captain America Game Fills In The Blanks Of The Movie's Montage
If anyone was curious about the adventures Captain America and the Howling Commandoes had during the montage in the middle of the film, then Captain America: Super Soldier is worth looking into. The game follows Captain America through his time fighting Hydra in the past as he works to stop Red Skull from recreating the super soldier serum and even worse, making himself immortal. The game is supposed to canonically take place during the events of Captain America: The First Avenger and actually does take steps to preserve the movie's continuity.
Captain America: Super Soldier comes off as a B-movie styled companion to The First Avenger, but there's no denying its over-the-top B-movie plot has some appeal to it.
4 The Incredible Hulk Has A Fully Destructible Environment
The most surprisingly ambitious out of all the old Sega MCU titles, The Incredible Hulk features an open world recreation of the city of Manhattan where every building is fully destructible. Even more impressive is the fact that the Hulk can pick up fragments of the buildings and use them as weapons, using streetlights as javelins or chunks of asphalt as shields.
A videogame based off the 2008 movie of questionable MCU canonicity would not be most people's first guess for this kind of gameplay, but The Incredible Hulk video game certainly goes above and beyond in what it allows the Hulk to smash.
3 Many Of The MCU Actors Reprised Their Roles For The Games
Many licensed games can't get permission to use an actor's likeness, much less get the actor to voice the character. Not so with these MCU tie-ins though, which had many of the actors returning to voice their characters. Some standouts include Robert Downey Jr. and Terrence Howard returning in Iron Man as Tony Stark and James Rhodes respectively, and Samuel Jackson voicing Nick Fury in the sequel. Chris Evans, Hayley Atwell, and Sebastian Stan also returned to voice their characters in Captain America: Super Soldier.
It's a rare occurrence to see movie tie-ins get the rights to use an actor's likeness; even rarer to actually get that actor to step into a recording booth to voice their characters from the original movie. Yet these much-maligned Sega games impressively pulled it off.
2 The Tie-Ins Were Able To Be Less Realistic
Phase One of the MCU placed a lot of emphasis on trying to keep the movies grounded; even in Thor the titular god of thunder claimed that Asgard wasn't founded on magic, but technology so advanced the two forces were indistinguishable. This focus on realism meant that certain character designs would have to be drastically changed, and others couldn't be used at all. This could be seen later on in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, where instead of being a face in the center of a robot body, Arnim Zola appeared as a digitally recreated face on a computer monitor. Meanwhile, Arnim Zola makes an appearance in the Captain America tie-in, where he does appear as a giant robot.
Other characters are able to look more comics accurate in the games as well, with Zola being a stand-out example. The games not being restricted to the films' philosophy of realism allowed them to fully realize some characters in ways the movies couldn't.
1 Many More Characters From The Comics Were Introduced
Because the video games were following different stories, it became necessary to add characters that hadn't been previously used. This meant that these MCU tie-in games saw a flood of new characters redesigned to fit the MCU's style. From Madame Masque and Crimson Dynamo showing up in the two Iron Man games to the Mangog getting a much more menacing appearance in Thor: God of Thunder, each game had multiple new characters introduced. Some, like Surtur, would even get canon MCU appearances later with little changes made to their designs.
It's already fun to see these popular Marvel heroes in new adventures for the player to experience, but it's even more exciting to see whole new villains and characters getting introduced, and with proper MCU designs to boot.