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A few quick happy news bits: GameStop announced the details on the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 collector’s edition. Along with the game, the package comes with a steel book with exclusive art, a 12-page prologue comic book, tons of art, a one month subscription to Marvel Digital Comics, and DLC codes for playable characters Shuma Gorath and Jill Valentine.

And speaking of MvC3 characters, She Hulk and Mega Man’s Zero join the growing roster.

Zen Studios showed off the tables for their upcoming Marvel Pinball, available on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Arcade before the end of the year. The first set of tables feature very flattering themes of Marvel’s top properties. Spider-Man, Blade, Wolverine, and Iron Man are shown in the trailer with hopefully more to come in the future. These tables looks beautiful, and I love a great game of pinball. Get more comic book pinball action here!

After a long few weeks of less than great games like Aquaman: Battle For Atlantis, Batman: Vengeance, and X2: Wolverine’s Revenge, I needed to take a break and reflect on a few of the things about comic book video games that make me truly happy.

The Foot Soldier Throw

In no particular order, the happy thing kicking off my list is from the classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time. Just like most of my peers, many many many hours of my childhood were joyously spent next to a Super Nintendo taking out armies of The Shredder’s henchmen. One of the combat features that always amused me was being able to throw a Foot Soldier right toward the camera. I still remember seeing it for the first time, and it made me flinch like I might actually have a Foot Soldier coming at me through my TV. I always tried my hardest to toss as many Foot as I could after that. I can’t really explain why this makes me so happy. Just one of those childhood delights.

Me vs. Vader

Going back to my childhood, and to the arcade, there were three staple arcade cabinets I had to make my usual rounds to. After Ninja Turtles and X-Men, I would take what was left of my Chuck E. Cheese tokens and devote them to Star Wars Trilogy Arcade. The machine is beautiful to look at, and playing through key moments of episodes IV through VI is a blast, but one particular mission that was so hard to get to, and impossible to beat, was the bonus lightsaber duel with Darth Vader. I remember being extremely intimated, and getting that feeling of actually being in a fight for my life, and, sadly, I would always end up dying. It ranks pretty high on my list of favorite video game moments.

Property Damage

The Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction is, in my opinion, the greatest Hulk game ever. The story is good, the action is intense, and the huge sandbox environments are widely destructible. Every now and then I like to pop in Ultimate Destruction, relax, and cause some havoc just thrashing around in Free Roam mode. Everything from cars, buses, tanks, citizens, and Stark Industry Hulk Buster Units are all play things in the hands of the Green Goliath, but the most shocking, and fulfilling act of chaos is completely leveling an entire building. You can’t do it to every building in the city, but at least one building on every block, once it’s taken enough of a beating, will completely crumble into dust and rubble. It’s incredibly satisfying.

Witty Banter

Captain America and the Avengers is a great classic game, but some parts of it are so BAD, it’s hilarious. More Specifically, the dialog. Somewhere between the Japanese version of the game and the North American version, the dialog was mistranslated into some super silly banter between hero and villain. As Cap and the Avengers drop in on Whirlwind and his band of rogues, the evil degenerate shouts “Do not disturb us!”, to which the Avengers boldly cry, “Why should it goes well?!” Truly awesome.

I’ll be honest. I’m never a happy person all day long. I usually end up with at least one thing that makes my day miserable, and can’t help but dwell on it, even if it’s only for a little while. I have to take a break from all this happy goodness and remember the disasters in comic book video games that make me HATE.

Man in the Big Yellow Gloves

I love Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe, and one of my favorite characters to play with is the Flash. But for the life of me, I don’t understand why on Earth Midway felt the need to put giant yellow gloves on the Scarlet Speedster. It’s a small complaint, I know, but it still makes me rage just as hard as any character on the game. I mean, when in history has the Flash ever had huge yellow gloves?! I know! Back in the 1960s in the Filmation DC short cartoon. BUT NO OTHER TIME! It just doesn’t make any sense.

Pubescent Peter

Moving from a small complaint to a large one, Spider-Man: Web of Shadows was already a disappointing game gameplay wise, but what really made me down right mad was having to listen to the shrill crap dialog of whatever whiny 14-year-old boy they hired to voice Peter Parker. See this video to hear it for yourself, but I don’t really recommend it.

Fantastic Two

Of course a video game tie-in to 2005’s Fantastic Four was released along side the film, which almost guaranteed a crappy game, but it couldn’t have been worse than 1997’s Fantastic Four game for the PlayStation. The game was a pretty basic, and even passable, dungeon crawler that big Fantastic Four fans could enjoy, but the really dumb part about this game is that it’s only two player. WTF? It’s the Fantastic FOUR? How is four player co-op not an immediate given? I don’t care what their budget was, that’s pretty inexcusable.

Rings From Hell

There is plenty to hate about Superman 64. The embarrassingly glitched gameplay and environment, the lack of design, or the repetitious gameplay, the latter of which being the source of my hatred. If you’ve played Superman 64, then you’re familiar with the horror of the rings. These damn sets of rings are placed every other level, and, seriously, all you do is fly right through them. Originally, I thought the first set of rings were simply the tutorial to teach you how to fly. Later, you find out that the rings are your punishment for being stupid enough to play this game all the way through.

Okay, thinking about the rings is depressing me. I need to go back to my happy place.

The Joker’s Butt

In Lego Batman, once you finish the campaign as Batman and Robin, you unlock more levels to play through the campaign from the perspective of Gotham’s deadliest. The Lego games are a ton of fun to play with a friend, and one of the qualities that makes it so special is all the characters having unique characteristics and abilities. The Joker, however, is a thousand times more unique than any other Lego character ever. The gameplay consists of a lot of jumping and lever pulling, and where every other character would simply use their hand to flip a giant switch, the Joker insists on using his butt. He hops up and sits on levers to pull them down. It’s another one of those delights I can’t explain; it just makes me happy. Joker also has a double jump attempt. That’s right, an attempt. You can try to double jump as Joker, but he always ends up falling flat on his back. It’s so adorable.

Kraven’s Exclusive Hunt

Spider-Man: The Movie, the game tie-in to the first Sam Raimi Spider-Man film, was an awesome game. But Spidy fans who played Spider-Man: The Movie on the Xbox got a significantly more amazing experience. The Xbox version of the game has an exclusive Kraven level, and it’s one of the most enjoyable parts of the game. It’s a simple platforming obstacle course, but Kraven is all you need to elevate anything Spider-Man related in the eyes of the fans.

Poker Night

A few years prior to the release of Spider-Man: The Movie, Spider-Man starred in another video game titled, simply, Spider-Man. It’s arguable the most loved Spider-Man game ever, because of how revolutionary it was for the character’s evolution in video games. After beating a ridiculously cool Doc Ock Carnage hybrid final boss, the game’s story comes to a close with a friendly gathering of some Amazing Friends. The whole scene is super silly, and it makes me smile every time. See it here!

The Voices of Yesterday

One of the things that helped fuel my love for comic book superheroes was the awesome Batman: The Animated Series. To this day it’s still one of my favorite shows, and has had a lasting impact on me as a kid. Once I started reading Batman comics regularly, every time I read a piece of dialog from Batman or the Joker, or any Batman character, the voices I hear in my head speaking those lines are the same voices from Batman TAS. So when it was announced that Kevin Conroy, Mark Hamill, and Arleen Sorkin would be reprising their roles as Batman, the Joker, and Harley Quinn for Batman: Arkham Asylum, I couldn’t have been more ecstatic. The familiar voices really made Arkham Asylum a real Batman game for me, and playing through the game for the first time is one of my happiest video game memories.

I encourage everyone to go live these moments for themselves, and hopefully it will put a smile on your face.

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Andrew Hurst
andrewhurst@comicattack.net