{"id":1980159,"date":"2026-06-09T09:20:27","date_gmt":"2026-06-09T06:20:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1980159"},"modified":"2026-06-09T09:20:27","modified_gmt":"2026-06-09T06:20:27","slug":"ign-interviews-marvel-games-about-the-enduring-appeal-of-90s-inspired-beat-em-ups","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1980159","title":{"rendered":"IGN Interviews Marvel Games About the Enduring Appeal of ’90s-Inspired Beat ‘Em Ups"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Marvel Cosmic Invasion<\/a> is a hit. With 1.5 million players, Tribute Games’ \u201890s-inspired beat ’em up follows in the successful footsteps of its similarly nostalgia-fueled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge. Both games are popular pick-up and plays in my household, where my eight-year-old son and I often grab a couple Xbox controllers and boot up the Xbox Series S for a quick session or two. Local co-op is great fun \u2014 I get a blast from the past as someone old enough to have grown up playing beat ’em ups in the arcade with friends, and my son gets to experience something similar with me at home. And when it comes to Marvel Cosmic Invasion itself, he has plenty of questions. For example, what is a Beta Ray Bill, and why does he have Thor\u2019s axe?<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Marvel Cosmic Invasion is no fluke on Marvel\u2019s part, either. As Marvel Games executive producer Eric Monacelli, and product development manager Brian Marquez tell me in a video interview, the team set out to make a game that would appeal to people just like me. They told me they\u2019d hoped that parents would play Marvel Cosmic Invasion with their children, sparking that cross-generational video game magic. And beat ’em ups are the perfect choice to facilitate it. That, and the ’90s are so in<\/em> right now. I\u2019m going to enjoy the ’90s being in vogue for as long as it lasts!<\/p>\n

Read on to get some insight into the development of Marvel Cosmic Invasion, what Marvel Games looks for when it comes to video game characters, and why there’s plenty more beat ’em up action to come.<\/p>\n

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IGN: I\u2019ve had a huge amount of fun playing Marvel Cosmic Invasion with my son. Is that what you\u2019re seeing as a typical experience of people playing this game, where for parents it\u2019s nostalgia but they can play with their kids because it has local co-op?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eric Monacelli:<\/strong> Yeah. That’s the goal we set out to, right? We want to preserve some of that history and some of that zeitgeist. I grew up with a lot of the old Marvel beat \u2018em ups that were in Marvel MaXimum Collection and played those. But that sort of cross-generational appeal, appealing to the nostalgia and the retro feel, and then getting parents to be able to play that with their kids, and then you can debate about, who likes their version of the game better? Is the old Spider-Man beat \u2018em up up better than the new one? I love that sort of conversation happening and making games that really linger and last and create generational debates and conversations, and just stir up a whole new set of opportunities for the younger generation to become Marvel fans, and also for the older generations to revitalize their love of Marvel or have a new fresh take on it from a different perspective. That’s what we’ve been striving for and that’s awesome to hear that you’re playing with your kids.<\/p>\n

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IGN: My son has lots of questions about the various characters that are in it. He knows the big ticket Marvel characters, the ones that have been in the MCU, for example. But you’ve got some obscure ones in there. He didn\u2019t know Beta Ray Bill for example. How do you decide on the lineup? How does Beta Ray Bill happen rather than Thor?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Brian Marquez:<\/strong> We wanted to have characters that people recognized and that people were familiar with because we wanted people to grasp onto somebody that they immediately could resonate with. But we also wanted to have characters that were fresh and new, that people could become new fans of, or to ask questions about like your son had. But when it came to choosing somebody like Beta Ray Bill over Thor, we really wanted to work with our dev collaborators to come up with characters that had unique movesets. So with Beta Ray Bill specifically to your question, we wanted to have somebody with a different weapon. Yeah, Thor had the Mjolnir, but Beta Ray Bill had the Stormbreaker. So how could we make the Stormbreaker different and more appealing and more interesting in that gameplay comparatively to a Thor, and how can he be different and more bombastic in this title?<\/p>\n

Eric Monacelli:<\/strong> And from a high level too, just like you said, your son was interested about Beta Ray Bill and we want that conversation. You probably had to explain who Beta Ray Bill was to him, I assume, right?<\/p>\n

IGN: Absolutely!<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eric Monacelli:<\/strong> So that’s exactly what we’re going for. If you’re a casual fan and you just know Thor is Thor, or you’re a hardcore Marvel fan and you know who Beta Ray Bill is, we want those conversations to happen between generations, and having those educational moments. That was a very important thing, and I think it\u2019s great for not only our IP, but just for story continuity and really good storytelling and continuing these characters’ legacies.<\/p>\n

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IGN: It\u2019s a beat \u2018em up. Is there something about beat \u2018em ups that really lend themselves to what you’re trying to do here? Is that the perfect genre for the nostalgia play, but also to try and get that cross-generational play together, as opposed to say more traditional AAA action games that might have more to them but might be more complex, or even fighting games, which might be more complex still?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Brian Marquez:<\/strong> What’s great about beat \u2018em up games is that they’re so easy to pick up and play. They are difficult, yes, but they’re just easy to pick up a controller and just hop on in either by yourself or with a group of people. And as we’ve all experienced here with the older generation of games, the ones that we see in the MaXimum Collection or with Marvel Cosmic Invasion \u2014 Eric mentioned that he grew up with some of the games. I still have my childhood cartridge of Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage, literally in the other room \u2014 those games are super great because you can literally just turn it on and hop into the game with very little barrier to entry. And with these, we really wanted to have that same experience for people. You just turn on the game, you jump in, and you’re immediately in the fun. And Tribute, the developers for this one, and Dotemu, the publishers, they lived and they developed by this philosophy of the games being as enjoyable and exactly as you remember growing up.<\/p>\n

So they may not play exactly as they were because obviously they were very hard. They were very, for lack of a better word, clunky back in the day. But they play as you feel you remember them. They’re still very easy to pick up. They’re still very fun. They’re still very enjoyable in that sense. And we wanted people to have that same feeling there with the nostalgia, you jump in, you immediately get that sense there with your friends, with your family. So yeah, we really wanted people to have that same enjoyment.<\/p>\n

Eric Monacelli:<\/strong> We make live service games, we make hardcore AAA console games for the people that have gamed a lot longer and have higher skill threshold, or fighting games, that sort of thing. And so we just have a wide diversity of different genres and things we do with our IP. We just want to have something for everyone. The thing that I always try and emphasize is we’re trying to make our games as accessible but advance them beyond where they are, past memories of genre or something like that. So whenever we approach and work with different dev teams and collaborating, we’re like, “All right, cool. What can you do to take this genre and make it cooler? What can you do with these characters to just amp it up and really, really advance it a little bit and put your own unique touch on it?\u201d That’s part of the reason we go into it.<\/p>\n

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IGN: You recently released the first DLC characters, The Thing and Cyclops, for Marvel Cosmic Invasion. Of course, these two characters are about to be in a new movie, and Cyclops is in X-Men \u201897 Season 2 also. From a video game perspective, do you try to line things up so DLC characters capitalize on other things that are going on at Marvel, like movies and TV shows? Because that felt deliberate to me.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eric Monacelli:<\/strong> We always wanted to tap into the zeitgeist and what’s happening, and we work across Marvel to figure out what’s going on. Does that always work? No! But we try our best, right? Lining things up, especially with these kind of games \u2014 and that’s kind of the cool thing with these beat \u2018em up games is it gives you the flexibility given the dev time and the cycles you need to do with these, compared to some of the other games that take a little longer to work on. And don’t get me wrong, these games do take a lot of blood, sweat, and tears and hard work to get where they are, but it’s a little bit shorter. And so you can align things a little bit more precisely.<\/p>\n

Brian Marquez:<\/strong> Yeah, absolutely. We do our best to try to line things up with what might work in the overall Marvel zeitgeist. But also going back to our earlier conversation, we look at the characters that we have and we look at who can vary up the gameplay the best, what can make for a unique character in the roster, who can make for the most different unique move set. And also, with the game being out, what do people want? What’s cool? Not that we’re looking at everybody and seeing what everybody is screaming for, but like, what do people want for these types of games? And obviously Cyclops is a very popular character and he lines up with everything and he makes for a unique moveset in this title. So the stars really lined up for this one. And The Thing also was somebody that was very, very cool. He’s very huge, he’s very weighty, he’s very strong. They were both just kind of no-brainers for this.<\/p>\n

IGN: Marvel Cosmic Invasion, beat \u2018em ups, X-Men \u201897… the ’90s are hot right now. Does that help games like this be successful? Is there something special that’s happening right now that you’re seeing on the Marvel side that suggests the ’90s is the perfect decade for everyone to be trading off of now?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eric Monacelli:<\/strong> Yeah. I think that cultural attention and perception kind of moves in 20, 30 year cycles, right? So when you get to a certain threshold, like the ’90s, the early 2000s are cool right now, and then let’s say 10 years from now it’s going to be later 2000s, 2010, right? And so it’s going to trend like that and that’s just something I feel like historically Marvel’s done phenomenally well throughout its history. It’s just had a real adept cultural fluidity where they pay attention to what’s popping in the zeitgeist and tap into it.<\/p>\n

Especially the people we collaborate with, I think it just comes down to what they grew up with, what they wanted to work on, that sort of thing, what they feel is good or what influenced them sometimes. And a lot of that you’ll see that pop up in that 20, 30 year window. I think it’s just fortuitous. I don’t think we consciously plan that way, but it just kind of happens.<\/p>\n

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IGN: Is there a Marvel loremaster type person who works with the developers to say, for example, ‘No that costumes shouldn’t be like that,’ or, ‘No, that person wouldn’t say that.’ Or, ‘Actually there was a comic 30 years ago that no one read that established this.’ How do you go about making sure everything’s authentic? Is there this one person who’s just the most genius Marvel historian that you draw upon to work with the studios in that way?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Eric Monacelli:<\/strong> Everybody goes into Marvel at a different time in their life, right? Some people know the ’90s stuff, some know the 2000s, some know the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, wherever it is. And so I think it’s hard because there’s so many stories being told and there’s so many there. But yeah, we have definitely some folks on our team that we work with. Our creative team is amazing. They’re all different ages and they all have their own take on what Marvel is. And so sometimes we get influences from all these different people. We’ll fact check, we’ll go back, we’ll talk to other people, we talk amongst the company, hear what’s to be said.<\/p>\n

And yeah, there are some people that have just been at Marvel forever that just know everything, right? And you will go to those people occasionally to ask, “Is this right? Do you remember this?” And sometimes they’ll just pull that out of some comic issue you don’t even remember. And we love working with publishing and all our different teams for this sort of thing. But I would say that it’s a collective effort. We value creative collaboration over everything and that’s kind of how we work. But we definitely have some folks that do focus in and know their lore a lot, but we hire very well to make sure that our creative team can assist our dev teams.<\/p>\n

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