Developer: Semi-Logic
Publisher: Mattel
Release Date: 2006
Marvel Heroes is better than Ben 10 because at least it fooled me for a few minutes. For about the first 10 minutes of playing I thought that it might be an alright game and not just a big scam. Sadly I was wrong. It’s so similar to the scam of Ben 10 that I don’t even have much to say about it in my intro. It is interesting to see a bit of Marvel ephemera from right before Iron Man came out and changed their fortunes. However, if you want to get a copy of it for your Marvel collection you’ll probably want to leave it in the box.
"Wait till the kids at school see my dirty back alley card!" - Not even the dorkiest kid in class
Marvel Heroes is a side-scrolling brawler featuring different setups for different characters. The card gimmick in this one is that all the different character cards are esentially their own tiny games. I started up the Captain America story card that came packaged with the game and was surprised to find myself actually having a little bit of fun. It played pretty quickly, the controls were decent, and combat was actually fun. I was almost ready to move the game into the purple section and call the HyperScan not a total loss. Unfortunately it didn’t take long for it to all fall apart. The story mode that goes along with the card consisted of three short levels with a few comic panels in the place of load screens. Captain America is looking for Baron Zemo. Then he finds Baron Zemo. That’s the whole Captain America story and it only takes about ten minutes. At the end of it there was a prompt to scan a Captain America card, however the story card I had didn’t work. Apparently you need one card to play the story and a different card to save your stats. This machine never stops infuriating me.
Just look at this stupid thing! At least Whirlwind makes a pretty good fan.
When I scanned my regular Hulk card I found a very different and much worse game. First of all the character card version of the game makes scanning a much bigger necessity. I even had to scan a boss to fight. Does anyone want to play a game where they have to provide their own enemy? You could at least make complete levels Mattel. Then I started my game as the Hulk and instantly fell in a hole and died. It was a hole I couldn’t get over with my regular jump no matter what I tried. I discovered that Hulk has a long jump that is activated with one of the shoulder buttons, but it would’ve been nice to know before I got a game over trying to move past the first hole. Sadly the level is full of them. Any time there was a change of elevation I didn’t know if it was just a small cliff or a deadly hole. I spent the whole game worrying about falling to my death. I doubt Hulk would even get hurt much if he fell into the grand canyon so it’s annoying and nonsensical. Why did they put these holes everywhere? Why not just focus on fighting bad guys? There wasn’t anything like it in the Captain America part of the game. I guess each character is a completely different awful game. It’s like Action 52 if you had to buy the games in individually priced blind bags to get the whole set. It’s downright shameful.
Needless to say Marvel Heroes is another HyperScan disaster. The whole console reminds me of a video game you would see in an early 90s cartoon made by non gamers. Everything is slow and weird and the whole thing is designed to take parents’ money. Even the most unscrupulous smartphone games don’t quite sink to the level of the HyperScan. Hey why buy one good game when you could spend twice as much money and play a dozen bad games? That’s the flawed logic of history’s most flawed console. Marvel Heroes is saved from the cellar by virtue of it not being Ben 10. Thankfully the HyperScan only has five games so at worst I’m only going to have to write about it three more times. I just hope I have a little sanity left after I am done.
1. Super Mario Odyssey
2. Galaga
3. Donkey Kong
4. Exodus: Ultima III
5. Pac-Mania
6. Wrecking Crew
7. Super Pac-Man
8. Pac-Man
9. Excitebike
10. Arc the Lad
11. Clu Clu Land
12. Artifact Adventure Gaiden DX
13. Mickey’s Racing Adventure
14. Metro-Cross
15. Ice Climber
16. Gaplus
17. Dragon Spirit
18. Pinball (NES)
19. Walt Disney World Quest: Magical Racing Tour (GBC)
20. Red Sea Crossing
21. Baraduke
22. Tennis
23. Hogan’s Alley
24. Gamma-Attack
25. The Legend of “Valkyrie”
26. Galaxian
27. Evoland
28. Cosmic Commuter
29. Hot Pixel
30. Wild Gunman
31. Defunct
32. Gyruss (2600)
33. Looney Tunes Racing
34. Squidlit
35. Baseball
36. Birthday Mania
37. Bad Street Brawler
38. Burly Men at Sea
39. My Name is Mayo
40. Marvel Heroes
41. Ben 10
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