What is the name of an old comic book arcade game?

April 29, 2012 1:32 PM

Trying to find name of an old arcade game with Marvel superheroes, including Captain America.

I could've sworn I used to play this arcade game during my childhood (15-20 years ago), but I can't find it using Google. It was a top-down view game, e.g. Diablo 2, where you could use Captain America and others (possibly iron man). I remember you could throw Cpt. America's shield. Any idea on the name of this arcade game???

posted by atmu to sports, hobbies, & recreation (12 answers total)

I would have said it was Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, but that came out in 2006.
posted by fight or flight at 1:39 PM on April 29, 2012

Well, there's Captain America & The Avengers. Another picture of the choose your character screen.

I think what you remember was a really old X-Men game from the NES days but I've yet to locate it. I remember it being top down.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 1:43 PM on April 29, 2012 [1 favorite]

Do any of these look familiar? Diablo isn't actually top-down, it's 3/4 isometric. Top-down is most often used in vertically-scrolling shoot-em-ups and occasionally in Gauntlet and its descendants.
posted by curious nu at 1:44 PM on April 29, 2012

It was an arcade game. I remember my friend's grandma gave us a ton of quarters and we beat it. Maybe it was DC heroes? It wasn't Cpt. America and the Avengers though because I remember it being top down. Oh well maybe my memory is shot.
posted by atmu at 1:44 PM on April 29, 2012

X-Men NES gameplay for you to look at.
posted by OnTheLastCastle at 1:44 PM on April 29, 2012

Curious nu, yes I mean 3/4 isometric.
posted by atmu at 1:45 PM on April 29, 2012

Marvel Superheroes, World of Gems?
posted by misha at 2:50 PM on April 29, 2012

Here's Wikipedia's list of Marvel video games. Like OnTheLastCastle, I'm almost certain you're thinking of Captain America and the Avengers; otherwise I'm frankly stumped.
posted by Faint of Butt at 2:54 PM on April 29, 2012

There is also a sequel to that one.

Finally, there is a Marvel Superheroes vx Streetfighter game. But I amnot sure that Captain America threw his shield in that one, and if it is like Streetfighter, it ought to be more of a side-scrolling game.
posted by misha at 3:02 PM on April 29, 2012

Sorry, by a sequel to "that one", I meant a sequel to the gems game (comments in between made that unclear).

So, you have:
Captain America and the Avengers;
Marvel Superheroes: World of Gems and the sequel Marvel Superheroes: Fighting Edition (and Cap throws his shield in those);
And Streetfighter vs the Marvel Superheroes (which was itself a sequel to the X-Men vs Streetfighter version).

After that, you are getting into the Marvel vs Capcom era.
posted by misha at 3:08 PM on April 29, 2012

This is a bit of a stretch, but stay with me here - was it by any chance Moonwalker? It was isometric (very few arcade games are), it came out in '90, it had co-op, you could throw your hat (maybe confusing it with Captain America's shield?), and you could (believe it or not) turn into an Iron Man-type robot.
posted by Sibrax at 9:03 PM on April 29, 2012

I'm pretty confident that there was never a top-down or 3/4 isometric Captain America game. The Captain America & The Avengers beat-em-up people have mentioned is a traditional side view scroller but it fits the rest of your description (it was fairly common in arcades 20 years ago, Captain America throws his shield constantly, and Iron Man is in it). As Sibrax said, isometric arcade games were not very common at all, partially because movement for those kinds of games tend to be along the diagonal, whereas a traditional 8-way arcade stick works best in the four normal directions and is flaky on the corners. Most of the games that were isometric either used a trackball (Marble Madness) or a specialized non-standard analog joystick (Escape From The Planet Of The Robot Monsters, 720°).
posted by burnmp3s at 7:41 AM on April 30, 2012