Retro gaming has continued to have quite a resurgence over the past few years and one brand where gamers have clamored to want titles is Marvel. We seen it mostly resolved in the fighting game space with various collections but what about those platforms that aren’t just on various consoles but also were crafted by various developers?
Marvel MaXimum Collection helmed by Limited Run Games looks to bring at least six of those titles back to the modern day of consoles with some additional features potentially increasing replay value for years to come.
Loading up Marvel MaXimum Collection brings you to a start screen that gives you the option to scroll through the various titles but not only the different versions of them as well. For example, Maximum Carnage has SNES and Genesis and while they do look eerie similar, they have subtle differences. I have originally only played the SNES version, so I went with that.
Other titles like Silver Surfer only had an 8-Bit NES version while X-Men of course only had an Arcade version (even though there were digital ports for PS3/X360). Captain America & The Avengers has NES, Arcade, and Genesis while Spider Man and the X-Men in Arcade’s Revenge has whooping FOUR with 16-bit Genesis / SNES versions and even nineties portables Game Boy and Game Gear.
If you jump into the archives section you can check out comprehensive listings of sections for storyboards, game manuals, and even box art. Showing off that original box from the SNES, Sega Game Gear, etc. It will help jog your memory.
I would have loved to see the actual cartridges like the “red” Maximum Carnage SNES version. But I wonder if they were not showing the names even on the box art and manuals if that was for legal reasons or just made it more uniform for whichever region it was in.
So how do these nineties game titles run in 2026? Just like you remember them with controls being okay and at other times funky. Some titles be god awful hard as such Silver Surfer. But if you find some of the games just too hard there are some enhancement options. Titles like Maximum Carnage and Separate Anxiety they have the option to add “infinite health” or “infinite lives.” Other titles will allow you to “insert coins” l had like twenty credits on Avengers game alone for fun.
Graphics for the titles look nice, vibrant, and cleaned up for modern times on your 4K TV. You can edit the screen size, add borders, and even put them in CRT mode. I did find going to the options for each game to be weird and having to find which button is which irritating, especially if you are jumping from title to title. There are also save and rewind options that vary by title.
Is Marvel Maximum Collection for you? It honestly comes down to what titles you were a fan of. X-Men: The Arcade Game is the headliner of this collection with Captain America / Avengers with a decent second. These two were my favorite to play with Maximum Carnage being a distant third. Mostly since I used to play it in the 90s. Being able to play X-Men: TAS online with multiple friends at once is great.
I would love to see them do another collection tackling some of those other Spider Man / X-Men titles that were mostly on the Sega Genesis like Spider-Man vs the Kingpin, X-Men 2: Clone Wars.
Marvel MaXimum Collection is available digitially for $24.99 on Steam, PS5, XBox Series S/X, and Nintendo Switch. Physical Copies were $39.99 on Limited Run Games website but have sold out.
