Marvel Cosmic Invasion looks to capture the side-scrolling joy of an arcade in the 90s
Time to assmble.
Tribute Games, the developers of the extremely popular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge in 2022, has now announced its next big game. This time, the Quebec-based studio is adapting another major franchise with Marvel Cosmic Invasion – bringing to life plenty of fan favourite characters for a cosmic, side-scrolling beat em’ up.
The game was first announced during the recent Nintendo Direct, although it isn’t exclusive to the platform, as shown by its new Steam page, which also just went live and offers plenty of fresh information about what to expect. As shown in the trailer, the big bad of this game will be Annihlus, who was first introduced as a villain for the Fantastic Four, who are noticeably absent from the trailer.
In the trailer, we see various playable characters, including Captain America, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Storm, Nova, Venom, and the lesser-known character Phyla-Vell. There’s also the promise of more characters, so don’t rule the Fantastic Four out just yet. The game has a roster of 15 playable characters on launch, helping perfectly capture the arcade aesthetic we’ve grown to expect from the developer.
The official plot description reads, “A cosmic battle awaits! After Annihilus launched an unprecedented attack across the galaxy, all life hangs in the balance. Nova, Spider-Man, Wolverine, Phyla-Vell, Captain America, and many more heroes, both Earth-born and cosmic, will join forces in a star-spanning brawling adventure against the deadly Annihilation Wave.
“From New York City to the depths of the Negative Zone, the future of the universe will be fought across the stars in MARVEL Cosmic Invasion!”
A new feature for this game, that wasn’t present in recent Tribute Games titles is the ability to switch out to another character on the fly, adding even more variety to team composition alongside the ability to play with up to four players – but you can play solo too if that’s more your jam.
Marvel Cosmic Invasion will be released later this year on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, and PC. We would expect the game to also arrive on the Nintendo Switch 2, but it's still unknown for now whilst we wait for confirmation of the console's release date.
If you're still aboard the Marvel hype train, why not look at the five characters missing from the recent Avengers: Doomsday announcement?
