NYCC 2011: MARVEL Announces SPIDER-MAN Movie Game!

[ingu]

The worlds of comic books and video games often cross over, and Marvel Entertainment loves to lead the way. Javon Frazier, Marketing Director of Games for Marvel, and Chris Baker, Manager of Licensed Games brought along some developer friends to talk about Marvel's recent games, and give some hints of what's to come, at New York Comic Con 2011. Marvel took the opportunity to announce Activision and Beenox's next game, The Amazing Spider-ManFrazier welcomed fans, then started a behind-the-scenes trailer with the voice actors ofX-Men Destiny, followed by Spider-Man: Edge of Time's launch trailer. THQ's newestSuper Hero Squad game got the trailer treatment next, and the panel turned back to Frazier and Baker.



Frazier kicked off by asking each of the developers what makes their game "so cool." Peter Armstrong from THQ talked about the uDraw tablet game of Super Hero Squad. It uses the new uDraw tablet controller for Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3. The pen is part of the game, where you can actually draw into the Marvel World; you are an actual character in the game, and your pen is the ultimate weapon. The game also features Squirrel Girl SHS-style, and Armstrong said her inclusion was a direct result of a request at last year's NYCC. A trailer specific to Squirrel Girl forSuper Hero Squad: Comic Combat rolled, drawing lots of laughs.

Neil Sorens of Zen Studios started talking about Marvel Pinball next. "We want to bring Pinball back," said Sorens. They're constantly making new tables, and the new pack has four tables, titled "Vengeance and Virtue." The first one is Ghost Rider, one of the two "vengeance" tables. The first virtue table was announced then by Sorens via a trailer, and it's finally an X-Men table!

Jay Minh noted that Super Hero Squad Online now has nearly 60 playable characters, including Miles Morales, the new Ultimate Spider-Man. Coming up, Dr. Strange, White-Suit Spidey, Nova, Firestar, Sentry, and Blade are joining the world. For October, they're also putting costumes into the game so you can dress up for Halloween.

David Brevik of Gazillion teased Marvel Universe, the other MMO, written by Brian Bendis. He noted that you play as the Marvel characters in the game, showing a design shot of Wolverine, with claws about as long as his arm. Deadpool and Cable were announced as playable characters as well!

Capcom's Seth Killian talked about the new characters in Ultimate Marvel Vs. Capcom 3. There are a total of 50 characters now, with 12 new ones. Nova screenshots, the most recently officially announced character was shown. Phoenix Wright is his Capcom counterpart. There's also an online spectator mode included. A trailer of Nova fighting Galactus (the game's end boss) was shown to demo his skills... and actually revealed that you can play as Galactus!

Finally, Doug Heder from Activision and Gerard Lehiany from Beenox announced that they are developing a game to coincide with the movie The Amazing Spider-Man. The game returns to the open world style of prior Spidey games. A trailer showed that off quite a bit, as well as a massive robotic enemy. It drew huge applause, and they even played it a second time for the fans.

A brief discussion on how the game development process in working with Marvel followed, with developers noting how the characters are rich, and they're able to each do their own takes on the same characters, while still allowing them to feel like the ones from the comics. They all said how much they love that their jobs give them an excuse to read comics on a regular basis.

The highlight of the fan Q&A was Amazing Spider-Man comic book writer Dan Slott coming to the mic to ask a couple of questions. He asked the Beenox team if there will be alternate suits, which they said they can't answer yet.

Source