Marvel games have a weird history. For every modern blockbuster like Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, there’s a graveyard of older titles—arcade brawlers, janky platformers, and brutally difficult oddities—that have been left behind on ageing hardware or scattered across half-forgotten ports.
The Marvel Maximum Collection digs a handful of those back up and throws them together into one package, dusting them off for modern platforms with a mix of preservation, convenience, and just a little bit of modern polish. The result is an uncanny collection and a reminder that I’m not as good at games as I was back in the day.
Available On: Xbox, PlayStation,Switch, PC
Reviewed On: PS5
Developed By: Konami
Published By: Limited Run Games
Review code provided by the publisher.
For $25 ($40, if you want a physical version from Limited Run Games) you’re getting an impressive collection of classics that have been either unplayable on home consoles or require some extra hoops to be jumped through. Not only are you getting the games but you also get the different platform versions, too. For the full rundown of titles in the package, click on the dropdown below, but otherwise here’s the main games: X-Men: The Arcade Game, Captain America And The Avengers, Spider-Man/Venom: Maxiumum Carnage, Venom/Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety, Spider-Man/Xmen: Arcade’s Revenge and Silver Surfer.
Full Game List And Relase Years
Game TitlePlatformOriginal Release YearX-Men: The Arcade GameArcade1992Captain America and The AvengersArcade1991Captain America and The AvengersSEGA Genesis / Mega Drive1992Captain America and The AvengersNES / 8-bit1992Spider-Man/Venom: Maximum CarnageSNES / Super Nintendo1994Spider-Man/Venom: Maximum CarnageSEGA Genesis / Mega Drive1994Venom/Spider-Man: Separation AnxietySNES / Super Nintendo1995Venom/Spider-Man: Separation AnxietySEGA Genesis / Mega Drive1995Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade’s RevengeSNES / Super Nintendo1992Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade’s RevengeSEGA Genesis / Mega Drive1992Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade’s RevengeGame Boy / Portable1993Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade’s RevengeGame Gear1994Silver SurferNES / 8-bit1990
Presentation is solidly handled, dropping you straight into a menu where you can scroll through the various games available to you. Could they have thrown a little more razzle-dazzle into how the games are presented? Sure. But let’s be honest, it’s probably best they just let you get into the games.
Now, I’m not going to delve into a full review of all the games here. I’ll be honest, I’m not even sure I could divorce myself enough from modern gaming to do these old-school beauties justice. I’m used to the snowflake treatment we get now, the cotton-wool they bundle us in as they guide us from place to place while dropping checkpoints everywhere. I’m used to being treated like a pretty little prince, and these games are a reminder of how good I used to be at games, and how old I bloody am now.
But I am going to wax poetic a little here. Give them a bit of the ‘ol Marvel rizz, ya know. X-Men: The Arcade Game is the headlining act here and for very good reason – it hasn’t been available for a long time on consoles despite its popularity. Everything you’d expect is here, up to the wide-screen 6-player mode and the option to play online, which was introduced in the 2010 digital remasters. However, some extras have been added: rollback netcode for smoother online play, plus cross-play. Also, keep in mind this isn’t the 2010 HD release – this is the original arcade game ported to modern hardware, so it’s as close to the original experience as you’re going to get without an arcade cabinet. The same goes for everything else in the collection.
It would have been amazing to see online support added to some of the other games in this package, too. Being able to play with a friend across the globe in some of the 2-player or 4-player offerings would have been nothing short of nostalgia-cocaine.
The Spider-Man portion of the collection is pretty impressive in terms of how rare some of these games actually are. The Spider-Man/Xmen: Arcade’s Revenge Game Boy and Game Gear versions are extremely rare to the best of my knowledge, so having them playable here – and in physical form if you opt for that – is spectacular. And friends, Separation Anxiety still holds up pretty damn well.
Silver Surfer was a notoriously hard game back in the day, and I’m pleased to report it’s still a complete bastard in 2026. Its inclusion here is so intriguing because, compared to the rest, it’s a pretty niche title that I doubt many people outside of the most hardcore knew about.
Arcade’s Revenge, meanwhile, is still kinda crap, but in a way that’s heaps of fun to re-experience in 2026.
Rarity aside, playing through this collection and chasing the Platinum trophy has been a genuine pleasure. At times frustrating due to how hard they can be, at times bewildering because of how weird they are in places, and at times just outright kind of bad (I’m looking at you, Arcade’s Revenge), but at all times playing these is a privilege.
Options, Extras, New Features
Now, with that out of the way, let’s talk about what this package adds and the bonus goodies you get, shall we?
By tapping the overlay button (consistent across every game) you bring up a few different options to mess around with that. In here you can swap aspect ratios – which differ from title to title-, turn on a CRT filter to give it an even more nostalgic vibe or pick from a couple of images to act as borders so that you aren’t just looking at huge black bars.
But the two biggest abilities are being able save the game whenever you want, and the rewind feature that lets you jump back in time by just pulling the left trigger. Both make completing the games in this collection a lot easier, even if it means sacrificing some of your ego. The children of the arcades would not be impressed with your weakness. Well, my weakness because I totally used both features.
Other handy stuff includes easily accessible cheat menus on the game selection screen, so now you can finally beat that fucking Silver Surfer game. And a few of the games, such as X-Men: The Arcade Game, let you add credits and lives at the tap of a button. Others, like Spider-Man: Maximum Carnage, don’t let you do this – you have to beat them the old-fashioned way, by swearing loudly and eventually throwing a controller through a window. Unless, of course, you look up some of the original cheats and figure out the correct button presses to make them work. But I can’t yet confirm if those work.
The archive section of the Marvel Maximum Collection is… underwhelming.
On paper, it sounds decent enough. There are manuals included for Captain America and the Avengers, Maximum Carnage, Separation Anxiety, Arcade’s Revenge, and Silver Surfer. Those are fun to flick through. Box art is a bit more complete, adding X-Men Arcade into the mix, while advertisements cover most of the same ground. So far, so fine.
But once you start digging into the extras, the cracks show. Official artwork is surprisingly sparse, limited to just Maximum Carnage, Arcade’s Revenge, and Silver Surfer. That’s a pretty small slice of Marvel history for something positioned as a “maximum” collection, and it never really feels like you’re getting a broader look behind the scenes.
The biggest disappointment, though, is the design documents. There’s exactly one included—Maximum Carnage—and while it runs to about 14 pages, it’s fairly basic stuff. You get location descriptions, a breakdown of heroes and villains appearing in each stage, a rough sequence chart, and a simple story outline. It’s mildly interesting in a “nice to flick through” kind of way, but it’s not the deep dive you’d hope for.
And that really sums up the archive as a whole. There’s nothing here that’s outright bad, but for a collection that leans so heavily on nostalgia, it feels oddly light on meaningful historical material. However, in the defence of this collection, I don’t know how much material is actually available and accessible, so what’s here might be as much as could possibly have been dug up.
We do get a music player, though, where you can pick from any of the tracks across all of the games. That’s a pretty banging mix of tunes, especially Silver Surfer, which apparently thought it could balance out its evilness by making you tap your foot. It was right.
In Conclusion…
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Rating: 4.5 out of 5.
As preservation collections go, this is damn near perfect. Sure, I would have loved to see a bit more meat in the archives—some interviews, deeper design insights, or even just a broader spread of artwork—but that’s the cherry on top stuff. And it’s possible there wasn’t more to gather in the first place.
What really matters is that these games exist here, playable, accessible, and largely untouched in all their weird, frustrating, brilliant glory. This isn’t a remake, and it’s not trying to be. It’s a time capsule—one that reminds you just how different games used to be, for better and for worse.
Seeing these titles preserved and served up to a new generation is something special. Even if some of them are still absolute bastards.
