Retro Marvel collection announced with X-Men arcade game

Konami’s classic X-Men beat-’em-up arcade game is coming home (again) with a new release that brings together an eclectic mix of 8-bit and 16-bit Marvel video games, Konami, Marvel Games, and Limited Run Games announced Wednesday. In addition to undeniable classic X-Men: The Arcade Game, the Marvel MaXimum Collection will also include titles like Captain America and The Avengers and the infamous Silver Surfer game for NES.

Marvel MaXimum Collection includes six old-school Marvel titles across 13 versions of those games, which were originally released for the arcade, Game Boy, Game Gear, NES, Sega Genesis, and/or Super NES. While the big draw may be Konami’s influential X-Men arcade game released in 1992 — which was digitally rereleased on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 back in 2010 — there’s a lot here for Spider-Man fans too. Spider-Man/Venom: Maximum Carnage, Venom/Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety, and Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge are also included as part of the collection.

Here’s a rundown of everything included in the Marvel MaXimum Collection:

• X-Men: The Arcade Game (Arcade)
• Captain America and The Avengers (Arcade, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, NES)
• Spider-Man/Venom: Maximum Carnage (Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive)
• Venom/Spider-Man: Separation Anxiety (Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive)
• Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge (Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis/Mega Drive, Game Boy, Game Gear)
• Silver Surfer (NES)

The Marvel MaXimum Collection version of X-Men: The Arcade Game features six-player online multiplayer with rollback netcode, which should remotely replicate the feeling of standing around a big arcade cabinet with five of your friends. And thanks to a rewind option and save states, you might actually be able to beat the notoriously difficult Silver Surfer for the NES three decades later.

Marvel MaXimum Collection also includes supplementary features like an Archive section that promises “high-resolution scans of original box art, instruction manuals, and vintage advertisements” to pore over, as well as a music player and display options that make the collected Marvel games look crisp and clean or heavily filtered with CRT and scanline effects.

A release date for Marvel MaXimum Collection was not announced, but it will be available for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 5, Windows PC (via Steam), and Xbox Series X “soon.”

2026 will be a big one for Marvel Games, with Marvel’s Wolverine, Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Souls, and Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra also pegged for release this year.