Showing posts with label Marvel Super Heroes. War of the Gems for Super NES print ad (1996). Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marvel Super Heroes. War of the Gems for Super NES print ad (1996). Show all posts

Friday, March 13, 2015

Marvel Super Heroes. War of the Gems for Super NES (1996)


Original ad published in the October 1996 issue 

of Electronic Gaming Monthly (no. 87).

Press to enlarge or download in higher resolution.


A lost opportunity for Marvel awesomeness 


The 90s were the golden age for superhero comic adaptations in video game land. Some of these games were mediocre, like X-Men game I talked about in a recent post. This time Marvel Super Heroes. War of the Gems (1996) takes the stage as another terrible game with very cool characters.

As I stated before: the superhero-movie saturation we are living in right now has to be related to the onslaught of video games of the same subject we saw in the 90s. This was the pinnacle of two very lucrative forms of entertainment: video games and comic books, so it was only natural that Hollywood try to capitalize on that enormous fan base built through the decades either in print form or in pixelated characters.

This game features all the great characters we've seen in gigantic Hollywood productions: Spider-Man, Wolverine, Iron Man, Captain America and the Incredible Hulk. That's a gold mine right there.

Sadly, Gems has terrible, unresponsive, gameplay that renders this side-scrolling experience an exercise in futility and frustration. Graphics are nice and sounds are adequate, but that doesn't save this Capcom game from becoming incredibly repetitive.

You would never now that by looking at the print ad above, prominently displayed in the back cover of many a video game magazine of the era. The game looks awesome. You've got every major Marvel character coming right out of the page.The game screens look very good and the overall design is very attractive. This is one of those cases where the promotion is much better than the product itself.







Marvel Super Heroes. War of Gems for Super NES print ad copy


Flex some 16-bit muscle

More Challenges!

Face a life and death hunt to locate six infinity Gems before Thanos. The fate of world depends on you.

More Heroes!

master the brute strength of your favorite Super Hero—Spider-Man, Wolverine, Iron Man, Captain America and the Incredible Hulk.

More Super-Abilities!

Battle fiendish hordes assembled by Thanos, including Blackheart, Dr. Doom and the diabolical evil clones of The Thing, Silver Surfer, Vision and a dozen others.

Flex more 16-bit muscle!

The most powerful collection of Marvel Super Heroes unite to battle a multitude of treacherous villains on your Super NES! It’s an incredible action-adventure and demanding your skill, cunning and might to defeat the forces of evil Thanos’ quest for power.