Marvel Ultimate Alliance’s new home on the Nintendo Switch feels like a comfortable platform for the isometric action-RPG.Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Orderis much more advanced and modern thanMarvel Ultimate Alliance’s previous two installments. But when fans take a look back at where the franchise started, there still remains the influential gameplay loop that influenced a third installment.
Marvel Ultimate Alliance’s chiefest pull as a franchise is the freedom with which players are able to combine characters and create their own personalized teams of superheroes. Co-op is therefore whereMarvel Ultimate Alliancefeatures the most longevity as players can drop in and out of co-op willingly; otherwise, a four-person team can be comprised of one player and three AI teammates. Recently, a fan’s artistic concept shows what a modern remake ofMarvel: Ultimate Alliancecould look like.
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Twitter user and graphic designer Rock Rider recreated the key box art forMarvel: Ultimate AllianceandMarvel: Ultimate Alliance 2, which both featured art of their iconic Marvel characters in different panels. Rock Rider’s concept supplantsMarvel: Ultimate Alliance’s artwork with character models of Marvel characters as they appear in contemporary titles. Spider-Man’s character model comes fromInsomniac Games’Marvel’s Spider-Man, for example, while Gamora’s comes from Eidos-Montreal’sMarvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy, and Black Panther’s comes from Crystal Dynamics’Marvel’s Avengers.
Interestingly,Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Orderdecided to take a highly stylized and cartoonish approach to its art design. This plays to Nintendo’s strengths but also keeps theMarvel Ultimate Allianceseries unique with its definitive art, as opposed to how realistic the visuals in modern Marvel titles attempt to be.
IffutureMarvel Ultimate Alliancegamesstay exclusive to Nintendo Switch, it is unlikely that their visuals will make such a departure. Either way, Rock Rider’s art concept does show what a remake ofMarvel: Ultimate Alliancecould look like if it was undertaken by a different developer and was perhaps multi-platform. The nature of superhero affiliate groups is that players may find more of an affinity toward particular, individual members rather than an entire team wholesale, which is whereMarvel Ultimate Allianceshines.
Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxyis ultimately a single-player game, though players can control certain abilities that the other teammates have in combat. Butin games such asMarvel’s Avengers, the player’s teammates are set.Marvel Ultimate Alliance, however, will always have a dynamic edge in terms of the massive scope of characters players can choose from, and will be popular with fans as long as that stays foundational to the IP.
