This, along with the fact that Disney now owns 20th Century Fox, makes the future of the X-Men in games a lot more bright. Outside of a few decent mobile games, X-Men fans didn't have much to play until X-Men characters like Wolverine, Deadpool, Cyclops, and Colossus appeared in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order for Nintendo Switch. Even though the X-Men played a pivotal part in the creation of that series, no X-Men characters were present in the fighting game, which was a total flop. This could be seen most in 2017's Marvel vs. The X-Men's representation in games dwindled after that, possibly due to rights issues with 20th Century Fox.
Its developer, Silicon Knights, even went under shortly after the game's release. X-Men: Destiny (2011) felt rushed and underdeveloped so it failed to deliver the fantasy of creating and playing as your own mutant in the X-Men. Once the 2010s hit, the trend in X-Men games became much more negative. 2009's X-Men Origins: Wolverine was a surprisingly great tie-in game for a terrible movie, and showed the potential of a game that was just a focused take on one X-Men character. In the early 2000s, games like X-Men Legends and its sequel truly captured the feeling of working as a team in a Diablo-like, getting the closest to a "true" X-Men experience. Street Fighter dominated the '90s arcade scene, with the later even spawning the Marvel vs. The official X-Men arcade game and X-Men vs. While X-Men games have been out of fashion in recent years, there were some pretty fun games over 20 years ago. This week, Inverse is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the first X-Men film, so as we also look back on the history of X-Men games as well, we can't help but hope that this decade will be a brighter one for the X-Men games. Much like it has on the big screen, one famous pillar of Marvel Comics, the X-Men, hasn't had much luck in games over the past decade. PS4 exclusive Marvel's Spider-Man kickstarted a new renaissance for games based on Marvel Comics characters, with new titles based on The Avengers and Miles Morales due out later this year.