Marvel Cosmic Invasion is a glorious beat ’em up from the Canadians behind TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge

When it comes to modern beat ’em ups, few are doing it as well as the folks at Tribute Games.

The Montreal-based indie developer was originally founded by former Ubisoft developers who worked on the acclaimed retro-inspired Scott Pilgrim vs. the World: The Game, based on Canadian Bryan Lee O’Malley’s eponymous graphic novel series. And in 2022, Tribute released Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, a similarly brilliant old-school, side-scrolling brawler that was a love letter to comics’ favourite anthropomorphic shelled reptiles.

Now, Tribute is directing its talents to its biggest licensed property yet. Enter Marvel Cosmic Invasion, a cosmic adventure in which a ragtag group of Marvel heroes must team up to stop the deadly Annihilus.

Of course, landing a Marvel title, especially as a smaller Canadian team, is a particularly impressive feat. As Tribute game director Fred Gemus says, it was actually his team that started the initial discussions with Marvel about a collaboration.

“When we finished [TMNT], we tried to figure out what would be the best universe to tackle as our next beat ’em up project. And obviously, the Marvel Universe was at the top of our list. It’s full of awesome superheroes that we love, but in terms of possibilities of gameplay, we also thought it would be very rich — great gameplay opportunities with it,” says Gemus during an interview at Summer Game Fest (SGF) Play Days in Los Angeles. “So we reached out. We had discussions, back-and-forth discussions with them. They had all their ideas in mind. And then we settled on doing it.”

During those early conversations, Marvel asked Tribute to include a “very large roster” befitting of a cosmic comic book yarn. In practice, that ended up being 15 playable characters. As Gemus tells it, this is a “crazy” number of characters, given that beat ’em ups generally only have between four to eight, but his team ultimately welcomed the creative challenge.

“It’s very exciting, because this way, we are able to touch on more of those superheroes that we love. Something we wanted to improve on was making sure that all of the characters would feel unique and different, so not only in their handling, but in terms of abilities and what they can do,” he says.

For example, he notes that sometimes, beat ’em up characters — including those, even, in Tribute’s own beloved Shredder’s Revenge — can feel a bit similar, almost like a reskin of sorts. With Cosmic Invasion, the team wanted to avoid that entirely, and based on an SGF gameplay demo I got to try out, I’d say they’re more than succeeding on that front so far.

For one, it’s an eclectic roster that includes heavy hitters like Spider-Man and Wolverine, to deeper cuts like Nova and Phyla-Vell. Right off the bat, that plays into the zany fun of these crossovers, which has a bit of everything for casual and hardcore fans.

But from a gameplay perspective, I loved how different everyone felt. Spider-Man has an appropriate freneticism that mixes acrobatic punches and kicks and the ability to web swing across the screen, while Storm is a true force of nature in how she flies around more methodically to blast enemies with wind and lightning attacks. I especially loved the delightfully visceral Wolverine, whose flurry of claw attacks includes a leap forward to wrap his legs around a single enemy and stab them repeatedly. On the flip side, Captain America’s shield gave him both a handy projectile and a defensive maneuver.

At SGF, the team unveiled two new characters who weren’t in my demo, Rocket Raccoon and She-Hulk, and even still, that leaves six more unannounced. (All of the ones I’ve mentioned, plus Venom, make up nine.) Therefore, I’m really excited to see who else makes the cut.

For now, Demus provided some insight into how the roster was decided. Initially, Marvel and Tribute each had their own lists of preferred characters, which led to further discussions to narrow it down.

“It was a matter of finding the right balance between fan favourites, characters that mattered to the cosmic side of the Marvel Universe, and then having a few surprises. For example, even though our game seems to be inspired by the ’90s cartoons and video games and comics, it’s not only characters that were there at that time,” he says, noting that someone like Phylla-Vell debuted in the 2000s comics. She-Hulk and Rocket, meanwhile, are “closer to their modern interpretation” than their ’90s counterparts.

Another way Tribute wants to deepen and diversify characters is through the new Cosmic Swap mechanic. At the start of playtime, you’ll choose two characters, and you can switch between them at any time. Not only does this give you more freedom to mix-and-match, but it gives you bigger combo opportunities. For instance, you can have Spider-Man knock enemies up into the air and then switch to Nova to fly above and juggle them. These snappy character swaps, fluid animations and stunning full-colour pixel art lovingly bring to mind such arcade classics as Marvel vs. Capcom and X-Men: The Arcade Game.

Of course, there’s also a story here, and that also feels novel. While many big-stakes Marvel stories might focus on the likes of Dr. Doom or Thanos, Cosmic Invasion is about Annihilus, a lesser-known interdimensional insectoid conqueror. It’s that relative obscurity — in the sense that it hasn’t been widely adapted into major media properties — that inspired both Tribute and Marvel to go down this route.

“Yannick [Belzil], our writer, and I are both big nerds of everything. I’m more on the gaming side, and Yannick is more the comic nerd. So sometimes it’s dangerous, because we have all of these really niche ideas,” admits Demus with a laugh.

“But when we started discussing with Marvel, we didn’t have any specific villains or story in mind, but on their side, they were interested to see us take on the Annihilus and inspire ourselves from the Annihilation storyline, which is mostly a cosmic event. It’s a bit serious and on the darker side, but it’s also a very important event in the comics, because it kind of gave birth to the modern Guardians of the Galaxy and such.”

Tribute, for its part, saw an opportunity to do something a bit different with this relatively untapped comic event.

“What we proposed was to have the Annihilation storyline occur in the ’90s era, the Golden Era of the Marvel TV shows, cartoons, comics, video games — something that you know sticks close to what we love to do at Tribute of having nostalgia-infused experiences. And it got [Marvel] super excited,” says Demus. “They were like, ‘Oh, that’s a great idea.’ So this way, we can really adapt this storyline to something that is a lot more accessible for a wider audience and such.”

Demus notes that the team’s experience on TMNT also helped make Cosmic Invasion‘s gameplay more inviting to a larger array of players.

“One thing that was really appreciated with TMNT was the fact that the game was quite accessible for players of all ages. A lot of fans told us that they love playing the games with their kids, or having a bunch of players pick up controllers during a party and jumping in and having fun,” says Demus. “So this is something that we try to stick to as well: making sure that even though we have so many characters with so many abilities, picking up the controller and jumping [won’t] be something daunting; you wouldn’t be bad at the game. If you button mash, you’ll do just fine, but if you take time to learn the characters, you’ll do better.”

At the same time, he notes some players may want a “real hardcore challenge,” and so the team is adding a bunch of “gameplay modifiers” to increase the difficulty. (Modifiers will also be available to make the game easier.) “I think this is a better philosophy than forcing things,” he says.

All in all, Cosmic Invasion looks like another masterful beat ’em up from Tribute Games. As someone who never grew up with TMNT, I more so have always just appreciated Shredder’s Revenge. But taking that winning formula and attaching it to Marvel, a property I’ve loved since I was a child? I’m all on board.

Marvel Cosmic Invasion will launch on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch and PC sometime this holiday. It’s worth noting that Tribute is also developing another beat ’em up, Scott Pilgrim EX, which will release sometime next year.

Image credit: Marvel/Dotemu