The Best Marvel Co-Op Games

Superhero games are always a great time when they come around, and Marvel have always given players the chance to take control of some of their most iconic heroes. Since most of these heroes work alone, players are normally treated to a solo superhero experience. Video games like Marvel’s Spider-Man,Incredible Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, and Guardians of the Galaxy are just some of the greatest superhero games of all time.

There have been lots of Marvel titles that let gamers play with their friends in a co-op mode. Now that playing a video game in co-op mode is so much more accessible with online gaming, there is not better time than now to look to try some of the best Marvel co-op games.

7 Marvel’s Avengers

An Online Live Service Game

The Avengers are Marvel’s flagship superhero team in the comics, and they have made the company a lot of money since the first live action Avengers movie was released in 2012. This team brings together a number of prominent heroes in the Marvel universe to battle the evil threats that are too big for just one hero to manage. There is no set roster for this team, and fans were excited when Square Enix announced that an online co-op action game featuring the team would be released in 2020.

Marvel’s Avengersdid not include all the heroes in the Marvel universe, but instead focused on a more linear approach that mainly focused on the superheroes seen in the movie. The game launched with players able to control Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Hulk, Black Widow, and Ms Marvel, with characters like Hawkeye, Black Panther, and Spider-Man joining the roster later. The story in the game was solid, but the most important feature of this game was that it allowed the player to hop online and complete missions with friends in a live service co-op mode. Players can upgrade their characters with new gear as they work together to fight enemies with their character’s unique abilities. Sadly, the endless grind of getting new gear and the simplistic combat system meant that the game did not attract many players, which led to the developers shutting down the servers for the game in 2023.

6 Lego Marvel’s Avengers

Remaking The Movies With Bricks

Number of Players: 2

With the Avengers movies making so much money at the box office, it was only a matter of time before these stories were converted into a LEGO video game. This co-op game allowed players to take control of one of the many superheroes in the MCU to play through the main story of the first two movies in the series and explore an open-world New York City to complete small challenges and find collectibles.

Sadly, this game was made when Marvel Studios did not have the rights to use some of their most iconic characters in the movies. As a result, this game trades giving players access to The Fantastic Four, X-Men, and Spider-Man for recreating some of the best moments in the Marvel movies.

5 Spider-Man and Venom: Separation Anxiety

Bringing To Life A Comic Story On Consoles

Number of Players: 2

Venom and Carnage were so popular in the 90s that the Spider-Man foes were almost inescapable, which was especially true for gamers. In 1994, a side-scrolling beat-em-up game was released for the SNES and Sega Genesis that heavily featured the two characters. Unfortunately, Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage was only a single player game despite the two title characters teaming up to take on Carnage. Luckily, the sequel, Spider-Man and Venom: Separation Anxiety, did have a co-op mode.

This next game in the series was more of the same, as it was another side-scrolling beat-em-up game that allowed players to use either Venom or Spider-Man to go on an adventure to stop Carnage again. It wasn’t particularly ground-breaking in its co-op features since there were no cooperative moves in the game, and both Spider-Man and Venom had the same controls.

4 X-Men Arcade Game

A Huge Mutant Multiplayer Adventure

The team of Marvel mutants, The X-Men, were huge in the late 80s and early 90s. These persecuted superheroes showed comic readers that having powers isn’t always fun, and so an arcade game was released in 1992 to give gamers the chance to fight alongside this iconic team. The plot of this game focuses on Magneto and his allies trying to cause trouble for the human population.

Players get to play as Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, Nightcrawler, Dazzler, or Colossus in this side-scrolling action game, and each character has a unique power-set based on how they behave in the comics. As such, this game was different to other arcade games at the time, as it offered a lot of variety. Plus, there is an option for up to six people to play together at once.

3 LEGO Marvel Superheroes

Converting The Marvel Comic Universe Into Blocks

Number of Players: 2

There are few video game fans out there who do not know what LEGO games are about. The toy company has spent years taking iconic franchises, like Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Jurassic World, and turning them into LEGO versions of the same story. LEGO Marvel Superheroes is just another example of LEGO doing the same thing, only this time they adapt the Marvel Comics universe.

The big positive that fans get when playing these games is that the developer is free to include all the heroes from the comics, and not just the ones the company has the movie rights to. The gameplay is very similar to all other LEGO games, as players get to complete a linear story campaign or collect things in the open world in single player or playing co-op. In the first LEGO Marvel game, the open-world hub was New York City, but its sequel opens up this location more and includes other planets and realms from the multiverse.

2 X-Men Legends 1

A Top-Down Dungeon Crawler Featuring The Mutants

Number of Players: 4

The X-Men had reached the height of their popularity by the turn of the millennium. They were the focus of a stellar animated show for five seasons, and the team even featured in several live action movies to kick off the modern superhero boom. As such, it was time for a video game developer to capitalize on this success.

X-Men Legends was released in 2004, and it played as a unique dungeon crawler that allowed the player to assemble a team of four X-Men, and use their specific powers to fight waves of enemies to defeat the evil Magneto. The best part about this game is that each mutant can be controlled by a different player. The sequel played the same as the first, but it expanded the roster to allow players to use both the X-Men and Brotherhood members to defeat Apocalypse.

1 Marvel Ultimate Alliance

The Ultimate Marvel Co-op Game

Number of Players: 4

When Activision had success with the first X-Men legends game, it prompted them to develop a similar game which featured all characters in the Marvel universe. As a result, another dungeon crawling, co-op game was released in 2005, featuring a unique story that had famous characters from Marvel Comics teaming up to face Doctor Doom. The game was a success, prompting a sequel in 2007, which focused on the Civil War saga from the comics and added new playable characters to the roster.

Unfortunately, this superhero series went quiet for a decade until Nintendo gained the rights, and released Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 as a Nintendo Switch exclusive. The same combat-heavy gameplay returned, as did the notion of assembling and leveling up a team of four unique superheroes. No word on a sequel has come out yet, but this series still remains as the best co-op Marvel game.