I had to look up if it was still a thing, but remember
Internet Arcade? They had a veritable ton of games, many from the classic coin-op era, but I thought the vast majority of them had since been copyright-struck, even if the companies that owned them probably didn't remember owning them or have any plans to put them into a format anyone could play anyway. I thought I might see this one in there, but didn't as of now: from 1996,
X-O Manowar/Iron Man: In Heavy Metal #1, "The Reality Alchemists" Written by Fabian Nicieza, art by Andy Smith.
This was based on a videogame from
Acclaim, but not a particularly well-received one. That said, back in '96 they had to make a game for like five different systems: Playstation (1!), Sega Saturn, Game Boy, Game Gear, and MS-DOS. Perhaps not surprisingly for a game tie-in, this features a ton of villains: Baron Zemo and a solid Masters of Evil roster from the Marvel U, and Augur, the Spider-Aliens, and Crescendo from the Valiant universe. There's also fake versions of Iron Man and X-O, to confuse the issue and probably set up a fight between the two.
I think Smith had done more art for X-O Manowar than Iron Man, and I don't know if he did the armor design in this one, but Tony's armor, with "Stark" on both shoulders, isn't a great one. I wonder if it was needed for the game, to help differentiate the two player characters? Iron Man does tell the Melter that he's "a happy employee cog in the wheel of mighty Stark," because this was
waaaaaaaay back when Tony's identity was a secret. Then again, this would have been a more traditional Iron Man than had been or would be on the rack for a while: per
Mike's, this was out the same month as
Heroes Reborn #1/2! So, coming off of "Teen Tony" and into another, another universe.
I had this series closer to when it originally it came out, and just recently grabbed it from the quarter (dollar!) bin again; but in all those years this is still about the only X-O Manowar I've read! Still, he has fans; I know he still gets a new series every few years.
1 comment:
I vaguely remember the game & an ad or two I saw in issues of Wizard magazine at the time. Still not sure why Marvel teamed up with Valiant and made a video game out of it when they already owned Ultraverse comic characters that could’ve produced the same effect. I wonder if Shooter was behind the two companies interacting. Oh wait, I think he was long gone from Valiant by then. This also reminds me of the Marvel Imperfects game. Ever play that?
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