No Problem With Licensed Games / Comic Books

• Several games based on the Asterix franchise fall into the "bad" camp but there are also several partial or complete exceptions.
  • The arcade beat-em-up by Konami, developers of The Simpsons, X-Men (1992),and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles arcade games, is on par with the high quality of the games the company published in the early 1990s.
  • The Master System and Game Gear games developed by Sega are excellent, if unoriginal, platformers that also allow for some variations in levels, depending on your choice of the Gaul to play.
  • Opinions are mixed about Asterix and Obelix for the SNES (whose GB/GBA version is considered better by some) but it's generally not considered a bad game.
  • Same goes for the first Asterix & Obelix XXL: while it feels unpolished and incomplete, and gets very repetitive in later levels, the core gameplay is quite fun.
  • The quality of the portable version of XXL is contested as well, but the technical effort put into it is undeniable: fully 3D worlds, awesome music, and great pre-rendered graphics, and it's on the GBA!
  • Asterix & Obelix XXL 2: Mission Las Vegum is a surprisingly fun Action-Adventure with a liberal helping of the comic books' humor, refined gameplay and a fun setting, with every scene and location jam-packed with shout-outs to other video game franchises.
  • Asterix at the Olympic Games doesn't reach the same levels as the above, if only because it's incredibly short, and the Olympic Mode doesn't add much. However, the main Action-Adventure part is still solid, and it's still better than the movie (with which it ties very bizarrely, like they wanted to distance it as much as they could).
  • After a string of mediocre cellphone games by In Fusio, Asterix & Obelix encounter Cleopatra by Gameloft is a big step up, with great graphics and traditional platformer levels alternated by top-view ones.
• Batman: Arkham Asylum. It's not based on any particular Batman canon, but the promises of a free-flowing combat system, a detective mode to see the world how Batman sees it, incredible amounts of fanservice for longtime fans, and writers and voice actors from The Animated Series joining the team built up the hype to almost absurd levels — and it more than delivered those features. By most accounts, not only does this game manage to be a good game that also stars Batman, it perfectly captures what it's like to be Batman: doing detective work, playing around with Batman's gadgets, stalking criminals from the shadows and pummeling bad guys, all gelling into a wonderful, cohesive experience. It's the highest ranking superhero game as of now, with a 91% on Game Rankings and a Guinness World Record for "Most Critically Acclaimed Superhero Game Ever".
  • Batman: Arkham City follows up its predecessor but actually dethrones it as the greatest comic book and superhero game in history. It's much bigger without being overwhelming, has a darker story (in a good way), has even more Fanservice, spectacular voice acting with maybe a career best for Mark Hamill, and so many more options.
    • It can and has been said that calling it the best comic-based game or licensed game is to grossly undersell it, when it can easily be considered to be one of the best video games of all time.
  • Other Batman games are a bit choppier. Batman: The Video Game is considered to be one of the finest NES games out there. Return of the Joker, while flawed and ridiculously over-the-top difficult, was still a good game, The Adventures of Batman and Robin was varied and interesting, Batman Forever was the kind of junk that gave Acclaim such a bad name, Batman & Robin is near the film in quality, and the less said about the video game adaptation of Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker, the better. Batman: Vengeance is regarded as pretty good, and Batman: Dark Tomorrow had excellent cutscenes, stayed close to the comics, and features the first (and often only) non-comics appearances of many characters, but otherwise blew chunks in every category.
    • The Batman Returns (SNES) game was generally well-received amongst fans, which was a very good Beat 'em Up that evoked the feel of the movie by showing actual screenshots from the film along with music also from the film). The Adventures of Batman and Robin games were good run n' gun titles varied more by the different versions than by the games themselves. The SNES version is the most well known and positively received version (again made by Konami which evokes the feel of the animated series in terms of good graphics, solid gameplay and music very reminiscent of the animated series). The Batman Returns (Genesis) game is even more impressive on a technical level, with large, detailed graphics and faux-3D effects that would've pushed the SNES to its knees, let alone the Genesis, a hardcore techno/industrial soundtrack, and some bosses that never made it in to the SNES version. The big downside is it's so ball-breakingly difficult few have seen the ending, and the graphics follow its own style from the animated series, but it's a quality title that shouldn't be overlooked. Lastly there's the Sega CD release, a racing game as you use the Batmobile to chase the villains to find Robin and Commissioner Gordon. The graphics are fairly good for a CD release with sprite-scaling effects and nice backgrounds as you race through six levels and use various powerups and weapons to knock out mooks. While the gameplay is decent though very, very, very hard, what really makes it are the cutscenes between levels, fully-animated with the writers and original voice cast from the animated series! When put together it's just five minutes shy of an original episode from the show, presented in widescreen, if somewhat grainy on the console. Batman: Vengeance is regarded more as a just above-average game particularly as the aforementioned Adventures of Batman and Robin games were better-received.
    • Batman Begins is certainly no masterpiece but it's fun and much better than similar licensed movie games of the era. The cast of the movie did the game as as well and did quite a good job. It's got great production design. There's also a really cool fear system that aids you in stealth. A lot of the good elements of the game were rolled into the Arkham series.
    • The Batman: The Brave and the Bold video game for Wii and DS was a side-scrolling beat-'em-up with a wide selection of characters. Whilst somewhat repetitive it was singled out for its fun factor and family-friendliness, getting a "Best Use of a Creative License" award from GameSpot.
    • The Sega Genesis release of Batman (Sunsoft) is also very good, with awesome music, decent gameplay, and a reasonable difficulty curve as well as sticking very close to the film.
• Konami's NES take on Bucky O'Hare was an incredibly well-made Mega Man-esque action/platform game.
  • Don't forget the arcade Beat 'em Up, which actually used the voices from the cartoon, and actually had you defeat KOMPLEX and save the Aniverse in the end...
• Captain America and the Avengers is a surprisingly good side-scrolling arcade Beat 'em Up, later converted to consoles. Not a brilliant game by any means, and sometimes ridiculously difficult (not a big problem if you had enough quarters, but on consoles... lose all your lives? Too bad, you start from level one), but fun in any case.
• Deadpool (2013), while not exactly a brilliant game, is a fun Ninja Gaiden-esque action game with a decent variety of techniques, solid level design, and humor that captures the essence of the character perfectly (complete with tons of hilarious fourth wall breaking). On the downside, it's rather short, is on the repetitive side, and has a massive Difficulty Spike towards the final act.
• Fantastic Four (2005) had the main actors of the movie returning with unique combos and is surprisingly fun.
• Guardians of the Galaxy (2021) is a solid action-adventure game that manages to distill the best aspects of the Guardians mythos while providing solid gameplay, world-building and story. The game's critical acclaim as a narrative-driven single-player title is an antidote to Square Enix's previous Marvel game, the highly divisive live service game Marvel's Avengers.
• Capcom's Marvel fighting games, the Marvel vs. Capcom games in particular, are very well regarded; Marvel vs. Capcom 2 still has a competitive scene in the present day. Such was the game's popularity that Capcom listened to the fans' demands and not only made a deal with Marvel to port MvC2 over to Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network with online play, but said port sold so well that Capcom decided to make Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Averted with Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, which released with mixed reception and had support for it abandoned earlier than planned due to poor sales.
• For a decent DC Comics fighting game there is Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. While a bit shallow it was a neat idea and played okay in short bursts. However, DC got a truly memorable fighting game in the form of Injustice: Gods Among Us, made by the same developer as Mortal Kombat 9, which has been seen at numerous major fighting game tournaments since its debut.
  • The sequel is arguably even better, if microtransactions aren't a deal-breaker for you.
  • Scribblenauts Unmasked, inspired by DC Comics, is awesome compared to how some other DC games turned out. With a massive cast of characters, an acceptable currency system, and AMAZING room for creativity. Of course, this is Scribblenauts, so it could be expected.
• The Punisher (Capcom) was an arcade Beat 'em Up known for its trigger-happy approach to the genre. It was the first of many critically successful games that Capcom would develop for Marvel.
• Marsupilami: Hoobadventure is a solid Donkey Kong Country Returns-esque platformer with good controls, great animation and tons and tons of Scenery Porn. Did we mention it also has some of the most realistic portrayals of dinosaurs in contemporary media? On the downside, it's very short and can get repetitive at times, but aside from that, it's a very solid experience for both fans and non-fans of Marsupilami.
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game managed to do pretty well, with the lowest score being 6.5 by GameSpot. It was very much helped by the fact that Anamanaguchi did the music.
  • As a whole, the game was praised by critics for having good art direction and much more creativity than other licensed games, which was helped by the fact that several independent artists worked on it. It definitely helped that the game 1) was based off a series and a movie that openly referenced game mechanics, and 2) was designed more similarly to indie video games with its retro beat-em-up design. The game also started a new trend in licensed games in general as other companies followed up with similar "retro" and "indie" adaptations of their properties. A shame that digital distribution of the game was discontinued for six years after the license was lost in 2014, but the game was rereleased in 2020.
• Despite being seen as the poster child for crappy licensed games during the third and fourth console generations, Acclaim (for the most part) turned over a new leaf in the fifth generation and created some pretty great comic book adaptions on the Nintendo 64, with Shadowman and the Turok series (the third less so than the first two) being the most notable examples.
• Most of the Spawn games are So Okay, It's Average to outright bad, but Spawn: In the Demon's Hand for arcade and the Sega Dreamcast is an underrated and fun little fighting game, sort of like a less-anime version of Power Stone.
  • Then came Spawn: Armageddon for the GameCube/PS2/Xbox, a reasonably competent Devil May Cry clone that was pretty faithful to the comic, and helped by Todd Mc Farlane himself having penned the script.
• The Spider-Man video games from the first PS1 game by Neversoft up to Ultimate Spider-Man (2005) have received generally positive reviews. In fact, for a period of time, Spider-Man games were notable for being consistently better than average. Spider-Man 3 unfortunately contracted Sequelitis but the series somewhat recovered with Web of Shadows. (And for the record, we're skipping over Friend or Foe in that series).
  • And preceding that, we had Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage, an excellent Beat 'em Up that appeared on both the SNES and Genesis. Too bad the sequel Spider Man And Venom Separation Anxiety was a straight example.
    • Double subverted because not only was it a licensed game, it was published by LJN, which was notorious for cranking out terrible licensed games. Even the Angry Video Game Nerd was surprised!
  • The first Spider-Man game for the Genesis (also known as Spider-Man vs. the Kingpin) was also pretty good. A decent Ninja Gaiden-style platformer with the added touch of replenishing your web fluid by selling photographs of villains you took in game.
  • On the SNES there was the fairly good platformer The Amazing Spider Man Lethal Foes, which is probably the Webhead's best game of that generation, although it sadly never left Japan.
  • Probably the most critically acclaimed Spider-Man game was Spider-Man 2. It was basically an open world game on par with Grand Theft Auto. You could find stores and purchase attacks, and even follow the story of the movie it was based on, with a Mysterio subplot to boot, but we all know what was the most fun part of the game: taking a swing around New York City and helping out civilians.
    • A really fun part of the game was grabbing a random goon and webslinging all the way up to the top of the Empire State Building and throwing him/her off. Or doing a spinning piledriver from a extremely high-up rooftop heist which would have KILLED SPIDEY never mind the goon. They're allegedly just "knocked out" from the fall. The game never got old because of the countless ways you could dispose of enemies. The control scheme was really fluent too. On the PS2 anyway...
    • Note that one employee worked his butt off to get the swinging mechanics working. He was told if focus groups didn't like it, he would lose his job. Yeah, safe to say he kept it for his work on the PS2 version. The PC on the other hand...
    • Stupid 1-button-controls on the PC. Open World? Nope, you could only move in certain areas and only webswing using the few swing-targets the game allowed. Talk about drift between game-versions. The GameSpot review says it all.
  • While the home console ports of Spider-Man 3 weren't all that well-received, the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS ports were rather well-received, with them being enjoyable little platformer style games, heck, the Nintendo DS version even has a fun touch-screen based combat system, that many DS games at the time didn't have.
  • There's also Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions, which, while not the greatest game ever, was at least a good, enjoyable game and an ambitious idea for a comic book game.
  • The sequel, Spider-Man: Edge of Time seems to fall under the opposite of this trope due to time constraints. Ironically enough, the same developer's The Amazing Spider-Man movie tie-in game was an improvement and a pretty entertaining return to the open world format.
    • The Amazing Spider-Man 2, however, received less positive reception. It isn't really bad, but it's a lot glitchier and less polished than its predecessor.
  • After Activision lost the rights to Spider-Man, they were picked up by Insomniac Games, who went on to develop Spider-Man for the PlayStation 4. It successfully managed to take the open-world gameplay established by the previous games and improve on it, adding a fluent combat system and a highly engaging story to boot, impressing many gamers with its surprisingly challenging (but fair) gameplay and creative use of the source material. It has even been said to be one of the best superhero games of all time by multiple reviewers, which given the standard set by the Batman: Arkham Series (to which this is often considered Marvel's response) and even Spider-Man 2, is no faint praise.
• Even though Superman has had his fair share of bad games, the 1988 Superman arcade game by Taito, and The Death and Return of Superman for both the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis are both pretty sweet.
  • Superman: Shadow of Apokolips was released early in the PS2 cycle, near the end of the animated series it was based on. It managed to keep the Man of Steel Nigh-Invulnerable (through a ridiculous regeneration rate) but kept the game very challenging with tricky mission objectives.
  • Sunsoft's NES game Sunman would've been an aversion as well had they not lost the license... and had the end result been released.
• Video games based on 2000 AD titles have fared pretty well for the most part. Probably helps that the comic is owned by a video-game company.
  • The 2006 third-person shooter Rogue Trooper, while not necessarily an excellent game, nonetheless boasted enjoyable gameplay, above-average writing and voice-acting, and a creative twist with animate equipment that justifies your character's One-Man Army status and eliminates any form of backtracking. Originally released on PlayStation 2, it received a HD Remaster for PlayStation 4.
  • Most video games based on Judge Dredd have been good or at least decent. The 1993 arcade game by Midway is a fun (if cheesy) brawler, with great stage variety and faithfulness to the source material - unfortunately, it was never even finished (the game has only three regular stages with bonus inbetween each, and ends on a cliffhanger with Judge Death), let alone officially released. The 1995 movie tie-in game is a surprisingly good platformer, and better regarded than the film it is based on. The 1997 arcade and PlayStation game by Gremlin and Acclaim is a decent light gun shooter, and the 2003 game Judge Dredd: Dredd vs. Death is an enjoyable first-person shooter that is very faithful to the source material.
• While XIII is sometimes better remembered for its cel shading, it was a tight game that nicely covered the first eight books of the comic book series. Though its 2020 rerelease was considered to land squarely on the other page.
• The X-Men have got many good video games:
  • The two X-Men games on the Sega Genesis are solid cult classics, frequently appearing on lists of the console's best games. Both feature a selection of distinct characters to choose from, great graphics, excellent controls and brutal but fair challenge. The second game is better than the first, but the first is not to be overlooked (despite a few innovative but intrusive gimmicks).
  • The X-Men arcade game was released in an age of beat-em-ups such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Simpsons (all three are by the same creator), and is widely regarded as one of the best in that category. Based on the failed cartoon pilot Pryde of the X-Men, some versions of the game allowing six-player simultaneous play. Unintentionally adding to the entertainment value were hilariously poorly-translated lines.
  • Capcom's X-Men: Children of the Atom took the beloved characters of Marvel's flagship comic series and placed them in a fighting engine lifted from Darkstalkers, the two fitting one another like a glove. Such was COTA's success that it led to Marvel Super Heroes, which added fan-favorite Marvel heroes like Spider-Man and Iron Man into the mix, along with Infinity Gems that added increased depth to the proceedings. That would follow into X-Men vs. Street Fighter, which crossed over X-Men with Street Fighter in a frenzied tag-team fighter that would lay the framework for one of the most celebrated fighting game series in the genre's history.
  • X-Men Legends and Marvel Ultimate Alliance are both very enjoyable action RPG series, with massive casts and storylines which tap into the rich Marvel mythology.
  • X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse for the SNES was a great game. Combining elements of platformer and beat 'em up along with fighting game style commands to use the various abilities your characters have. Plus, the levels are tailor made to each character to use every one of their abilities. Eventually you get to levels that are the same for every character... except that these levels are more cleverly designed with alternate paths and strategies depending on the characters you use. It did a good job of reaching into X-Men lore for the different characters, fights and locals and results in an enjoyable X-Men experience.
    • Plot-wise unrelated but can be considered a sequel gameplay-wise, there's Marvel Super Heroes: War of the Gems. While it follows the same story as the other excellent fighting game Marvel Super Heroes, instead of being a port, it gave it a more coherent plot and uses the gameplay style of Mutant Apocalypse. The only returning character from that game, Wolverine, plays exactly the same. The other characters are replaced with other Marvel heroes such as Spider-Man or Iron Man, getting their own abilities and fighting game commands, adding super moves and letting you play as any character in any level and deciding yourself which characters abilities best fit, and having a ton of cameos and references to locals and characters across the Marvel Universe, even as mass-produced enemy clones. Definitely an enjoyable adventure for any Marvel fan, and a good platforming beat 'em up for those who aren't Marvel fans.
• The Walking Dead has had two major success stories when it comes to video games, one of which is detailed on the Telltale Games section of this tropes page. The other is the Virtual Reality exclusive survival horror game, The Walking Dead: Saints and Sinners. Not only is it an incredibly well made survival horror game that emphasizes resource and inventory management, it also has fluid melee combat (which is NOT easy to do in VR games), fun gunplay, excellently designed levels, and an interesting story that has memorable characters that all feels right at home in the universe of the comics. It's considered one of the defining VR titles for a reason.
• Wendy: Every Witch Way, a tie-in to a never-produced cartoon spinoff of the Casper the Friendly Ghost comics was a late Game Boy Color release by WayForward, so it's no surprise it turned out great. With a gravity-swapping mechanic inspired by Metal Storm, the game has Wendy flipping directions and collecting powerups to increase her firepower with smooth controls. The gameplay is definitely on the easy side (it was intended for little kids after all), but it's nonetheless an excellent game, boasting simple but fluid spritework for Wendy, colorful stage environments, and paralax scrolling that really showed off what the handheld was capable of, foreshadowing the excellent first Shantae installment. She even has a few voice clips that sound pretty clean on the limited sound. Unfortunately, it was one of the few games not to be composed by Jake Kaufman, and the soundtrack can be pretty grating. It's nonetheless a great little platformer on a console that's known for being full of terrible licensed games.
• Xenozoic Tales had a solid arcade Beat 'em Up developed by Capcom, Cadillacs and Dinosaurs . Needless to say, the game was popular enough to the point that many people discovered the comic books from it.

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