Trivia / Marvel Ultimate Alliance

• Author's Saving Throw: After the botched launch of the re-releases, a patch was issued and the developers apologized. They also promised the first game's DLC characters (absent on the 8th generation consoles despite re-releases generally including all of the DLC) would be free.
• B-Team Sequel:
  • The second installment is made by Vicarious Visions rather than Raven Software.
  • The third game has a developer change yet again, being handled by Team Ninja.
• Channel Hop: The first two games were published by Activision, and were multiplatform. The third game is a Nintendo Switch exclusive published by Nintendo themselves.
• The Danza: Scott MacDonald as Scott Summers, aka Cyclops.
• Dummied Out: Moon Knight and Colossus in the Xbox, PS2, and PSP versions of MUA1. They can accessed by certain methods. ^note Due to obvious reasons, you don't need to use that method ever again if you have the current-gen versions.
• Hey, It's That Sound!: In the 360/PS3 version of the second game, when The Thing punches Lady Deathstrike away, the sound she makes is the exact same sound Elektra would make in the first game when she gets hurt.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes:
  • With the Xbox 360 DLC for the first game now gone, the only way to access the added 8 characters is to get the "Gold Edition" of the game; which has also gone OOP, meaning that you'll have to pay a hefty price to get it from online sellers.
  • Averted with the remastered version... after it was initially omitted and both games' ports had a bunch of other issues, prompting Disney to force Activision to fix it because they were making the license look bad. It took a few weeks to port the DLC, likely because they hadn't even considered starting on it. With Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, they remembered the DLC first time.
  • As of August 2018, the remastered versions have now been pulled away from Steam.
• The Other Darrin: Most of the cast got replaced in the transition from 1 to 2, with even the actors who stayed on between games now voicing different characters. The sole reprises were Steve Blum as Wolverine, John Kassir as Deadpool, Dawnn Lewis as Storm, and April Stewart as Ms. Marvel.
• The Other Marty: Arin Hanson won a contest where fans would get a chance to voice Bruce Banner or Jean Grey in the first Marvel: Ultimate Alliance game. However, Bruce Banner was voiced by Robin Atkin Downes in the final game.
• Screwed by the Network: Both games, in regards to the DLC.
  • The first game's DLC was only released on the Xbox 360, thus screwing PS3 owners out of characters like Cyclops, Hawkeye, Magneto, Dr. Doom, Venom, and Nightcrawler. Oh, and the Hulk (the one character everyone wanted in the game but wasn't).
  • The second game's DLC was released, and then taken down after several weeks. For six months. It wouldn't be so bad, except a) The DLC was released over a month later on the PS3, and the DLC was taken down at the same time on Xbox Live and PSN; b) the DLC was taken down before Christmas, so anyone who was getting the game as a present couldn't get the extra characters; and c) Activision had the audacity to claim the DLC was a limited offer - It wasn't, they just hadn't renewed their licence with Marvel and the DLC had to be taken down. Hell, people who worked on the game complained about this one. The DLC was eventually made available again in June 2010, only to vanish again on January 1, 2011. The second game's DLC went back on the PS Store once again in January 2012, until January 2014 when most of Activision's Marvel games were delisted due to them losing the rights to make Marvel videogames. Only the tie-in game for The Amazing Spider-Man was spared.
  • In 2016, both games were made available on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and on Steam, only to be pulled off halfway through 2018.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The Wii version of the first game was originally intended to feature Link and Samus as playable characters. The story behind their removal was that Activision had shown Nintendo both characters through a demonstration on a PlayStation 2, intending for it to act as a placeholder until they could have them implemented on the Wii. Nintendo was furious that they were being shown two of their mascots playable on a rival console and asked for them to be pulled out. None of their code remained on the disk, and footage of Samus can be found here, showing that she and supposedly Link for that matter were close to finalization before the fateful decision. Note the PlayStation face buttons appearing during each of her skills.
  • Concept art from the first game indicates that in one level, Captain America would take his friends back in time to World War II, and they would aid the allies on the beach of Normandy. Talk about Best Level Ever that never was.
  • Other planned locations in the first installment was the Baxter Building and the X-Mansion. They both got axed.
  • According to in-game concept art, MUA2 was originally going to be called Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2: Civil War.
  • Electro is present in one of the villain concept art pieces in MUA1, but was not in the game. Guess who shows up early in MUA2?
  • Captain Britain was planned as a playable character.
  • Howard the Duck was going to be included, either as an NPC or an easter egg.
  • A look into the files for the first game reveal a pretty impressive amount of things that never made it in, those things including:
    • Hobgoblin also would have been one of the villains in the first game.
    • The Hulk was *this* close to being playable on all versions of the first game. How close, exactly? The files show how the character would've been unlocked in the Omega Base mission: after disabling the gamma bomb, the Masters of Evil would've set off an explosive that covers Dr. Banner in rubble. When the characters go back to get him out, he would emerge from the rubble as the Hulk, who initially thinks that the heroes set off the explosive. After a brief confrontation, the heroes manage to get the Hulk to understand who really was behind the explosive. Seeking to get back at the Masters of Evil, the Hulk would then have agreed to join the heroes. He even would've had a unique conversation with The Thing. Also shown in the files is what would've been his comic book mission (that even has the voiceovers for it finished) where it would begin with Bruce Banner narrating his origins only to then transform into the Hulk, and from there on the objective of the mission would be to defeat 100 enemies (no boss) ^note A mod for the PC version of the game makes the comic book mission fully finished and available to play. What ultimately prevented him from getting into the game were rights issues that were later on corrected, allowing him to be in the 360 DLC as well as the sequel.
    • In addition to the encounter with Hulk described above, the Omega Base mission would've featured a couple of extra tidbits, like a more-extended elevator sequence where the power is cut off and the heroes have to find the override, and a mission involving assisting Mr. Fantastic that would end in him being unlocked on the roster, vs how he's available from the beginning in the final version of the game.
    • Namor was originally going to be an unlockable character, who would've joined the heroes after the Atlantis mission.
    • Iron Fist and Longshot were once planned to be PSP-exclusive playables.
  • This applies as a whole to people who've just learnt about the series on the consoles and will now never get the DLC (See above for details). For PC Gamers it's better, as they can get the characters for the first game at least through mods.
    • Averted when the game was rereleased... and the DLC was added automatically.
  • As seen here, characters had different powers such as the Thing having Impervious which would have made him completely invincible for a time and Dr. Strange having Revitalize which would have fully replenished the team's HP and EP and boosted the team's max HP and EP. It's likely both were cut due to being grossly overpowered.
• Working Title: The title for this game during development was "Marvel: Legends", but was changed to make it stand apart from the X-Men: Legends series.

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