While the highly anticipated Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was only recently announced, its been kept under wraps pretty good since its development. The reason I say this is because Capcom has been working on the game for almost 2 years now, actually starting production during the summer of 2008.

We know this because the creators of the game were recently asked if the reason they are releasing it was due to Marvel vs. Capcom 2‘s success as a downloadable title. To make a long story short they responded no, we started it long before that.

Marvel vs. Capcom 3 will be released sometime in Spring of next year.

via vg247

Well folks, it is finally officially coming — What you see above is a brand new trailer for Marvel vs. Capcom 3. Unfortunately it doesn’t feature any actual gameplay but there are a ton of cinematics in addition to some appearances from Wolverine, Ryu, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man and a lot more.

Now all we need is a solid release date and we’ll be set.

The Walt Disney Company has announced today that they are going to acquire the comic book company Marvel Entertainment. The deal will happen through a stock and cash transaction. The transaction value is at $50 a share, or $4 billion in total.

“Disney is the perfect home for Marvel’s fantastic library of characters given its proven ability to expand content creation and licensing businesses,” said Ike Perlmutter, Marvel’s Chief Executive Officer. “This is an unparalleled opportunity for Marvel to build upon its vibrant brand and character properties by accessing Disney’s tremendous global organization and infrastructure around the world.”

Disney will now have control of over 5,000 comic book characters. On a business perspective, it can be seen as a good move, but die-hard comic book fans might not be so pleased.

Sega’s new Iron Man game looks a lot better than its predecessor, and will hopefully play better, too. As announced yesterday, Iron Man 2: The Video Game will go beyond than just what was told in the movie, but will also expand on the story.

As shown on the trailer, the game will be hitting stores April 2010 for all “major consoles”. The movie itself will be released on May 7th, so it’ll give you enough time to soak up the Marvel fandom.

Expect more details come Comic-Con.

It’s not every day I get my hands on a game like X-Men Origins: Wolverine.  Having just covered the movie version of same mere days ago over on our sister site Screenhead, I knew that the game was going to be a baffling little package for plenty of reasons.

Perhaps the biggest of these reasons is that, the movie was a greatly flawed beast that had a lot of wild action fun involved with it.  It virtually ignored canon and went off on a truly bizarre tangent that only resembled in passing any of the previous events.  So knowing what we all know about movie-to-game translations, how would the game version, the Wolverine Uncaged Edition (now available for Playstations two and three, Xbox 360, PC, Wii, PSP, and the Nintendo DS) play for us?

First, the plot—basically, X-Men Origins: Wolverine—Uncaged Edition will follow the movie plot, somewhat, as we follow Wolverine through his military service to where he joined the Weapon X program and beyond from there.  He’ll fight government supersoldiers of every stripe, including his “brother” Sabertooth (which even casual fans will know is a crock of the highest order) to get revenge on the government that betrayed him.

Now…on to the game itself; I don’t remember the last time I played a game involving Marvel characters that was this extravagantly blood-soaked.  And I definitely don’t remember the last time Wolverine did quite this much killing.  Seriously—by the end of the first level he’s going to have a body count higher than any Marvel enterprise I’ve seen lately, and probably higher than the last time Jason Voorhees took a run at some campers.  When Wolverine’s outkilling the undead juggernauts of my favorite horror classics I know something is GRAVELY wrong.

And the plotlines of the movie and the game will actually be somewhat divergent.  How divergent, you wonder?  Well, let me put it to you this way—the game will involve Sentinels.  You see so much as a robot in the movie?  No?  Well, neither did I.  I’m having a hard time with this game—most movie translations to game at least TRY to look like the movie they’re translated from, but this is just ridiculous.  And sure, I’m glad that a Marvel property actually tried to be mature for once, but all this blood is actually sort of out of place.  I remember thinking, this is why Wolverine pretty much had to be a good guy.  If he were evil he’d be an unstoppable killing machine.  And this is actually the biggest problem of all.

Wolverine is supposed to heal up from pretty much any damage, up to and including being shot in the skull with adamantium bullets.  That’s canon.  We saw that in the movie, too.  So how do you translate this into a play mechanic that doesn’t end up with the character being invincible?  Sadly, you can’t—thus, you have to water down Wolverine—give him a health bar and force him to regenerate by not taking damage until you can recover.

So really, the movie to game translation of X-Men Origins: Wolverine—Uncaged Edition is much bloodier, and yet at the same time much less substantial than the movie.  And the movie wasn’t saying much to begin with, so it’s safe to say unless you’re dying for that sweet Wolvie Berserk Style in your gameplay, this one isn’t worth a snikt.

After that leaked achivements list pointed at Marvel vs Capcom 2, it was only a matter of time until Capcom released an official announcement.

Well, that time is now and Capcom has announced that Marvel vs Capcom 2 will in fact be hitting Xbox Live and the Playstation Network sometime this summer. While the game won’t be getting a complete makeover a la Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix, there will be an addition of an online matchmaking system along with a few visual tweaks.

You can check out the above video detailing the game’s return and check out the PSN exclusive demo when it hits this Thursday.

Read (1UP)

Fighting games often have a very steep learning curve. Neophytes can easily master simple combinations of punches, kicks and maybe even pull off some cool moves by accidentally mashing buttons, but it takes hours of practice, patience and sore thumbs to achieve true mastery in most of these games due to the sheer number of moves and timing involved. One of the greatest examples is Marvel vs. Capcom 2, where a huge stable of familiar characters are playable from Mega Man to Iron Man.

I admit to enjoying the game immensely, though I never graduated past the frantic button mashing stage. It remains a fan favorite however, so many will be excited to hear that there are more rumors that the Dreamcast title is making its way towards downloadability. Rumors began last October with an ESRB ratings list and now a leaked achievement list suggests again that the title might be resurfacing on Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. Given the current propensity of the comic book world to huge cross-over events, it feels quite appropriate.

Perhaps the single most schizophrenic game on the shelves right now is Spider Man: Web of Shadows.  Featuring fully THREE different versions compatible with seven different hardware platforms, it’s amazing that so many versions of one game can exist.  For the sake of our coverage today, we’ll be handling the Xbox 360 version, which also saw releases on the Wii, the PS3, and the PC.

Spidey’s got a lot on his plate this go-round, with Luke Cage needing help with New York’s gang problem, the Kingpin running amok with a collection of supervillains, including parts of the vaunted Sinister Six like Vulture, Electro and Rhino, and of course, Spidey’s worst nightmare Venom working on conquering the planet with a collective of symbiotes peeled off his own superstructure.  Worse, the Venom symbiotes are going to start attaching themselves to various locals, including some superheroes.  Man, you’ve never seen freaky until you’ve seen Wolverine in a symbiote-black suit.

Let me start off by saying that this is possibly the most fun I’ve had playing a Spider Man game yet.  It’s set up in kind of a sandbox format, so you’ll have a lot of room to webswing around to get from place to place and mission to mission.  I have never had so much fun with the web swinging component of a Spider Man game.  And the combat is also a pretty new and interesting step—you’ll actually be able to upgrade your attacks using experience points, allowing you to do all sorts of strange and highly effective attacks.  In fact, there’s one great sequence where you’ll fight the Vulture by webswinging from flying henchman to flying henchman until you can get in web range of the Vulture himself, and then take him on in mid-air.

However, there’s a down side to all this—the lock-on mode isn’t exactly always there, and has an annoying tendency to just suddenly decide not to lock on any more.  And the difficulty can be somewhat unbalanced at times.  I remember my first bout with Venom—there would actually be moments where I couldn’t land a punch on ANYTHING in the area because there would be so many enemies simultaneously trying to pound me that I couldn’t stay on my feet.  I tried every trick I had in my repertoire, which I admit was rather extensive by that point, and it still didn’t work for several tries. That, as far as I’m concerned, qualifies for a second look in the whole difficulty department.

It’s hard to hate Spider Man: Web of Shadows because it’s easily the best game in the whole series…but then, that’s not really saying much.  Has there been a good Spider Man game yet?  I can’t think of one offhand, frankly.

I loved swinging from place to place on my weblines, humming one of the various Spider Man theme songs that have cropped up from sheer joy.  It didn’t matter—I could climb the highest buildings, or I could swing only feet above the streets of a surprisingly extensive New York City.  I pummeled thugs and broke up gangs and took on all the biggest names in the Spider Man universe.  And though some parts were better than others, I still had a lot of fun.

And at the end of the day, isn’t that the point?

Marvel has signed an exclusive 10-year deal with Gazillion Entertainment to develop its comic book properties into multiplayer online games.

The Lego Universe publisher will share revenue with Marvel. They are working on two MMOs under the deal, the first of which is Marvel Super Hero Squad, a casual MMO aimed at younger people.

The second, Marvel Universe, is being developed for PC and consoles. More information is expected in the coming months.

The Cut Scene reports that film producer Avi Arad has brought the film rights to Mass Effect, BioWare’s recent action-RPG epic. Arad is also producing a Lost Planet movie with his new production company.

Arad, for those in the dark, is responsible for bringing Marvel franchises such as the X-Men, Spider-Man and Iron Man to the silver screen. The BioWare project is yet to get a writer, director, or anyone else attached to it.