At first glance, Marvel Cosmic Invasion might seem like a somewhat cynical if welcome attempt to cash in on a beloved IP by reskinning the already incredibly successful Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge with Marvel superheroes. Take the existing mold, inject a different set of hugely popular characters, and watch the dollar signs multiply. But having recently played the retro brawler’s arcade mode for a couple of hours, it’s clear Marvel Cosmic Invasion is anything but a by-the-numbers knockoff.
Made by Dotemu and Tribute Games, which also shipped Shredder’s Revenge to GOTY-contender acclaim in 2022, Marvel Cosmic Invasion takes a similar revivalist approach to arcade beat ’em ups and adds a deceptive amount of extra nuance and flashy pageantry. It pits heroes like Captain America and Silver Surfer against Annihilus and his invading insectoid armies, with a deep roster of allies to pull from as well as supervillain cameos from Galactus and more. The scope, including 15 total playable heroes, is impressive once you get to spend some time with Cosmic Invasion‘s main combat trick: hero swapping.
Like in Marvel vs. Capcom and other 2D tag-team fighters, players select two characters, swapping between them on a dime to combo enemies or deploy unique team-up attacks. You might pair a ranged flyer like Storm with a heavy-hitting grappler like She-Hulk. With up to four-player co-op (online and local), that means up to eight distinct fighters going ham on aliens, sentinels, and more with pixel-perfect precision.
Part of what’s so impressive is the variety of attacks. Unlike Shredder’s Revenge, which mostly featured the turtles each engaging in variations of the same move sets catering to their preferred weapons, Cosmic Invasion has Rocket Raccoon shooting laser blasts and Spider-Man swinging from the ceiling. Most of these unique abilities are all beautifully animated as well. It doesn’t feel like you’re playing a beat ’em up that happens to have Venom in it. It feels a bit more like you’re playing a Spider-Man game that also happens to be an X-Men game that also happens to be an Avengers game.
Cosmic Invasion is set to arrive before the end of 2025 on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC. As Kotaku‘s Kenneth Shepard mentioned back when he played it at Summer Game Fest, there’s no shortage of great-looking Marvel games right now across lots of different genres. So it’s no small feat for the one that’s a modern homage to colorful ’90s arcade button mashers to also be the one that has my full attention.
