MARVEL: ULTIMATE ALLIANCE

Enter the multiverse of modness.

- Justin Wagner

Superhero fatigue? We’ve all felt it. Marvel’s star-studded roadmap of blockbuster movies and videogames has no end in sight, and you had better get used to the cape and cowl if you don’t want to miss out. My issue is, Marvel can never resist bringing out the big guns. It’s all Wolverine, SpiderMan, Captain America – yawn. Where’s my Diablo-lite APRG where I can play as my favourite comic book hero, mustachioed SHIELD agent Dum Dum Dugan?

Never mind, I found it. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance had a healthy lineup of 23 playable characters when Raven Software released it in 2006, and the novelty of building your own Marvel team-up in couch co-op helped the game score a cult following despite it being otherwise unexceptional. But the Marvel Mods forum community is astir like 2006 never ended, and 18 years of active modding have taken that modest roster of 23 to a whopping 700 and counting, turning the original game into an unparalleled monument celebrating comic book heroes from the mainstream to the obscure.

But don’t take it from me; take it from my world-saving superhero team, Earth’s Alrightiest Heroes, consisting of Fantomex, Iron Fist, Silver Samurai, and of course, Dum Dum Dugan. I’ll never see these guys hanging out together on a silver screen or a spinner rack, but I thought they were badass when I was 12, and that was all that mattered when putting this gang together.

My foray into Ultimate Alliance modding began with a community cornerstone: a series of roster hacks which expand the number of selectable characters to 50, called