The Best X-Men Games No One Played

Should Team Ninja have made X-Men Legends 3 instead?

by Ewan Paterson
Raven Software

Somehow it's 2019 and Marvel Ultimate Alliance is back. It makes no sense, but the gaming franchise that endeared itself to True Believers in the late noughties has returned, debuting to a moderately positive response in July. It's developed by Team Ninja and is also a Nintendo Switch exclusive, and while it does bear all the hallmarks of its two predecessors, it isn't quite the same thing, stumbling in a similar fashion to the Vicarious Visions-fronted Ultimate Alliance 2, which was seen as a step down compared to the original 2006 title developed by Raven Software.

In many ways, Ultimate Alliance should be seen as Raven's series. They built the first game themselves, and it was also they who developed X-Men Legends, MUA's spiritual predecessor, and a series all too many fans seem to overlook, either due to the declining popularity of the X-Men during the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or simply because Ultimate Alliance is seen as the bigger, better, and more ambitious title.

Releasing in 2004 and 2005 respectively, X-Men Legends and its sequel were isometric, co-op oriented dungeon-crawlers that focused on Marvel's eponymous uncanny group, arriving at a time when - in the wake of the nineties TV show and then Fox's movies - the X-Men were still the House of Ideas' most beloved and famous superhero team. That seems almost strange to think in the age of the MCU and the Avengers, but it's true - to many, the X-Men were and still are Marvel's most important superhero property.

So, why now? Why X-Men Legends? Well, apart from the fact that Ultimate Alliance has sparked new interest in the series, the X-Men are also on the up. Teased for MCU Phase Five and on the cusp of a new golden era with the arrival of writer Jonathan Hickman, Marvel's mutants have embarked on their own little resurgence, and so it feels only apt to talk about one of their more successful - if not forgotten - exploits in the gaming medium.

The Legends series was an absolute gem, and one all too many tend to forget.

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Content Producer/Presenter

WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well. In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.