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It might seem like every single Marvel Comics storyline has been adapted to heck and back over the years, either in cartoons, movies, or video games. However, the upcoming beat-em-up Marvel Cosmic Invasion wants to bring the long-overlooked Annihilation storyline to a new generation of fans, and they’re doing it with an X-Men ’97 aesthetic to grab us by the nostalgia.

“The Annihilation storyline was something that Marvel brought to us when we started to discuss the game,” said Fred Gemus, the director of the Marvel Cosmic Invasion game, in a recent interview. “They were like, ‘There’s one amazing storyline that was never adapted anywhere, and would be great for a video game like this, and it’s Annihilation.’ This is a hardcore space crossover that occurred pretty much at the same time as Civil War, which completely changed the cosmic universe of Marvel.”

According to Gemus, Marvel was keen to see this 2006 storyline adapted and went in with quite the pitch to Tribute Games. “Marvel was like, ‘There’s a bunch of bugs, and Annihilus can have all these weird goons, and it could be quite fun,’ and we agreed with that, but it’s kind of a dark storyline at the same time. Annihilus just wants to destroy and kill everything, and a bunch of people die in there.”

The solution was to sprinkle a little of the '90s nostalgia-fuelled visuals that made us all fall in love with X-Men ’97. “Yannick [Belzil, Marvel Cosmic Invasion narrative designer] and I discussed, and we thought about what would happen if Annihilus struck in the ‘90s era of the Marvel universe, when the cartoons were strong, and the classic video games [were around]. And that’s pretty much how we kicked things off. We pitched that idea to Marvel, and they were like, ‘That’s perfect, that’s great.’ Now we can have Earth heroes, we can have classic stuff, and we didn’t have to stick closely to the storyline to adapt it, but just use it as an inspiration.”

Marvel Cosmic Invasion is out now for consoles and PC.

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