I grew up with arcade beat-em-ups like Konami’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time and X-Men. It was a genre I loved, so I was sad to see it diminish in relevance. Thankfully, beat-em-ups have had a revival, thanks in part to publishers like Dotemu and developers like Tribute Games.
The two teamed up for 2022’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, a worthy successor to Turtles in Time. Now, they’re working on Marvel Cosmic Invasion. Like Shredder’s Revenge, it’s a classic beat-em-up with beautiful pixel art. It features a cast of classic Marvel characters and lets players tag and swap between two heroes.
I had a chance to play Marvel Cosmic Invasion during the recent Summer Game Fest Play Days in Los Angeles. I enjoyed its emphasis on tag-team hero action and was happy to see each hero have a unique play-style — Captain America can throw both his shield and meaty punches, while Spider-Man can shoot webs and swing in the air.
I also go to chat with Dotemu’s CEO Cyrille Imbert, asking him about his company’s niche in the gaming market.
Cyrille Imbert, CEO of Dotemu.
GamesBeat: It feels like you guys have been at the forefront of making the beat-em-up genre popular again. Was that a goal of yours, or just something that happened through the games you were working on and publishing?
Cyrille Imbert: It wasn’t really a goal. Our goal, really, is to bring back, I would say, classic games and famous IPs in the video game space the right way. Our first big success was Streets of Rage 4. Lots of people before that were telling me, why are you doing this? Even if Streets of Rage is a very nice IP, beat-em-ups are dead. Nobody plays them. There’s a reason for that. You’re taking a lot of risk with that. I don’t know. I love the IP. I love the game. I don’t see any reason why I wouldn’t love it again, especially with a modern take.
After Streets of Rage, people were asking for other beat-em-ups. One of them that was a top ask from the community was a TMNT game. I decided to go for it. After TMNT, which was an even bigger success than Streets of Rage 4, lots of people were asking for a Marvel game. I was like, let’s go for it. If we’re all about trying to understand where there’s a need from gamers on existing IP and fulfilling that need–we just went that way, basically.
GamesBeat: I was maybe expecting X-Men after you did TMNT. It seems like you jumped over X-Men and landed on all of Marvel
Imbert: Exactly.
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