8 Superhero Games You Can No Longer Buy

Superheroes have been appearing in video games since Atari 2600 owners wondered where the Man of Steel needed to go in 1979’s Superman. Some of their games have even become classic must-play games, like Spider-Man on the PS1, the Batman: Arkham series, and Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3. While others have become notorious, like Superman 64 and Aquaman: Battle for Atlantis.

Still, the best superhero games are often easy to grab hold of, as they’re still up on digital storefronts, or as physical copies in shops, bargain bins, and more. However, they’re not immune to being delisted or pulled from sale. Unless players got lucky with their online searches, or bought them while they were still available, these are some superhero games that are no longer available for purchase.

Capcom’s First Marvel Re-Release Gets Scuppered By Disney

Iron Galaxy made their name porting classic fighting games, like their Online Edition of Street Fighter 3: Third Strike. Following Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3’s success, Capcom brought them back in to port the classic Marvel games to a new audience on then-modern consoles. Well, some of them anyway. Marvel Vs Capcom: Origins ended up containing just Marvel Super Heroes and Marvel Vs Capcom 1, since they didn’t feature the X-Men so heavily compared to the other games in the series.

Disney didn’t own the film rights to the group at the time, so they didn’t want to promote them by featuring them over the Avengers. The collection did have online play, filters, and challenges, but without the other games (especially Marvel Vs Capcom 2), it felt anemic. The game was delisted in 2014 after Capcom’s Marvel license expired. So, players better get the upcoming Marvel Vs Capcom Fighting Collection, complete with the missing X-Men games, while they can before it disappears too.

7 Doodle Jump DC Super Heroes

Batman-Themed Platformer Runs Out Of Time

• Developer: Lima Sky LLC
• Publisher: Lima Sky LLC
• Platforms: iOS, iPadOS, Android
• Release: November 5, 2014
• Genre: Puzzle Platformer

Mobile games have a much shorter shelf life than their computer/console counterparts and are often much fiddlier to emulate. But emulators are the only way players can fire up Doodle Jump DC Super Heroes. The license ran out, leading to the game’s delisting in 2017. Like the regular game, players had to guide a little creature called the Doodler along endless platforms while dodging enemies and hazards.

Only this time, they were dressed up as Batman, fought enemies based on his rogues’ gallery, and used The Dark Knight’s equipment as power-ups. The player could also upgrade the Doodler’s gear with crystals, which, in freemium fashion, could be obtained with either repeated playthroughs or real cash. At least the regular Doodle Jump game can still be played for free on browsers.

6 Deadpool

Mouthy Merc Outstays His Welcome Twice

Fans who wished they could get more of Nolan North’s Deadpool back in the day must have set off a monkey’s paw, as he got his own game in 2013. Deadpool uses the Merc with a Mouth’s meta 4th wall-breaking to put himself in his own game, where he has to stop a plot by Mr Sinister. The game is packed with plenty of gags, references, cameos, and other wacky features — like getting an achievement for getting an achievement.

Related

5 Reasons Why It’s Time For A New Deadpool Video Game

It’s been 6 years since Deadpool’s last movie, and 11 years since his last video game. Deadpool 3 is on the way; it’s time for a new game to match.

However, the gameplay was comparatively dry. It offered basic hack ‘n’ slashery with some gunplay and many annoying difficulty spikes. The game was pulled from digital stores in 2014 after Activision’s Marvel license ran out. Then, it somehow returned again via a remaster in 2015 for current-gen consoles — likely to capitalize on the (at the time) upcoming Deadpool movie — before disappearing again in 2017. As of this writing, it has yet to make a second return.

5 Marvel Ultimate Alliance 1 & 2

When The First Two Entries In A Trilogy Get Delisted

Based on Raven Software’s popular X-Men Legends games, the Marvel Ultimate Alliance games let players create their own hero teams to take down Dr Doom, the Masters of Evil, and (in Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2) each other as per the Civil War event comic. Both games received ports to all playable platforms in the 2000s, but Zoë Mode brought the games back to the PC, PS4, and Xbox One in 2016.

Their re-release was based on the Xbox 360 version, which featured more characters and levels. However, they were delisted just two years later, in 2018. Unless players already got them previously, the only way to play them now is to fire up an old console (or its emulator). Their popularity did gain them a sequel, Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order, which (as of this writing) is still available to buy since it wasn’t made by anyone under Activision’s thumb.

4 Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions

Victim Of Licensing Inspires Multiversal Storylines

The Activision Marvel license shenanigans were also why Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions got delisted in 2014, relisted in 2015, then delisted again in 2017. It’s a shame, as it’s a surprisingly influential game. It saw Spider-Man work with Spider-Man 2099, Spider-Man Noir, and Ultimate Spider-Man (with the Venom symbiote) to retrieve the Tablet of Chaos from their villains and restore balance to the multiverse.

If that sounds vaguely similar to the Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse comic…or its movies…or Spider-Man: No Way Home…or any multiverse thing involving Spider-Man and/or other superheroes in the past few years, then there’s a reason for that. Dan Slott was a writer for the game and used its multidimensional premise to write the comic, which in turn inspired the movies. It wasn’t the first Spidey story to do it (as viewers of the 90s Spider-Man cartoon can attest), but it was one of the best.

3 Marvel’s Guardians Of The Galaxy: The Telltale Series

IP Lost In Messy Downsizing

The last 3 words in the title alone give away what happened here. Telltale Games is famous for their choice-based adventure games, like The Wolf Among Us and their versions of Back to theFuture and The Walking Dead. However, they were beginning to show their age by the mid-2010s, with their later entries like Game of Thrones and Batman being weaker in the story department.

Related

The 29 Best Telltale Games, Ranked

The best Telltale Games titles provide players with thought-provoking narratives and interactive excellence that few other developers can match.

When the studio fell apart and reformed, it lost a lot of goodwill and IPs. Their Batman games are still available via Athlon Games, but their Guardians of the Galaxy title wasn’t so lucky. People with physical copies can still access the Guardians’ adventures with the Eternal Forge, as it’ll let them access the otherwise digital-only episodes beyond Episode 1. Everyone else lost their chance when it was delisted in 2019.

2 Marvel’s Avengers

Support For Critically-Panned Game Ended By Acquisition

At least Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions has its fans and made a mark on comics and movie history in its own little way. Marvel’s Avengers became more of a fiasco. It aimed to be an Ultimate Alliance-esque game where players form their own Avengers to fight off AIM, complete with co-op support, customization, and other neat features. But its fun factor was offset by its frequent bugs, repetitive, grind-heavy gameplay, and its Gaas (games-as-a-service) approach.

Microtransactions for free games were bad enough, but doing so for expensive AAA games was another, less palatable option that has doomed similar games. The game saw its player base dwindle rapidly. The Embracer Group later acquired developer Crystal Dynamics, leaving the Marvel license behind in March 2023, when it was delisted shortly afterward.

1 X-Men: Destiny

It Fought The Law (And The Law Won)

• Developer: Silicon Knights
• Publisher: Activision
• Platforms: PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, Nintendo DS
• Released: September 27, 2011
• Genre: Action RPG, Beat ‘Em Up

Marvel’s Avengers was a mess, but it was still pristine compared to X-Men: Destiny. X-Men: Destiny was an action game, having players pick one of 3 new mutants and, depending on their choices, help the X-Men forge peace between mutants and humanity — or help the Brotherhood of Mutants turn what’s left of San Francisco into a mutant-only city state. It was also a short, dull game with stodgy combat where the playable newbies were a significant downgrade compared to the NPC heroes.

Fans and critics at the time couldn’t believe it was made by the same people behind Eternal Darkness. Except by then, Silicon Knights was in trouble — especially when it turned out both it and SK’s other game, Too Human, used code from Unreal Engine 3 without permission. Epic Games sued them and won, leading to both games being pulled from stores and their physical copies destroyed. X-Men: Destiny‘s few surviving copies may become valuable over time, but only as collectors’ items.

More

6 90s Superhero Games That Need A Collection

Superhero games were huge in the 90s, and the stars of these titles deserve collections to make those games accessible now.