At PAX East 2026, I caught up with Limited Run Games to discuss the Marvel MaXimum Collection.
The games in this collection have a place in a lot of millennials’ hearts. How can anyone forget the red cartridges of Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage? Whenever Carnage or Venom was involved in anything, you best believe 90s kids ate it up every time. Limited Run Games also had a He-Man game that looked rad as well, just in time for the movie later this year.
Kayla Yaden and I spoke on behalf of Outun Gaming with Jeremy Campbell about many topics, and another topic that came up was the commitment to the fans of Limited Run Games and the preservation of classic games. Limited Run has been in some hot water recently. I honestly believe they want to be better and do better.
Made by fans for fans
How the collection came to be is no secret; the people over at Limited Run are fans of retro games. A lot of the old Marvel beat em’ ups are trapped on the old consoles with no love being shown to them. The team wanted to rerelease these games with modern-day quality-of-life features, such as save states.
Jeremy was born in 1985, and the first console he could call his own was a SEGA Genesis, which was also my very first console. SEGA did what Nintendon’t, ya know? We spoke about how we both used to rent Maximum Carnage over and over. Renting games from video stores back in the 90s was a big deal. Without it, I don’t think I would’ve been able to rent so many games.
Heading into the video store and seeing a Spider-Man game with a red cartridge made it a no-brainer to rent it for the week. You had plenty of time for dying over and over again, trying your best to beat a difficult game. All you could hope for was that when you went back, you could rent it out again.
Quality of life and accessibility of older media are important
Accessibility of old games is increasingly necessary in the current era for multiple reasons. You can emulate it or buy it at a crazy price (most of the time), but there isn’t a way to play it on modern consoles. Now there is an easier way to play on any modern console with the MaXimum Collection.
Not only do you get six great games, but you also get modern features that help improve your quality of life. As a parent, I can’t sit down and play a game straight through, and save states help with that. Any gamer that needs to sit down a game often can rejoice. Rewind is another feature that can help you out of messy spots. Making a huge mistake can be undone easily, and you can keep enjoying your game. The development team added full analog controls to these games as well. Going into older games and adding these features is no small task, and modern-day players will be grateful for it.
Physical media is dwindling, but you can stop it
Kayla and I got into a deep conversation with Jeremy about how physical media is dwindling. Jeremy reflected on his old job at Best Buy. Everyone was buying movies, games, and music in a physical format. Nowadays, when you go to Best Buy, almost all the physical media is gone. You run into issues like when 28 Years Later was about to be released in theaters. 28 Days Later wasn’t on any streaming services, and the movie was out of print. The only way to watch was to hit the seven seas of the internet.
That is why companies like Limited Run Games are so important. They add an ethical way for you to actually own your games, which is an increasing concern as games become unplayable once a company decides a game is done. A lot of the time, you hear stories of a game’s source code being lost or deleted for good.
That is why Limited Run announcing changes and recommitting themselves is a good thing for gaming and fans. You deserve a physical game with beautiful box art and a manual. Nothing will beat the feeling of riding home from the store and reading the manual because you just couldn’t wait to play it. Now we can pass that feeling on to the next generation of gamers.
Follow Outrun Gaming on MSN for more content you love.
RELATED:
