When an war between the imperialistic Kree Empire and the often-noble Shi'ar Galaxy threatens to erupt across the cosmos, even the Earth is threatened, and the mighty Avengers are once again pulled into the intergalactic fray! But not everything is as it seems and one player in the conflict has a motive few others could even imagine. Only Captain America and the Avengers can stop the conflict, but at what cost? Don't expect me to tell you, either read the comics or play the game!

This fighting game mostly adapts the 1992 Marvel Comics multi-part "Operation: Galactic Storm" story arc (plus a bit of its aftermath) and the game play is split into two distinct modes. The playable Avengers roster includes Captain America, Black Knight, Crystal, and Thunderstrike while the playable (in Vs Mode) villainous Kree Starforce members are Dr. Minerva, Korath the Pursuer, Supremor, and Shatterax Not only do players choose who they'll fight as, they also choose an assist character who can be called in to attack by rolling Down, Down-forward, Forward on the joystick (a.k.a. that Hadoken move) and pressing both punch buttons when you have one full bar of power. Assist Avengers are Iron Man, Vision, th e Mighty Thor, and Giant-Man, while the partner Kree characters are Ronan the Accuser, Kree Sentry, Captain Atlas, and Ultimus. Story Mode allows you to play as an Avenger to fight through a series of fights connected by in-game cinema scenes based on the comic book's plot. Joining players can either be friend or foe, depending on an option the starting player chooses on the mode select screen. Choosing Foe allows the incoming player to be the enemy character in the story mode fight, but the Friend mode allows the new player to choose another playable Avengers member and double-team the enemy. The other mode, Vs Mode, is a conventional one-on-one fighter where any character can fight any character except for Galen-Kon, the final boss. As the attract mode says, "When you have a full power meter create a double-powerful tandem move" by having your characters near each other and pressing both punches and kicks at the same time. When you have two full power meters, the super is performed with quarter circle forward on the joystick and pressing both kick buttons.

This game is also notible for being a 2D fighting arcade game with pre-rendered 3D graphics a year after Rare's Killer Instinct in 1994.

Much like Maximum Carnage, this game was based directly on a real comic book storyline that ran through the Avengers and Avengers-related comics in early 1992. The game went into production years later and adjusted the roster to fit the then-current landscape of the Marvel Universe. Not only were most characters shown in their later designs (Vision was still in his white reboot design), but their later personas, with Hank Pym as Giant-Man instead of Clint "Hawkeye" Barton's short return to being Goliath (a Kree-Skrull War callback) and Eric Masterson being Thunderstrike instead of temporarily being Thor (long, slightly confusing story) and Thor appearearing as himself (tried to tell you it was confusing). Unplayable boss enemy Galen-Kor doesn't even appear in the Galactic Storm storyline, but in a related Avengers story that follows it. Galactic Storm isn't as famous as Secret Wars, Infinity Gauntlet, or Maximum Carnage, but was selected partially because it allowed them to set it somewhere other than the usual city stages seen in nearly every other Marvel game, fighting game, and beat 'em up, a fact confirmed in an article I'll talk about more in a bit. Many of the villains were obscure even to comic readers at the time the game hit, but the cosmic corner of Marvel has grown in fame since then, starting with the hit Annihilation crossover that led to the now-famous version of Guardians of the Galaxy. Ronan, probably the most known villain in this game, really has some great moments in the Annihilation era.

A special one-shot "Captain America Collectors' Preview" comic with an inner cover date of March 1995 has an article blurbed on the cover as "First Look: Data East's Galactic Storm" that turns out to be an official record of the game that we almost got. Written by Brian David-Marshall, many of the quotes come from Mike Thomas, Marvel Comics Creative Services Art Director at the time. With a cover date of March 1995, this had to be written before that, because that's how time works, so factor in the whatever the lead time is for books like this and you can figure out when this was written. It's so early in the development cycle that there are only line art drawings of both the player moves and fight stages, and a Captain America 3D model that has less "extreme" proportions than what you see in the game. There's also direct comic art of a miscolored Deathbird, who is in the comic story arc but not the game, and it makes me wonder if she was going to be in the game, because this article filled with things that aren't in the final game. The original playable roster was Captain America, Thunderstrike, The Vision, The Black Knight, Crystal, Hercules (who is nowhere in the game). Playable characters only available in one-on-one mode were supposed to be: Captain Atlas, Dr. Minerva, Shatterax, Korath the Pursuer, Ronan the Accuser, Ultimus, Supremor, Galen Kor. The Avengers strikers would've been Iron Man, Quasar, Quicksilver, Giant-Man, US Agent, Wonder Man, Sersi, Thor, Scarlet Witch, Beast and Hulk. Beast wasn't an Avenger at the time, but appeared in the the later story when the Kree decide to get payback for the events of Galactic Storm.

One concern Data East had was in keeping the story fresh and current with the Marvel Universe, so they shook things up. The characters in the game are not exactly the same characters from the comics. Iron Man, for example, couldn't appear prominently because he has his own home game coming out under a separate license. Thunderstrike, a relative newcomer to the Marvel Universe, is taking his place. it will be the first time the hammer-wielding super hero appears in a video game.

"You have to think about what are kids going to be into then - are they still excited by only this sort of format?" Thomas questioned. "So what we worked out between us is that we wanted to tell a story. Any time we work on a product, we try to put as much Marvel into it as we can. When it comes to video games we always try to tell as much of a story as we can. Characters just duking it out doesn't have much to do with what Marvel Comics tries to be. We try to have big stories, big build-ups with climactic events at the end. So we wanted this to be a story-driven game. Pretty much the way that it works is it's a platform game - which means it's a horizontal play field and you go back and forth fighting villains as they come along, and at the end of each level you reach a point where your graphics enlarge until you have a single background, and then you do have to just fight it out with that level's boss. It's a combination of the two video game standards of scroll and fight and the strict fighting format. I think its going to turn out well and do great. They're playing it up as: it's the best of everything, a really great fighting game and a really great scrolling game."

In addition to the fight-style ending to each level, in what is being referred to as the "cooperative mode," players can select a one-on-one mode and choose from a menu of characters - larger than the one in cooperative mode - and face off against their friends in the fight style of play.

We know they could've done the zoom in feature (technically) because there's pixel-scaling moments all through the game, like Giant-Man's size-change intro. I love how Sega's arcade Spider-Man beat 'em up turns into multiplayer Strider, Galactic Storm turning into Monster Mauler-style boss fights could've been a genre-changing moment. In fact, along with the selectable strikers before strikers was even a word, this game would've shaken multiple genres in one game. There's much more in the article, including how Maximum Carnage's success led to more games adapting real comic storylines, click on the thumbnails below to read the scans!