I’m totally looking forward to Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and you can be sure I’ll be getting this for the Nintendo Wii and loving every muscle-tearing moment of it. First, the game features just about EVERY important character in the Marvel Universe (get it?), with 20 playable characters available straight from the start and 120 more unlock-able throughout the game. Second, not only are all of these amazing characters playable, but you can actually custom create your team of heroes, creating the ultimate, dynamically switchable team (Wolverine, The Punisher, Spider Man and Thor on one team, oh man). The gameplay takes you through missions, huge melee brawls and even recreations of legendary Marvel battles throughout the history of Marvel. The game looks brilliant and will be released for every major next-gen platform, which will fit right at home with my Wii60 collection.

Watch gameplay videos for Spider Man, Thor and Mr. Fantastic after the jump..

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Well, that was shocking. Cryptic, Marvel Entertainment and Microsoft Game Studios today announced that Cryptic has been tapped to develop Marvel’s upcoming MMO, Marvel Universe Online, which will be released for the Xbox 360(!!) and Windows Vista, presumably next year. This is a shock because it was only a short time ago that Marvel Entertainment (and DC Comics) had Cryptic and NCsoft in their sights, accusing both of allowing users to infringe on their respective copyrights, by allowing users of NCsoft MMO City of Heroes to create characters resembling well-known Marvel and DC brands. I’m sure somewhere in South Korea, an NCsoft executive is throwing things at the poor intern who has to break this piece of bad news. How this will affect NCsoft is unknown yet, but, I can only imagine that with the release of Marvel Online Universe, NCsoft had better be planning a way around the potential fallout, as City of Heroes and City of Villains players abandon ship to play as Marvel-created super heroes. Though, whether players will actually get to play as Wolverine or Spider-Man remains to be seen.

Read more: Marvel and Microsoft announce Cryptic as Marvel Universe Online developer | Cryptic’s open letter to their fans