Comic books and video games have always had a close link, with characters and stories flowing freely between them. Major players like Superman have found their way into digital form tens of times, but unfortunately, they often suck. You’d think given their action packed nature, iconic costumes, and excellent stories, comics would translate better into video games then they do. It just seems they blow goats, most of the time. However, there are some pretty notable exceptions, amazing games that started life on the printed page.

14. Little Nemo: The Dream Master

The Little Nemo game for the NES was based on the Japanese/American animated film Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland, which was based on the old newspaper strip Little Nemo. Ask your grandparents about it, they might remember, and then go on a tangent about how the Sunday comics used to actually be funny, and were more than just talking heads. The movie was successful in America, and the game was brought to our shores. In what proved to be an extreme rarity, a video game based on a movie (and a comic) was really good. But, it was also crazy freaking hard. This was the NES after all, most of its games were stupidly difficult. Countless parents bought the game for their kids after seeing the movie, dooming them to never being able to complete it due to the infinite number of enemies and difficult exploration required. Still a damned good game, though.

13. TMNT: Turtles in Time

Konami’s second TMNT brawler game started at the arcade and was ported to the SNES, and astonishingly survived the move very well. The arcade version was Konami’s best selling title, with voice clips from the cartoon’s actors. When it moved to the SNES, instead of gutting it (like happened with many titles that leaped platforms), some parts were scrapped, but new levels and bosses were added — giving it a net increase in content. After the Shredder kidnaps April and the Statue of Liberty, you’re sent plummeting through time to try and stop them. You and a friend (or three, on the arcade) each took a turtle, and had special powers, advanced move sets, and could even throw badguys at the screen. You know that was freaking cool when you were 9! The game got a 3D re-skin last year for XBox Live and PSN, if you desperately want to go kick some Foot Soldiers.

12. Turok: Dinosaur Hunter

Turok was an early N64 title, and the first made by a third party developer. To put it bluntly, it blew everyone’s minds. At the time, the N64 was a beast of a machine, and the world it created in the FPS was like nothing else out there. It was also one of the first games to use the analog stick to aim, something we now take for granted, but a move that bewildered many reviewers at the time. How can a game where you play a time travelling Native American, killing dinosaurs and aliens, be anything but pure awesome? Throw in a wide variety of weaponry, unique death animations based on how you killed the enemies, and the fact you get to take on T-Rexs single handedly? SUCH AN AWESOME GAME! And yes, it was based on a comic, Valiant/Acclaim’s long lived title, that’s been going since the 50s. The sequel was also great (and added a stunning array of weapons, including the dreaded Cerebral Bore) — unfortunately, every game that’s followed has been mediocre.

11. X-Men Arcade

Another beat-em-up by Konami, the X-Men Arcade game handled six freaking players! You could always spot this thing from the opposite side of the arcade, it was monsterous. It was based on the 1989 cartoon movie/pilot Pryde Of The X-Men — aka the one with the Australian Wolverine. It debuted in 1992, and let you play as Cyclops, Colossus, Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, or Dazzler. I know, Dazzler? Seriously? You had to fight your way through hordes of enemies, eventually facing Pyro, Blob, Wendigo, Nimrod, The White Queen, Juggernaut, Mystique, and Magneto. At your disposal was the ability to jump, hit, and use your mutant powers to clear the screen — but at the cost of three health units. Each character handled differently, compelling players to chose a strategy that worked best for them. And, for once, it was a game that you and all your friends could play at once, teaming up to kick some super villain ass.

10. Alien vs Predator Arcade

There are a ton of AvP games, but the old Capcom arcade version was unlike anything else before or after. Instead of dark atmosphere and terror, the game was a brightly colored beat-em-up, that lacked story, but packed in the ass kicking. It used the famous CPS-2 chip, which was also used for Super Street Fighter II, DarkStalkers, Shadow Over Mystara, Street Fighter Alpha, the Vs. games, the 19XX games, and pretty much anything Capcom made in the 90s. What links all of these? They were phenomenal. AvP let you chose from a predator hunter, a predator warrior, Lieutenant Linn Kurosawa, or Major Dutch Schaefer. Each character played differently: the warrior was balanced, the hunter did heavy damage, Dutch was a cyborg tank, and Linn was super fast and could do mad combos. You plowed through level after level of alien types, and eventually took on a queen. The game was a total quarter sucker, but had a hidden amount of depth, as each character had special moves that could be discovered.

9. XIII

XIII was based on the eponymous Franco-Belgian comic, which never really took off in the USA the way it did in Europe. A hard-hitting conspiracy thriller, it was heavily influenced by the Jason Bourne books, and starred an amnesiac killer, framed for murdering the President of the US, with an army of mercenaries after him while he tried to get to he bottom of a major conspiracy. The video game had some issues with repetitive and simplistic gameplay, but carried itself by the phenomenal cell-shaded graphics and well cast voice acting. The decision to make all the graphics heavily stylized and comic-booky ended up making for one of the most visually distinctive FPSs of a generation of games. Oddly, the decision to go with this look is the opposite of how the comic itself looks, which is marked by realistic and understated art. Hardly the bold lines and two dimensional look that the game used.

8. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance

M:UA was a spiritual successor to X-Men Legends and X-Men Legends II: Rise of Apocalypse, taking the squad-based adventure games to the wider world of Marvel. There was another sequel, but it managed to be underwhelming. M:UA was the pinnacle of these game, with 22 playable characters — and more available over DLC. It was packed with dozens of NPCs, villains, sly references to old comics, awesome geeky locations, and a plot that sent you from Asgard to Skrull spaceships, ending in a climactic battle with Doctor Doom. Every playable character had unlockable outfits, upgradeable abilities, and there were bonuses if you put specific characters together. I tended to use Thor for muscle, Deadpool due to teleportation, Ice Man for range, and Wolverine — because every Marvel team needs Wolverine. The sheer volume of geeky comics references they squeezed in the game is mind boggling, and makes it great for the fanboy in your life.

7. The Capcom Vs Games

X-Men: Children of the Atom, Marvel Super Heroes, X-Men vs Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes, Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes, and now Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds is in the works. From the first steps of an X-Men fighting game, on to the epilepsy inducing, multiple character, pure insanity of MvC2, the Capcom vs games have thrown out traditional fighting game traditions of “balance” and “skill”, and instead focused on huge special effects, button mashing, and general awesomeoness. Sure, it’s filled with massively overpowered characters that encourages move spamming. But where else can you play a giant sentient cactus fighting a time travelling cyborg from the future, and then swap to a tiny but powerful robot and a tentacle demon?

6. Aliens vs Predator (1999 PC Game)

The first time Aliens and Predators faced off was on the pages of comic books, which is why I think they deserve to be on this list. The 1999 AvP game was one of the scariest FPSs ever made, and people still have vivid memories about it — especially the Marines campaign. The game had three paths — Colonial Marine, Predator or Alien. As the Alien, you could cling to any surface, follow scent trails, and drop down from above to bite through someone’s head. Predators can turn invisible, use different visual modes, have much better health than the other two species. The humans? The humans are weak little fleshglobs, clinging to their rifles and armor, relying on flares and motion detectors to try and stop the death from above. They seem so incredibly underpowered compared to the other characters, making the game intense and terrifying.

5. The Darkness

Jackie Estacado is a hit man for the Mob. He also is possessed by The Darkness, an evil spirit of the shadows that manifests in black tentacles that extend from his body, evil minions, and the ability to generate black holes. Based on a Top Cow comic, the game did away with Jackie’s alien looking costume, and instead kept him in a suit. The FPS let you use normal firearms as well as your Darkness powers, enabling you to take multiple ways to defeat a situation. The strength of these mystic tools were severely weakened in bright light, which forced the player to destroy illumination in order to boost your strength. When the game debuted in 2007, it was hailed for its excellent single player gameplay, and graphics. While generally pretty violent (a game about a mob hitman possessed by evil being violent? You don’t say!), it also had one of the most touching romantic scenes ever encountered, where you can sit with your girlfriend and watch an entire film together if you like. You’re free to leave whenever you want, but you can just stay and be with her for the entirety of “To Kill A Mockingbird”. It does a great deal to humanize the character, and actually make his motivation seem believable.

4. Spider-Man 2

It seems only appropriate that the best of the Spider-Man movies gets the best of the Spider-Man games. It proved that not every game based on a film has to be crappy shovelware. Set in a sprawling, accurate New York, you could completely ignore the plot and just websling your way around for hours. For the first time, slinging required you to actually hit buildings, rather than just shooting your web into the sky. The city was an almost 1:1 remake of Manhattan, and filled with crime for you to go out and fight. Throw in a bunch of villains, some decent voicework, and all sorts of crazy spidey-powers, and you can see why this did so well. Sure, some of the side missions are pretty boring, but the unmitigated joy of web-swinging is worth it.

3. Hulk: Ultimate Destruction

Hulk smash. That’s the only two words you need for a game about the Hulk. You’re big, green, unstoppable, and have a penchant for property damage. The environments in the game were eminently destructible — almost anything could be broken and used as a weapon. Tanks flattened into shields, boulders as bowling balls, cars fashioned into boxing gloves, trees as javelins. There are waves of enemies to destroy, massive bosses, and your powers increase as the game continues. As you get stronger, you can leap across the city, run up buildings, plow through badguys and traffic. The more you destroy, the stronger you get. Fuck subtlety, fuck strategy. Run in, smash things, and use their bodies as clubs. You don’t need anything else.

2. Sam & Max Hit The Road

Arguable the greatest adventure game of the genre’s golden years, Sam & Max was certainly the most bizarre. The detective duo of a six-foot tall dog and a rabbit-thing were based on a comic by Steve Purcell that successfully transitioned to a cartoon, this game, and a more recent, episodic, 3D adventure game. Hit The Road perhaps typifies everything that was good and horrible about those old adventure games that Lucasarts made. The writing and art was phenominal, and often hilarious. The puzzles were viciously hard, and in retrospect ludicrously arbitrary. Many of them just required guessing and mashing together items until you figured out how things went together. The humour was so packed with non-sequiters and absurdist joy, that anyone who didn’t like it was obviously a soulless shade. The recent 3D versions from Telltale games were great, if not quite the same level of amazingness of the original — though that might be the nostalgia goggles talking.

1. Batman: Arkham Asylum

Arkham Asylum manages to combine all of Batman’s greatest features into what is doubtless the fines comic book game of all time. You’ve got brutal violence, detective work, stealth, fear, gadgets, and an unparalleled rogue’s gallery. Like Batman should do, you spend much of the game hiding out of sight, only popping up to take down thugs with wild abandon. More than just a brawler, Arkham had excellent writing by legendary comics scribe Paul Dini, and voice actors from the 90s cartoon series. If you’ve played it, you doubtless remember the utterly terrifying Scarecrow section, a surrealist level tapping into Batman’s past and unconscious. The only downside of this game, was the cop out ending. Rather than being something that actually required intelligence or detective work, it ended up ending with a generic boss fight, which was a letdown for a game that otherwise came across as a thinking gamer’s third-person action game.