While it’s still in beta and the first season is being postponed indefinitely, MultiVersus is already impressing players from far and wide. It has established itself as the rare free-to-play game that doesn’t feel exploitative. equally impressive, MultiVersus is a game made in the form of Super Smash Bros. that has the chance to claim its long-held crown as the best crossover fighting game. While it’s still early days, the title is already more of a contender than games like Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl.
One of the MultiVersus’ biggest triumphs to date is the way it makes a cohesive game of a disparate set of characters owned only by Warner Bros. common. This gives fans of the Disney-owned franchises hope that they can get a smash-like one day. As fun as Darth Vader’s fantasy novel against Buzz Lightyear may be, fans shouldn’t hope it ever becomes a reality.
Disney commissions a developer to make its own smash clone looks like a no-brainer on paper. The characters created for his classic animated films would make a solid roster for a crossover fighting game in their own right. By choosing characters from properties the company has acquired over the years, the fighting game would gain access to characters from Marvel, Star Wars and 20th Century Fox’s old IP catalog. That can include anything from The Simpsons to one of the many versions of the Predator.
There are a few reasons why the Disney smash clone of dreams of fans is unlikely to come true. One is based on Disney’s video game history. While many Disney games feature characters from multiple Disney franchises, few have the kind of crossover that a smash clone would require. They are not completely devoid of this – the Kingdom Hearts after all, games feature Donald Duck and Goofy visiting worlds based on Disney franchises. However, Disney has shown reluctance to cross streams between its various franchises.
Disney Infinity is an example of a Disney video game with a wide variety of franchises. After focusing on the animated films and the disastrous live-action reboot of 2013 The Lonely RangerDisney added Marvel and Star Wars playsets and characters to the second and third wave of the toy-to-life game. Players can combine characters from each franchise in the game’s creative sandbox Toy Box mode. However, they couldn’t use characters from different franchises in other playsets, denying players the chance to see the Incredibles interact with the Avengers.
Disney’s current crossover game, Disney Mirrorverseappeals to all ages. mirror verse is a mobile RPG with a large selection mainly drawn from the Disney and Pixar animated films, with Jack Sparrow and Tron representing their live-action canon. While some Marvel characters are involved in mirror versethey come from Great Hero 6who has never been associated with the Marvel Cinematic Universe or been part of Marvel games such as the Lego Marvel series.
Disney’s reluctance to intermingle its many franchises could be seen as brand management. Whether fans write it down that Disney is too conservative with its IP or a rare display of reticence from a giant company, Disney’s apparent lack of interest in crossovers between its franchises could very well be an institutional philosophy. There’s another more mundane reason there won’t be Disney smash clone: bureaucracy.
While Disney is a major player in video games, it differs from Warner Bros. in one important way. Disney has not published any video games since Disney Interactive Studios closed in 2016. While some excellent games like Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order released in the intervening years, licensing rights have meant that situations like Spider-Man exclusive to the PlayStation versions of Marvel’s Avengers.
This is nothing new for developers working with Disney properties. In explaining why Marvel and Star Wars characters are not in Kingdom Hearts, director Tetsuya Nomura told the story of the limited use of a Disney icon in Kingdom Hearts. Because another publisher had a Mickey game in development, Square was only able to use Mickey in one scene, where he appeared in silhouette.
Now that EA is still publishing Star Wars games and Marvel titles spread across developers, creating a Disney smash clone would create many legal hurdles. That might be for the best. The fact that MultiVersus come together so well is a minor miracle. There is no guarantee that a Disney smash clone wouldn’t be the cynical money grab and unbalanced mess that MultiVersus has not been. As much potential as the idea has, Disney’s answer to: MultiVersus maybe better off as a dream than a reality.
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