Tiny Diggers – An iPad Construction Truck Game for Kids Age 2-5

A few years ago, Marvel sued NCSoft and City of Heroes developer Cryptic Studios for copyright infringement. The basis of the suit had to do with characters that resembled Marvel characters being made in the game. The suit was settled out of court and in a weird twist of irony, Marvel selected Cryptic to make an MMO based in the Marvel Universe.

From that point, all we have seen or heard of this title was a teaser trailer. No real news has been heard until the last few weeks. Rumor was that Microsoft was cutting a big first party project. The web was alight with people trying to guess which title was on the chopping block. Was it Alan Wake? Or maybe Halo Wars? Possibly a Banjo Kazooie title? All of the developers for these projects as well as others stepped up and announced that their titles were still firmly in development and were not in the process of being cancelled.

There was one omission: Marvel Universe Online. Cryptic did not give a statement of any kind with the exception of saying that all their projects were currently in line and that there were no problems in house. When asked specifically about Marvel Universe Online, they sort of deferred to the previous response of everything is fine, without confirming or denying the game was still in development.

Things were complicated further when a fair amount of the team that worked on City of Heroes went to work for NCSoft when they purchased the title and intellectual property from Cryptic Studios. Anyone that might have worked on Marvel Universe Online probably ended up going to NCSoft, leaving the team in a bigger lurch.

So is Marvel Universe Online cancelled? You would think that such a high profile title would be exempt from cancellation, but remember that super hero games have long had a difficult gestation in the gaming world (Champions, Agents of Justice are just a few of the casualties). Also, Microsoft has shown that they have no problems cancelling a high profile title, looking back at how True Fantasy Live Online was cancelled weeks after Shane Kim mentioned that it was on track for release soon.

One thing is for certain. If you were hoping to test your chops as The Hulk, Thor, Venom or lesser characters like Longshot, Brother Voodoo or Jocasta, you might have to wait longer, as the light seems to be fading on this game faster than Magneto was consumed by the Marvel Zombies.