As if the Marvel Comics license issues weren’t already confusing enough, Sega has purchased the rights to three more prominent characters.  Preparing for the upcoming feature film, Sega purchased the rights to Iron Man, the red-and-gold hero who’s always battling the bottle.  But now, Iron Man has company, as Sega now owns three other prominent Marvel figures.  Captain America, the recently-deceased (for now…) WWII hero joins his last foe on the list of Sega-owned characters.  Thor, the thunder god (who’s also dead in the comics…for now) also joins Sega’s ranks.  Most surprisingly, though, is the Incredible Hulk.  Vivendi Games put out the critically-popular [i]Hulk: Ultimate Destruction[/i] which sold quite well, but now the rights to any video game incarnations of the green behemoth will be done by Sega.

In recent years, Marvel’s huge cast of characters has been divided up further and further.  Originally, Capcom held all the cards to Marvel’s cast, and put out the still-popular “Versus” fighting games, with games like [i]X-Men vs. Street Fighter[/i] and [i]Marvel vs. Capcom[/i].  After a general hiatus from the gaming world, outside a handful of half-hearted fighting games based on the X-Men, Activision started a long run of great games starting with the Spider-Man game on the PS1 back in 2000.  Since then, comic-based have become commonplace, but the licenses to each series have been chopped up and spread across the gaming industry.  2k Games has the rights to the Ghost Rider series.  Activision has the rights to the X-Men and Spider-Man series.  THQ has the rights to The Punisher, and now with Sega controlling the three leads of the Avengers team, gamers shouldn’t be holding their breath for something like a Marvel: Ultimate Alliance 2.