Tales to Astonish Episode 1 - The Lost Marvel Atari Game

 

Back In 1982 Parker Brothers released the very first Video Game based on a Marvel Character, Spiderman, and it was a bit of a hit for the day. This was the heyday of video games so the team at Parker Bros did what anyone would do... plan a sequel, the Incredible Hulk.  In this episode lets talk about the unreleased and never seen  Incredible Hulk video game for the Atari 2600.

Superhero video games are a commonplace today but back in the 1980s there was a limited slate for fans of the caped and masked heroes of the era. There was a few, Atari had a great Superman Game, one of the first games developed for the flagship VCS in 1979, now known as the  2600,  and Parker Bros had developed their Spiderman game in 1982. We have done videos on both games here and on our sister channel VGN, checkout both links below...

In Parker Bros’ ‘The Incredible Hulk’ game the player would play as Bruce Banner, as he would go through various levels of the game. The levels in the game would get progressively harder after completing the previous level. In each level, the player would have tried to avoid turning into the Hulk. Additionally, The game apparently involved smashing up some robots as the Hulk.  Honestly, why wouldn't you want to be the Hulk right? That kind of sounds Gamma-lame... but it may have played off the TV of the era where the transformation was avoided. We can look to the gameplay of the Spiderman game to see probably how this would have looked and its complexity.

There was even a fairly high visibility advertisement campaign for the game in several publications and even as part of Parker Bros 1983 promotion material. The Incredible Hulk was supposed to be released in stores by Autumn of 1983. This was during what is known as the Great Video Game Crash of the 1980s . ATari had released  E.T. in December of 1982 kicking off this malstrom of disaster. Many point to the movie adaption but its clear now there was  a laundry list of reasons for the crash, it just needed the right catalyst. The is known as the great video game crash of the 1980s and Parker Bros, despite some really great games such as the aforementioned Spiderman game but also a line of pretty successful Star Wars line, never releasing many of its slated titles.  All that remains online of the unreleased game is a couple of CLAIMED screenshots from in-game and some photos of the box art. There was also a comic ad for the game that has survived but it didn't show any game details.

Despite some reports, Leonard Herman, author of Phoenix: The Fall and Rise of Video Games, actually confirmed  thatThe Incredible Hulk for the Atari 2600 was not displayed at the 1983 Consumer Electronics Show. As of the making of this video, we know of no one claiming to have seen this game in action. Nearly every one of the Parker Brothers programmers of the time have been asked about the game by hobbyists and journalists alike over the decades, and all of them deny having worked on this project.

This doesn't mean every video game historian agrees. Well known Atari Historian and  Collector Matt Reichert of AtariProtos.com has remained optimistic, and was quoted as saying:“I’m ninety-five percent certain it’s out there. I think it was completed. All evidence seems to say it was.”  The evidence, according to Reichert, is based on a past history of unreleased Parker Brothers games. Nearly every unpublished game by the company has, to date, been found by private collectors, some more than one time.  Reichert is quoted as saying  that the aforementioned catalog screenshot we have used heret is conceptual art work, and not an actual game screen. He went on to say he feels that the relatively detailed description of gameplay is enough to suggest that the game was, at the very least, worked on. Additionally, says Reichert points to  Parker Brothers advertisingThe Incredible Hulk rather heavily in magazines, including mention of an equally-mysterious Intellivision version.

The tale doesn't end here...Back in 2001, a promo box was bought and scanned online, suggesting that the game's prototype might indeed actually exist somewhere in the universe. Then over a decade later. In 2014, an Italian user named airgames posted a forum thread on Atariage.coml He claimed  he had actually obtained a promotional copy of the game and had it in his possession. Unfortunately he later admitted that he got "scammed" and the promotional copy was a fake.. It was actually a modified version of a Frankenstein game that had a very hulk like creature in it. As i said earlier, Nearly every unpublished game by the company has, to date, been found by private collectors, often more than once… The Parker Brothers Incredible Hulk gave has never been seen by the public.

Ironically the next Marvel video game was an Incredible Hulk game, Although not for the 2600. Bruce Banner and the green goliath actually kicked off the Questprobe Line of Marvel Games. A short lived and never completed series of graphic adventures for multiple versions of home computers in the 1980s..but that is a tale for another time!