We’re only about a month away from IAAPA 2026, which often means that arcade news starts to pick up a bit from what it was. While this summer was a bit uneven on the news, there are always things happening behind the scenes, with most developers aiming for the end of the year as the time to unveil or release their next big hits. Today we have another title that has a name instantly recognizable by millions to it and is a console-to-arcade port. That would be Marvel Cosmic Invasion, coming to us in its new arcade form from Adrenaline Amusements. This is surprising in a couple of ways; although Adrenaline themselves have not commented on the game officially yet, get into it.
Note that this is a story on an unannounced game that is on location test, the arcade equivalent of a beta test. It may change significantly from what is shown here, or it may not see a wide public release at all. Reserve final judgments for when/if it reaches full production.
Marvel Cosmic Invasion At Home
Marvel characters & comics shouldn’t need any introduction, but since there are a lot of products out there bearing the Marvel name, you may have missed this one. Marvel Cosmic Invasion was released for all major home platforms in December 2025, having been crafted by Tribute Games. They are a Canadian studio who has developed a number of other of well-liked games, including the fantastic TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge. MCI follows a similar pattern as TMNT: SR, being a multiplayer beat ’em up and using a similar art style and game mechanics. Just like that game being a love letter to Konami’s arcade beat ’em ups of the past, MCI may remind you some of Konami’s X-MEN from ’92. I have not played this one though, so I can’t comment on how it fulfills that promise.
Marvel Cosmic Invasion Comes To Arcades
This past weekend, photos started appearing on various social media accounts of an arcade version of MCI appearing at some select Dave & Busters locations. It is unknown how many D&B locations have this, but as we can see from these photos, it is an Adrenaline Amusements game, and they’ve designed it to fit in with other large games that pop up out there (note that in this photo it was still being set up, so there are tools on it; source). While Adrenaline has not done a beat ’em up before (unless you want to count Infinity Blade FX), they are also based out of Montreal like Tribute Games is, so it would not surprise me if they are working closely together on this:
This also may be a special limited time exclusive that is not destined for the rest of the industry, kind of like what Adrenaline did for D&B back with the Hot Wheels: Victory Lap racing game. Notice that on the top monitor is has a sticker for Avengers: Doomsday; it’s been a little while since the last one, but D&B has done these specialized releases with movie releases before.
This second image is taken from a video of a new D&B location in Bristol, TN, and it shows that the second screen appears to be showcasing the game’s cutscenes, with the screen below serving as where all of the brawling action happens. Control-wise, there’s a ball top joystick (probably analog) and four buttons, although I have yet to see any close-up photos of the panel yet to see what the functions are. A third photo can be found at this Reddit post, which shows the neat touch of it featuring projected Avengers emblems under the control panel that light up the carpet.
The console version of MCI does have an arcade mode, so until we hear otherwise, my guess is that they will have taken that and adapted it for what an arcade needs – removing any menus you can sit on, skipping longer dialogue/cutscenes, and offering most or all of the current DLC characters. Whether or not this will have unique, exclusive characters/stages or other such features, we’ll have to wait and see though; otherwise it would be a hardware exclusive with that second screen and projection features.
We did reach out to Adrenaline for more details about this, but they have not responded as yet; we will be sure to provide them whenever they are offered. Adrenaline is notoriously quiet on their socials and previews of games on test though, so don’t get your hopes up. As such, we have no idea whether or not this will also be at IAAPA 2026 about a month from now, although given the size of their booth from the map, I imagine that the only reason it wouldn’t be there is if this is a special D&B exclusive. Assuming that it will be around, I’ll be sure to capture footage and information at the show, unless it happens to be at my local D&B and I get a chance to drop by before then (especially in the event that it is exclusive to them).
Until we find out more, what do you think of the new arcade edition of Marvel Cosmic Invasion?
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