I've grown up loving Marvel. I have boxes and boxes of carefully stored comics, ranging from my favorite X-Men to my Spider-man issues. Yes, I was hyped for X-Men Legends when I first heard about it, but what about the rest of the Marvel staples? Apparently, Activision listened to their fans' demands, and created the ultimate game mash-up, featuring your favorite heroes and villains from its entire history. Killer Betties got to ask Dan Vondrak - the Project Lead at Raven Software - some questions about the upcoming game, and here is what he had to say about Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.

1. There are currently a reported 140 Marvel characters that you'll get to interact with throughout the game. How exactly does that number break down? How many of those will you get to play as? How is the number split between heroes and villains? And how do the others appear in the game?

There are 20 playable heroes plus additional unlockables. The rest are split between villains and NPCs – we have tons of both. You are meeting Marvel villains constantly throughout the game. A lot of them are paired together so you can experience a true comic battle. The NPCs you meet all over the place, a lot of them in the different headquarters you use, and of course a large handful during the combat levels.

2. What is the story of Marvel: Ultimate Alliance?

Dr. Doom has re-created an all new Masters of Evil. It’s a massive collection of Marvel villains, some huge names and some more obscure names the comic fans will love seeing. Doom starts off by making strategic strikes against specific S.H.I.E.L.D. installations. The heroes are called into help. Doom does a lot to throw the heroes off, and the heroes finally figure out what Doom wants after it is too late. There is some serious destruction that happens at the hands of Doom and the Masters of Evil. The story takes you from earth, to the holy grounds of Asgard and finally the far reaches of the cosmos. We explore every corner of the Marvel Universe.

3. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance seems to be based on the X-Men: Legends RPG system. Why was this system decided upon?

It’s important that you have deep RPG elements, but usually action gamers don’t want or need to get bogged down in the details. In this game we have the incredibly deep RPG elements for those who want that. As a team, we all felt that the basics of gaining levels and then points was easily understood and made it easier when you have such a huge cast of characters. We’ve actually added Outfits to the mix, so as you unlock the different outfits or skins for each character you can now level up different attributes for each look. It’s cool picking between Ultimate Captain America or WW2 Cap.

4. Beyond the fact Marvel: Ultimate Alliance covers a wide variety of characters within the Marvel universe while X-Men: Legends only covered the mutants, what other changes can players expect? Has the combat evolved, the way in which the game advances, etc?

We took a much more action-oriented approach to Ultimate Alliance. We ditched the health and energy packs in favor of orbs that get spewed out from enemies, each character has overridden fight moves, so Thor bashes people with his hammer, Spidey does all sorts of flips and kicks, Mr. Fantastic has some sweet looking stretch attacks. And that’s just the standard melee attacks.

There’s an all new “Arcade Mode” which is a competitive coop mode. This allows you to fight along side your friends to complete missions, but you now compete for experience, kills, health and the SHIELD credits. There’s a whole point system and who ever has the most points at the end of the level gets bonus rewards. And you can create your own Marvel Team, name it, pick a logo, and gain reputation throughout the game.

5. On the official website, it says "the missions you accept, and the objectives that you meet, will have a direct impact on how the story plays out." What does that mean exactly? Does that mean there will be different endings? Will players who play through more than once experience different told stories? Etc?

Marvel: Ultimate Alliance features an epilogue system that shows you how you affected the Marvel Universe at the end of the game. As you complete or don’t complete critical objectives, that is recorded and at the end of the game you see how those decisions impacted the fate of the Marvel Universe.

6. The game features "unique comic book missions that are unlocked throughout the game that will reenact legendary Marvel battles." What famous battles can players expect to unlock and exactly how does the player go about unlocking these missions?

The comic book missions are hidden throughout the game. When you find the missions you can play them right away or replay them anytime you want back at the headquarters. The comic missions give some background history on the characters and pit them against one of their main villains. What’s really cool about these missions is there’s only a single hero in them. So if you’re playing co-op you’re friends can control the enemies on screen while you control the lone hero – it rocks.

7. There are over 17 locales throughout the game. Are these environments taken from the Marvel universe and where can players expect to go?

Absolutely, the environments were all taken from the Marvel Universe, the problem was there were too many environments to choose from. There were some huge arguments over what environments were going to get left out. A few I can talk about are: the S.H.I.E.L.D. Hellicarrier, Asgard, the Skrull Homeworld, and Murderworld (this one is awesome, there’s a classic pitfall level!).

8. When trying to decide on what characters, special comic missions, and worlds to visit, what was the process on how those particular ones were decided upon and were there any criteria that had to be met to allow for those?

We would get into a huge cage and whoever came out alive was allowed to pick a character. Seriously, that might have been easier. There were a dozen or so characters that everyone agreed on right away, the rest were tough. We were changing characters in the final months of production – because we just felt bad cutting anyone. Marvel helped us a ton in picking the environments and characters. They would let us know who was going to be used more prominently in upcoming comics, and of course they had their favorites too. There wasn’t a particular criteria, besides their powers couldn’t be so crazy that they would disrupt the game. Some characters have powers that make it difficult to get into a game.

9. What are your favorite characters to use in Marvel: Ultimate Alliance and why?

Ghost Rider is a ton of fun, I love his chain attacks and one of his attacks can cause guys to run in fear. Captain America – he rocks in Arcade Mode. You can throw his shield around and then run around and grab the loot while the shield cuts through your enemies.

10. Marvel: Ultimate Alliance is going to be coming out for the Wii as well. Can you talk any about how Marvel: Ultimate Alliance will take advantage of the Wii controller and motion sensing capabilities?

Nintendo did a great job with the Wiimote and nunchuck, it was a great idea to split it into two, there’s so much freedom to it. The Wii controls are pretty neat, one of the best features is being able to pull off the finishing moves for the melee combat with just a flick of the wrist. Instead of hitting A, B, A, you can flick the controller down and do the stun move, or flick it up and pop an enemy into the air. Vicarious Visions was responsible for implementing the controller and they did an awesome job. The camera controls are really smooth, you just gently turn your wrist and the camera will rotate.

A special thanks to Dan Vondrak for taking the time to answer our questions about Marvel: Ultimate Alliance. Be sure to pick the game up when it is released on October 24th.