Whosoever Holds This Hammer, If He Be Worthy
I love games for so many reasons, and it's a love that goes back decades to the neon-lit days of the 1980's when my dad introduced me to chess, Monopoly, Uno, and more. He also introduced me to comic books, and it was perhaps fitting that love of one nurtured for the other as I grew older and gained access to games like Advanced Dungeons and Dragons and the Marvel Super Heroes RPG. Both games allowed me to play alongside characters I'd only read about and that was incredible, clearly the height of enjoyment for any fan.
Fast forward a few decades and fantasy and comic book content was making the leap to the silver screen in very big ways! The Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Marvel Cinematic Universe were a cultural phenomenon to say the least.
"But what do these movies have to do with games," you may ask? Patience, dear reader.
Recently, Avengers: Endgame made a return appearance to theaters across the nation, a reminder of sorts of the zeitgeist and impact it made after 10+ years of narrative build-up. Around the same time, coincidentally, my Facebook memories reminded me of an all too important moment in my own gaming history.
You see, two years before Endgame originally hit theaters, a friend of mine picked up Munchkin: Marvel Edition and we played it having an absolutely fantastic time. During that game, I managed to do something I had only dreamed of since first reading the Walt Simonson run on Thor – I wielded both Mjolnir and Stormbreaker together, two years before Chris Hemsworth did the same on the big screen.
I'm not saying I was the first to do it, but I canonically did it before MCU Thor. That's the power of games and just one of the reasons why I love them so much.
Game on!