High Moon Studios' upcoming Marvel video game was revealed today. As it turns out, they're not making an Avengers game. They picked a more obscure Marvel property, instead: Hit-Monkey.
Hit-Monkey is actually what it sounds like: a monkey hitman. He's a Japanese Macaque whose simple existence was disrupted when he encountered an assassin on the run. This assassin had failed a job and was being hunted. The group of Macaques allowed the man to stay with them.
A lone Macaque - the eventual Hit-Monkey - watched the assassin as he trained for his inevitable encounter with his pursuers. As a result, the monkey learned these skills himself. The assassin's enemies catch up to him, kill him, and then slaughter all of the Macaques except Hit-Monkey. Hit-Monkey decides to embark on a quest for revenge using his newfound talents.
Hit-Monkey is not exactly a household name. The character was created only two years ago. He had a three-issue miniseries and a three-issue story arc in Deadpool.
High Moon has worked with some very high-profile licenses, including Bourne and Transformers. Why would they pick such an unknown character for their next project, then? Maybe they realized that picking a new, relatively untouched character would give them a lot of creative freedom. They're getting in on the ground floor and can take big role in shaping Hit-Monkey.
The official website for the game is now live. It notes a 2013 release for the game, but doesn't specify platforms. High Moon is due to talk about the game at San Diego Comic-Con, though, so we'll find out more then.
