OverPower is a collectible card game produced by Fleer Corporation originally featuring characters from Marvel Comics and later from DC Comics and Image Comics. The game was initially launched in August 1995 and is no longer in production. In the game, two players went head-to-head with teams of four heroes and villains. Unlike most other collectible card games of the mid-1990sFact: date=April 2008, OverPower was very distinct strategically and structurally from Magic: The Gathering.

History

Overpower was produced by Fleer from the game's beginnings in 1995 until October, 1997, when Fleer decided to end productionFact: date=April 2008 in favor of its other products. Fleer, a company with a solid baseball card product line, was chosen because it was a neutral party. If Marvel had produced the game from the start, it was unlikely that they would have been able to broker a deal with DC Comics to make DC Overpower, but it was possible for Fleer. In early 1998, Marvel Interactive became the sole producer and distributor of Overpower, taking it over from Fleer.

Marvel Interactive only produced two sets, Image and X-Men, both of which were fraught with delays and printing difficultiesFact: date=April 2008. After X-Men was released in 1999, Overpower enjoyed no more official supportFact: date=April 2008. Eventually, Marvel decided to sell the exclusive rights to produce a collectible card game based on Marvel characters to Wizards of the Coast. Though fans kept playing the game, its popularity started to die off around 2001, when it had become increasingly clear through Marvel Interactive and Wizards of the Coast press releases that Overpower would no longer be supported. Several years later, Wizards of the Coast released the X-Men TCG. The game did not sell wellFact: date=April 2008, and ultimately the license ended up in the hands of Upperdeck. Currently, the VS System is one of the most popular card games on the market and has an extensive organized play professional circuit.

Possible reasons of failure

One of the game's main issuesFact: date=April 2008 was that the card backs of Marvel, DC and Image cards were all different, requiring the use of opaque card sleeves if a player wanted to mix them.

The artwork for the first 3 sets, and most of the Marvel character cards, was sub-standard.

Most of the popular characters were released in the first sets, before the introduction of some game-changing concepts in later sets. As a result, secondary characters such as the X-Babies, the Marauders and the Starjammers were very competitive, while Spider-Man, Batman and Wolverine languished.

Unlike Magic: The Gathering, most Overpower cards were released once and not updated in later sets, relying instead on errata to correct any inconsistencies. The IQ set updated the Marvel Character cards that had been released up to that point to include the Intellect statistic, and included one new Special card for each character, but none of the original Special cards were rehashed.