The 1997 X-Men Quake mod

X-Men: The Ravages of Apocalypse is a first-person shooter video game developed by Jonny Gorden of Zero Gravity Entertainment and released for PC in 1997. The game was built with the Quake engine and requires the original version of Quake to be played. Think of it as an early version of a texture pack, not to downplay the work that went into this mod. The game acts as an expansion of Quake; X-Men: Ravages of Apocalypse relies on another game's engine, but changes every other aspect including story, locations, characters, weapons, display and interface.

The Ravages of Apocalypse features fourteen levels, replaces the original Quake weapons with new designs, and all of the enemies in the game have been replaced with cyborg clones of popular X-Men characters, each with their own super powers; for example, Wolverine has his healing factor, Archangel is immune to rockets, etc.

Marvel was in a slump in the mid-'90s, having seen a massive drop in popularity. In an effort to combat this, they created Marvel Entertainment, a division tasked with seeking out opportunities to expand the franchise into other media formats. They were impressed with Gorden's work and decided to take Ravages of Apocalypse on as an official project.