Arcade is a fictional character and supervillain in the Marvel Comics universe. He first appeared in Marvel Team-Up volume 1 #65 (January 1978). A combination of evil genius and hitman, Arcade affects a manner of dress and speech that makes him appear to be a comedic character. This is part of his overall theme, which extends into his preferred method of murder, an underground complex of deathtraps, disguised as an amusement park, which he has dubbed "Murderworld". Arcade's backstory, up to and including his real name, remains largely unknown even to this day. This is mainly the result of his uncanny knack for escaping once he has been defeated. Because of this dubious talent, Arcade has never once been captured and, consequently, all information about his life prior to his first appearance is what he has decided to disseminate. Given his propensity for deception, this origin story can hardly be taken at face value. According to the man himself, he was born into an extremely wealthy family and lived for much of his early life in, depending on the telling, a ranch in Texas or a mansion in Beverly Hills. At the age of either eighteen or twenty-one, again depending on the telling, his allowance was cut off by his father, who declared that he did not deserve it. In retaliation, Arcade allegedly murdered his father, thus inheriting all of the man's supposedly vast estate. Now independently wealthy and free to do as he pleased, Arcade became a freelance assassin, traveling across the world, killing people in rather mundane fashions, and amassing even more wealth than he already had. Eventually, he grew bored with doing business as an ordinary hired killer and resolved to find a way to continue his work in a manner more suited to his sensibilities. Discovering an aptitude for technology, Arcade designed and built Murderworld, a subterranean evil lair disguised as a very deadly amusement park. From this base, and with the help of two mysterious assistants named Miss Locke and Mr. Chambers, he reemerged as the world's most expensive hitman. For the price of $1 million (actually a token sum, since Arcade doesn't need the money and, in any case, never turns a profit), he will tailor Murderworld to exploit the specific weaknesses of his target and then watch, with unconcealed glee, as they are killed by the variety of traps strewn throughout the facility. Since his first attempt to slay the unlikely duo of Spider-Man and Captain Britain, Arcade has tangled, at one time or another, with a large number of heroes and teams of heroes. In addition to battling the X-Men, X-Factor, Alpha Flight, and Excalibur as groups, he has attempted to kill many individual members, usually in pairs. Examples of this include Gambit and Wolverine, Colossus and Shadowcat, and Iceman and Angel. Other would-be victims of Murderworld have included Longshot, Green Goblin (Phil Urich), Doctor Doom, Ghost Rider, and the Micronauts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcade_%28comics%29