Its most recent iteration, Cortex Prime, was designed by Cam Banks and initially published by Fandom Tabletop, then acquired by Dire Wolf Digital.
Prior versions appeared in the licensed roleplaying games published by Margaret Weis Productions, where it was used as the house system.
The core game was originally slated to be followed by a long series of supplements, each focusing on a different period of Marvel's fictional history.
Without the licenses for the three existing games, the Hacker's Guide presented three 'flavors' of Cortex Plus: drama, action, and heroic.
On November 1, 2016, Margaret Weis Productions released a statement announcing that Cam Banks and his new design studio Magic Vacuum had licensed the Cortex system and would be "taking over the design, development, and publishing of games based on these rules... for 2017 and beyond," coinciding with "Margaret’s retirement from RPG development to focus on her current novel and film projects.
Prime discards the drama, action, and heroic flavors of Plus and instead offers a modular system that can be custom-built for vastly different play experiences.
As part of the Kickstarter stretch goals, five volumes of "spotlight" mini settings by 22 authors, were also planned and funded.
[7] Tales of Xadia was published on March 29, 2022,[8] but Legends of Grayskull was canceled[9] after Cortex was sold by Fandom to Dire Wolf Digital in August 2022.
[10][11] Dire Wolf Digital has stated their intent to still publish the spotlights,[12] but they remain available only to backers of the 2017 Kickstarter campaign as of August 2024.