According to the man himself, he was born into an extremely wealthy family and lived much of his early life, depending on the telling, on a ranch in Texas, or in a mansion in Beverly Hills. At the age of either eighteen or twenty-one, his allowance was cut off by his father, who declared that he did not deserve it. In retaliation, Arcade murders his father, thus inheriting all of the man's vast estate. Arcade became a freelance assassin, traveling across the world, killing people in rather mundane fashions, and amassing even more wealth than he already had. Discovering an aptitude for technology, Arcade designed and built his first Murderworld, a subterranean evil lair disguised as an 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, he would tailor Murderworld to exploit the specific weaknesses of his targets and then watch as they are killed by a variety of colorful deathtraps strewn throughout the facility. However, one of his "gimmicks" is that he always deliberately leaves each target a small chance of survival. In one instance, when the girlfriend of one of his captives begged him "If you're going to kill them, at least have the decency to do it quickly, painlessly!" Arcade laughs and replied, "Decency's dull... besides, miss, your way, they're dead and that's that. My way, they've got a chance. Not much of one, but a chance." This sets Arcade notably apart from most other villains who use deathtraps; while most villains believe that their death machines are infallible, Arcade likes to give them a chance on purpose, for the sport of it. 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, X-Force 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, Iceman and Angel, Nightcrawler, Northstar, Meggan, and Dazzler,. Other would-be victims of Murderworld have included Green Goblin (Phil Urich), Hercules Johnny Blaze, Patsy Walker, Gwenpool, Iron Man and The Thing and the Micronauts. Courtney Ross is one of the few non-super-powered civilians to escape Arcade's