Video Game Review: X-Men

X-Men

 Genesis

Back in 1993, the X-Men were big. Not only were the comic book and the cartoon series well known and beloved, the characters themselves were iconic and easily recognizable by even the most casual follower. I myself was a big X-Men fan. Pryde of the X-Men had gotten me hooked a few years before, and after that I devoured every single thing X-Men ever thrown my way.

When I first saw previews of this game in an old video game magazine (EGM? Gamepro?) of course it immediately piqued my interest. Good old pre-internet days. I followed the progress of the game from magazine to magazine. X-Men was on the top of all my wish lists. I don't know if I got it as a present or bought it with my hard saved allowance money, but I quickly managed to snatch this game up as soon as it hit the shelves.

The game was everything I had hoped for, and more. I don't know how many times I must have played and beaten the game, but it was quite a few times. I searched every nook and cranny of the game. Found and saw everything there was to find and see. As is often the case back in the Sega Genesis era, the novelty of the game eventually wore off and I moved on to obsess over another title. X-Men got put on the dreaded shelf of obscurity, and eventually disappeared from my life. I don't remember whether I traded it in for cash or had given it to a family member, but the game was no longer in my possession.

Ever since I began writing this blog about a year and a half ago (give or take a handful of months) I have been thinking about X-Men. Reviewing old games had made me nostalgic for this title. But the problem was: I didn't own it anymore. It had vanished from my possession nearly 20 years ago. I regularly scour used game stores for classic 8 and 16 bit titles, but I had never been able to find X-Men for the Sega Genesis. I don't believe in emulating games online, so it seemed I had reached an impasse.

But alas, like a ray of shining light burning its way through the darkness came my cousin Ryan, who is a regular reader of this blog. He loaned to me a box of his old Genesis games to play and review. Lo and behold, he had X-Men. It was like my prayers were answered. As I powered the game up, I even began to wonder if this was my old copy and I had given it away to Ryan so long ago that I had forgotten about it. That would be quite the reunion after 20 some years had passed.

Anyway, even though it had been such a long time since I'd played the game, it all came back to me pretty quickly. The music at the beginning, the little introduction with Magneto and the X-Men.... classic. And then the game started.

If you have never played this game before, it actually has a pretty decent story line for a side scrolling platform game. Magneto has sent a signal that interferes with the X-Men's Danger Room simulations, putting them in real life or death situations. Playing as one of four X-Men (Cyclops, Gambit, Wolverine, or Nightcrawler) you must find a way to break free of the simulation.

Each level takes place inside a Danger Room simulation. These levels take you all over the X-Men universe to areas like the Savage Lands, the Shi'Ar Empire, and Mojo World. This is a clever way of working all these different X-Men environments into the game without the game makers having to make up some fantastic story line where the team is traveling all over the place. Once you finally do manage to break free of the Danger Room (which you accomplish by pressing the reset button on your Genesis when you reach the end of Mojo World), you head to Asteroid M to end the Magneto threat once and for all.

The old reset trick is the stuff of video game lore. It took me forever as a kid to find out that that was what you were supposed to do. I always just assumed that the game froze or got stuck whenever I would reach a certain point. Out of frustration after the fourth or fifth time this happened to me, I hit the reset button to start over and hey, would you look at that, it worked and I was able to advance to the final level of the game.

As mentioned earlier, you can pick from one of four X-Men to play throughout the course of the game. You can swap characters mid level, but I believe you can only swap twice per stage. The health of the characters stays the same at all times. So if you are almost dead with Cyclops, you can switch to Gambit. But Cyclops will still be near death if you switch back to him again. Once all your characters die, it is game over for you.

But the game is very generous in allowing you plenty of time to recharge all of your battered and broken X-Men. In between each stage, the Danger Room reverts to normal for a minute or two, and you can break these floating orb things that refill your character's health. So if you are smart, you should be able to manage each of your characters having full health at the beginning of each stage.

The game's controls are pretty standard fair. You walk (no running in this game), jump, and punch. Each character also has a special attack. Cyclops shoots lasers from his eyes (of course), Wolverine's claws deal big time physical damage, Nightcrawler can teleport through walls (and damage enemies if they touch him while teleporting), and Gambit slings explosive cards at his foes. Controls are a little wooden and stiff, and as I mentioned your characters can only walk, so it seems as if you are moving pretty slowly at all times. But I never minded this too much. This is more of a methodical platformer, so taking your time is encouraged.

In addition to your characters' regular attacks, you can also call upon four additional X-Men to help you out. Iceman is the most useless of the four. He creates bridges for you to walk across. Which really only comes in handy at two different points in the game. The others - Archangel, Storm, and Rogue, deal punishing physical attacks to your enemies. I find the best strategy to be saving these special attacks for the boss battles, as these characters can do big time damage to most of the bosses and do most of your work for you.

Speaking of bosses, most classic X-Men villains make an appearance in the game. Juggernaut, Apocalypse, Sabretooth, Mojo, and of course Magneto himself all put in their token appearances. There are a few lesser known boss characters in the game as well, but I have no idea what any of their names are.

Even though I have played the game before, albeit 20 years ago, I actually found it to be a bit of a challenge. There is a learning curve, but once you get the hang of things it isn't too bad. Some of the levels and a handful of boss battles can be a little trial and error intensive. But if you die, fire the game right back up again and you should breeze through the area you just had trouble with. The levels I found to be the most difficult were the future world and Asteroid M. Everything else was relatively easy. Asteroid M took me quite a few attempts to beat. There is lots of precision jumping, and everything seems to do double the damage that it did earlier in the game. But it is beatable.

Graphically, the game is not much to look at by today's standards, but by no definition is the game ugly. There are a few games out there from the 16-bit era that do not withstand the test of time, but this is not one of them. The game looks nice. Certainly not mind blowing, but nice. Same with the music and sound effects. Nothing earth shattering, but the do the job.

All in all, I found this to be a very enjoyable game. Perhaps I am biased because I loved this so much as a kid, but I had a fun time. Is it a timeless classic on par with games like Sonic the Hedgehog or Super Mario Bros 3? Of course not. And now that I have beaten the game, I don't have any particular desire to go back and play it again. But three years from now... Five. Ten. However long it is before I play this again I will still enjoy it.

Overall:

A-