Marvel Super Heroes in War of the Gems
Super Nintendo
Nostalgia Factor:
This section of the review is going to be short and sweet, as I never played this game growing up. In fact, I didn’t even know it existed until just a few days ago. I was scrolling through the Super Nintendo library on my Retro Pie when the title of this game caught my attention. I quickly looked it up on YouTube and watched a SNESdrunk review of it. I thought it looked like it could be a fun way to pass some time, so I fired it up, played it, and beat it. And now here I am writing this review.
Story:
This game loosely follows the events of the Infinity War comic series from the 1990s, NOT the Infinity War MCU films. In the game, the Infinity Stones have fallen to the surface of the Earth. Adam Warlock appears to warn the planet’s greatest super heroes about the strength of these stones, and how they possess the power to destroy the universe if they fall into the wrong hands. Thus begins your quest to investigate all of the possible sites where the stones may have crash landed. You have to fight through these locations, defeating waves of enemies and several of the toughest super villains in the Marvel Universe (including Thanos at the end of the game). Once you’ve made it through all the stages and have collected all the Infinity Stones, the game is over.
Gameplay:
The game begins by giving you the choice of which stage you’d like to play through first. When you make your selection, you can then pick which character you’d like to use to complete the stage. There are five different characters to pick from: Spider-Man, Captain America, Wolverine, Iron Man, and the Hulk. Each character has their own strengths and weaknesses. For example, the Hulk is the strongest character, but he is also very slow. Spider-Man can climb walls and scoot along across the ceiling. Wolverine can use his claws to climb walls. That kind of thing. Your character has one health bar to work with, and that health bar carries over from one stage to the next. So if you beat the first stage with the Hulk, but use up almost all of your health – and then you pick the Hulk as your character for the second stage, you’ll start out with a nearly empty health meter. So you have to play strategically. Eventually, however, you are given the ability to heal before starting each stage, so that makes things a little easier for you if you have a favorite character you like to use all the time.
Basic gameplay consists of jumping on platforms, walking to the right, and punching your enemies to death. This game is ALMOST like a beat ‘em up, but it does not take place on a 3D plane and there are platforming elements aplenty to be found. I’ve heard it compared to X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse (also for the SNES), but I have not played that game so I cannot verify or shoot down this claim. This whole thing is just very, very basic. So basic, in fact, that I feel like I’m not going to be writing for very long. You walk to the right until the screen stops scrolling. You fight the enemies that come out. Once they’re all gone, you can continue moving to the right. Sometimes you have to knock down walls that appear, blocking your path. Other times you have to hurry along because the path has filled up with water and you are starting to run out of breath. Sometimes there are platforms you have to ascend or jump across. When it comes to gameplay variety, don’t get your hopes too high with this game. You walk, you punch enemies, and you keep walking until you fight a boss.
One thing that’s pretty cool is that this game implements “fighting game”-esque controls into the mix. Sure, you can just spam the attack button to punch your enemies into oblivion, but if you play around with different button combinations (like down, right, attack), you’ll discover different moves you can unleash. These attacks will come in great handy to you as you play, and I’d say are essential to your ability to master this game.
What didn’t I like about this game? Well, if you die with a character you are sent back to the beginning of the level and have to do the WHOLE THING over again with a different character. There are no checkpoints in this game, apparently. Luckily stages are pretty short. Another gripe I have is that before each stage you’re given the ability to modify or upgrade your characters, and I could never figure out how to make this work. Every time I would click on something, the game would just beep at me like I did something wrong. The only thing that ever worked was the ability to heal my character before each stage. Even that seemed to have a certain number of times you could do it attached to it. Luckily I never ran of healing items because I have no idea what would have happened all of my characters had died. Do you have to start the whole game over? I am betting you do.
Also, I got the impression that you are allowed to do “special attacks” due to the gem icons you see on the screen from time to time. Could I ever figure out how to do them, though? No. No I couldn’t. I just played through the game using your standard jumps and melee attacks. Luckily if there are special gem attacks they aren’t essential to you being able to beat the game, because I still did okay without them.
Graphics:
This game looks really good, character wise. The 2D sprite based artwork looks phenomenal. All your favorite Marvel heroes and villains are faithfully created and animated for this game. Just look at these screenshots. The characters look great, right?
If I had to bicker it would be about the game’s stage design. The stages themselves are, for the most part, pretty boring and uninspired looking. I enjoyed the variety in the different types of stages you’d fight through, but none of them got me too excited visually.
Sound:
Overall things sounds pretty good here. All the punch and kick noises are what you’d expect to hear from a game like this. Stage music is fine. It’s fast paced and gets you pumped to beat up some bad guys. Kind of reminds me more of something I’d hear in a Sega Genesis game, rather than a Super Nintendo game to be honest with you. On the whole, however, I’d say this game’s sound is very forgettable. I liked it in the moment, but in the long run absolutely nothing about it stood out to me at all.
Overall:
This game was kind of a guilty pleasure of mine. I could tell as I was playing through this game that it was nothing special, but I still had a fun time. The theme goes a long way, I think. If this wasn’t a Marvel game, I’d probably be saying it was mediocre and telling you to avoid playing it. But it IS a Marvel game. And it’s Marvel-ness really saves it, in my humble opinion. There’s just something incredibly satisfying about playing as Captain America and smashing hordes of enemies with your shield. Or going to town on them with your adamantium claws as Wolverine. Or smashing them with your giant Hulk sized fists. You know what I’m saying. The fun character sprites, the Infinity Stone based storyline, and the combat system all made this an overall enjoyable experience for me.
Has this game become one of my all time favorites? Am I going to return to it every few years or so to play through it again? Probably not. In fact, I may not ever play this game again, period. But I’ll be darned if I didn’t have a good time with it on my recent playthrough. This is a fun game. Anyone interested in Marvel definitely needs to check it out. If you’re not a Marvel fan, don’t go out of your way to play this. You have better things to do with your time, and if you aren’t invested in the story, the theme, or the characters like I was, you’ll probably find that this is a somewhat mediocre game.
But I liked it.
Final Score:
C+
If you liked this review, check out some of my other game reviews:
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