Hard for me to hate this game since I played it so much as a kid. You have 4 x-men to choose from and switch between and that's always been a game mechanic I wished every x-men game continued using.
The game is simple (til it's not) but the games overall presentation is really rad. Genesis to the core. Worth a play if you like x-men.
The game is simple (til it's not) but the games overall presentation is really rad. Genesis to the core. Worth a play if you like x-men.
"reset the computer" one of the best moments in all of my years gaming. could only really beat it with nightcrawler. but still go back to it to try with other characters. one of my faves in my small collection.
X-Men (1993): Salvo que uses a Nightcrawler, injugable. La definición de anti-intuitivo; bosses que si no llegas con el poder adecuado son invencibles, paredes infranqueables y atascos en todas partes. Me cuesta encontrarle virtudes, pero supongo que los sprites molan (4,95)
The resetting of the genesis in one of the stages is unforgivable. The graphics are ugly and the music sucks. The controls are not great and the gameplay isn't fun, nostalgia is the only thing keeping this one afloat.
Cool visuals, frustrating gameplay (why put a limit on how often a superhero can use their superpowers??), but again... you took would you could get back then.
If I didn't grow up with it, I would probably hate this today.
But I did grow up with it, and I don't hate it today. Fantastic use of the lore, it took other X-Men games over a decade to catch up.
But I did grow up with it, and I don't hate it today. Fantastic use of the lore, it took other X-Men games over a decade to catch up.
This game is bad. Each playable character represents a life and you can't get him back once you die as him from what I played at least. There also aren't continues and it's piss hard. Music sounds like farts and level design is more mazelike than it should be. I got stuck a bunch of times and ran out of energy to keep pushing forward at about level 4. Maybe I'll try again another time but like idk man
Kind of a shame, because save for a few crippling design choices, this is much stronger than the average licensed platformer. It looks pretty good, sounds pretty good, feels pretty good, does the characters justice, and has a relatively well-presented story. Unfortunately, it's way too hard all-around and getting through the levels and fighting the bosses is a matter of puzzle-solving -- sometimes intentional, sometimes not. Just a bunch of individual moments of amateurish level and puzzle design (with apologies to that infamous system reset trick that makes the game impossible to beat on Sega Nomad, lol) and an overall difficulty curve that's way too high to be enjoyable.
(Looking them up, I am super duper not surprised to find that this team also did the Spider-Man animated series game which has ALL of these EXACT same problems but about ten times worse (despite coming out later!), and they also did NOT do the sequel to this, X-MEN 2: CLONE WARS, which is a huge improvement)
(Looking them up, I am super duper not surprised to find that this team also did the Spider-Man animated series game which has ALL of these EXACT same problems but about ten times worse (despite coming out later!), and they also did NOT do the sequel to this, X-MEN 2: CLONE WARS, which is a huge improvement)
This game had so many cool ideas going for it. First off: how distinct each of the four playable X-Men were. Cyclops' optic blasts are indispensable for taking out tough enemies from safe vantage points. Nightcrawler is not only the most maneuverable (thanks to his teleportation and his acrobatic dive-kick) but also can abuse his teleportation frames for temporary invincibility. Gambit has good melee range but suffers from tall people problems (he can't duck under projectiles). Wolverine gradually recovers health on his own, but also loses health if he tries to use his claws when his mutant power bar is empty.
The stages are also very different from each other, invoking subtly different genres (the Savage Land has strong platforming elements while the Shi'ar stage is more of a straight brawler). My pick of the bunch is the Excalibur Lighthouse, which almost feels like a survival horror game - there's a generally creepy atmosphere, and aside from three bosses, you spend most of the level exploring the lighthouse and evading ghostly enemies you can't damage.
Where it loses points is how unforgiving it is, both in individual segments as well as in its general format. A lot of the elements of the game necessitate trial and error, such as the many blind jumps in the platforming segments, and the bosses which have both a small hitbox as well as a very small time window in which you can hit them. One particularly dick move is the regular enemies in the final level who have a projectile that can kill you in one hit unless you know the very counterintuitive way to survive. Now I can deal with hard games, but the game punishes failure very severely. You don't actually have lives; the four X-Men are your lives. So once a character dies, that's it for them (they are thankfully revived for the final level though) - you get kicked back to the character select to pick another member, and have to start the stage over. This, combined with the sometimes obtuse boss solutions, makes the game needlessly frustrating. I saved state before fighting Apocalypse, and fought him for about 20 times before consulting a guide for the strategy (that I don't think I would have gotten on my own, even after another 20 attempts), and I can only imagine what it would have been like if I had to play through the entire level every time I died (and started from the beginning of the game every four times).
I should mention that you can actually switch to another playable character in the middle of a stage, which gives you a bit of a lifeline in case you're about to die (each X-Man has their own lifebar). But, I assume in a bid to preserve it's pretty insane difficulty, there's a limit to how many times you can switch each stage. Given how different each character's abilities are, and that much of the game is deliberate and methodical as opposed to balls-to-the-wall hectic, I wish they didn't have that limit. This would have added a slight 'puzzle' slant to the game where you could switch to the character whose abilities best matched up with the challenge you were facing. That, plus the implementation of some sort of password or lives system, could have turned this game into a classic.
The stages are also very different from each other, invoking subtly different genres (the Savage Land has strong platforming elements while the Shi'ar stage is more of a straight brawler). My pick of the bunch is the Excalibur Lighthouse, which almost feels like a survival horror game - there's a generally creepy atmosphere, and aside from three bosses, you spend most of the level exploring the lighthouse and evading ghostly enemies you can't damage.
Where it loses points is how unforgiving it is, both in individual segments as well as in its general format. A lot of the elements of the game necessitate trial and error, such as the many blind jumps in the platforming segments, and the bosses which have both a small hitbox as well as a very small time window in which you can hit them. One particularly dick move is the regular enemies in the final level who have a projectile that can kill you in one hit unless you know the very counterintuitive way to survive. Now I can deal with hard games, but the game punishes failure very severely. You don't actually have lives; the four X-Men are your lives. So once a character dies, that's it for them (they are thankfully revived for the final level though) - you get kicked back to the character select to pick another member, and have to start the stage over. This, combined with the sometimes obtuse boss solutions, makes the game needlessly frustrating. I saved state before fighting Apocalypse, and fought him for about 20 times before consulting a guide for the strategy (that I don't think I would have gotten on my own, even after another 20 attempts), and I can only imagine what it would have been like if I had to play through the entire level every time I died (and started from the beginning of the game every four times).
I should mention that you can actually switch to another playable character in the middle of a stage, which gives you a bit of a lifeline in case you're about to die (each X-Man has their own lifebar). But, I assume in a bid to preserve it's pretty insane difficulty, there's a limit to how many times you can switch each stage. Given how different each character's abilities are, and that much of the game is deliberate and methodical as opposed to balls-to-the-wall hectic, I wish they didn't have that limit. This would have added a slight 'puzzle' slant to the game where you could switch to the character whose abilities best matched up with the challenge you were facing. That, plus the implementation of some sort of password or lives system, could have turned this game into a classic.
Although it is quite an interesting attempt, it feels really stiff and it definitely needs more polishing.
Love this game. The memory of calling the 1-800 Videogame hotline in the 1990s to understand how to reset the computer to advance in the game. Still feels wrong. Now I can't even get to that level, so the challenge is there!
Pretty freaking frustrating and kinda bad, but a nostalgic classic to me, nonetheless.
Whenever I invoke my made-up genre of Tall Platformers, the game I am most often trying to invoke is this one. It's like halfway an action game and halfway a puzzle game, but it's not really good at either, but dang look how big those sprites are. This game is, at best, fine. It's got a neat trick in Mojo World which I'm sure has been covered in some other review on here. It's mainly worth playing at this point just to see what kinds of things licensed games tried to be when the emphasis was on making sure people knew exactly which licensed characters on the super hero team you were looking at.
Actually completed the game this time and it is a fucking chore from front to back. It features the same mechanic as War of the Gems where you switch between one-life characters, but it's really not done well and it appears to have limited use, which got me softlocked in stage 4 the first time I played this if I recall correctly, due to being unable to use Nightcrawler to warp back up from a hole just too low to jump out of. It also has consistently terrible hitboxes and collision, most notably on platforms and bosses. Sound effects are also horrible and most of the music sounds like this, like the pure embodiment of the weaker side of the Genesis' sound.
Nothing about this game is good honestly, but oddly enough it's one of the best sellers out of the console library, selling over a million units. I have to wonder how many kids asked for it under the assumption it was a console port of Konami's X-Men beatemup in arcades (which, frankly, is rather middling anyway).
Nothing about this game is good honestly, but oddly enough it's one of the best sellers out of the console library, selling over a million units. I have to wonder how many kids asked for it under the assumption it was a console port of Konami's X-Men beatemup in arcades (which, frankly, is rather middling anyway).
I watched a YouTube video about how bad the soundtrack this is and on some other genesis games and it was the first time I’ve ever heard someone describe it as “farty,” and I have to say that is exactly the appropriate word for this phenomenon, a word that once you hear it and recognize what kind of Genesis sound it means you can never unhear it for the rest of your life. I know I’d like an explanation as to why every year everyone blasts Webster’s Twitter account with “why is ‘WAP’ in the dictionary” kind of shit but is completely silent on “why is ‘farty’ (adj., regarding the sound a Genesis game makes with music composed on the G.E.M.S. system) STILL NOT in the dictionary?”
Also they expected us to soft reset the game right before the last stage. Whoops, you accidentally reset your whole game! Sorry about that! Don’t reset the whole system next time dumdum, just the computer within the game! God, the fucking sheer dripping contempt the developers had for their own customers back then, you could put a bucket underneath and make a nice gooey maple syrup out of it
Also they expected us to soft reset the game right before the last stage. Whoops, you accidentally reset your whole game! Sorry about that! Don’t reset the whole system next time dumdum, just the computer within the game! God, the fucking sheer dripping contempt the developers had for their own customers back then, you could put a bucket underneath and make a nice gooey maple syrup out of it
Difficult as all hell. To beat one of the final levels you have to physically reset your console to progress.
This was one of the first sega games I got. Game was pretty hard, but very memorable. I played it a lot trying to get to the end. I eventually did after years of trying to figure out what to do in Mojo's stage. It's pretty creative and inventive. The characters were about to be exploded or something and Professor X kept shouting we need to reboot the system and I couldn't figure out what to do. You actually have to press reset on your console for the game to continue. That's some Kojima level shit.
This was the second game I ever bought for Sega Genesis, with the first being Mortal Kombat. I was way late to the Sega party, and man this was one of the games that made me so glad I got one. The graphics were pretty freaking sweet for the time. I really like the soundtrack a lot, even though there was much better to follow not too far after it released. The story was pretty standard fare for comic to game translations were concerned back then. I tried playing through it again about a year ago and forgot how punishing the lack of direction this game gives you is. If they were to release a game like this in modern times it would most likely be torn apart. Sign of the times I guess.