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).