The year was 1992 and I was five. So neither did I play or remember when this game came out. But as I grew older and Fox Kids started airing X-Men the Animated Series, did I notice Nightcrawler and Colossus on the side of arcade cabinets. Then my quarters disappeared.
This Xbox Live and PSN game made by Konami was polished and released by Backbone Entertainment. It is the same game you'll fine in the dusty corner of any forgotten arcade, but made for the stay at home gamer; which helps and hinders the game play. First of all, if you want to beat the arcade game, you're going to need more than $20 and at least five friends. Both were hard to come by at a young age. So this download game is $10 and has multiplayer online so every one can enjoy the full game. Choice given are difficulty, four or six player and which style you want to play. The styles are USA and Japanese. After playing the Japanese game, I realize that American arcades really were just a place to loose money.
In the American X-Men arcade game you had 3 lives, a ten hit health bar and two orbs which represented uses of your super powers. If you use your super powers, you lose life until you're down to your last hit. Then you start using the orbs. So if you even want any help fighting the Blob or the White Queen, just do it like a normal person with punches and kicks. You're just throwing your life away using super powers apparently.
In the Japanese version, which for some reason still is all in English, with just a smattering of Japanese subtitles, the game is much more designed for playing at home on a console. You still have the same health bar and orbs, except you use the orbs first and then you start tapping into your life force for your powers (which isn't canon, but nothing from this game really is.) This means you can at least blow up everything on screen then get your punches in afterwards. The single best reason to play the Japanese version is that it has drop items! Something that would save too many quarters in America, you can pick up extra health and extra orbs for powers. This version makes playing the whole game a much more enjoyable experience.
Now playing and beating the game isn't hard. You don't rack up points, you rack up continues. So if you do well, you can keep on going after you die. But its not like you get 2 or 3 continues each level. No, you get about 100 each time you punch the air. So the game loses any kind of challenge right away. Can't fight Nimrod? Then just die one thousand times and maybe you can finally get a punch in. Even in Expert mode, where you need those 100 lives to get past the first level, no one has to use any kind of strategy. Just power spam until your life is used up, then die and get them all back. It is really the only depressing part of the game, that there isn't anything stopping you from beating this once epic monster of challenge in less than 25 mins. (Which is a trophy.) The only incentive really is to beat it fast with little death to end up on the online leaderboards.
The real treasure is that is a great port from the arcade, includes wonder mutants which any X-Men fan enjoys, yes even Dazzler, so any one a fan of beat-em-ups, X-Men or only spending $10 on the arcade game ever again, this is a fun download that can be beaten a few times with friends.
This takes me back to the days of playing in the arcade at the Methuen Mall, before it became The Loop and then nothing at all. Me and my good friend Nam would sink all our quarters into this and the Simpsons arcade game. My Nightcrawler and Marge were really nothing to write home about.
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