Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge

"Plenty of villains - some making their only cameos in this game !! Worth looking at ;)"

FOREWORD

When I was a boy, there was a shop in the nearest town to the parish I lived that sold second-hand Super Nintendo and Megadrive games ... it is there that I uncovered plenty of gems, including this title ... how does it break down ? Read on ;)

OVERVIEW AND OBJECTIVE OF THE GAME

Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge is a multi-character platform title, in its simplest form. You pick one of the X-Men from a bunch available (you will ultimately have to play with ALL of them, but you get to pick the order yourself), and are then pitted against a series of traps and tricks by the evil Arcade - a freelance Assassin and long-time enemy of the X-Men.

Your objective is, quite simply, to find and slay Arcade, and escape from his amusement park of death ... simple, non ?

GRAPHICS - 7/10

Graphically this is a healthy offering from the Super Nintendo. The characters themselves are quite small in places - Wolverine and Cyclops springing to mind immediately - but the levels themselves are quite sprawling, and very colourful, so there is plenty of eye candy to focus on ...

There are some nice touches graphically too - the villains are all well drawn, and I certainly was able to tell who they were even without the SNES chucking out their names ... and each character has a number of different moves - simple ones, granted, but different ones nonetheless - e.g. Cyclops has his eye beams and can also punch; Storm can create cyclones and fire bolts of lightning; Wolverine can punch or extend his claws and slash, and so on and so forth.

SOUND - 6/10

The sounds aren't the greatest selling point in the game ... the music is upbeat and in some places quite reasonable, but in other parts of the game it's borderline cheesy, and I for one wound up turning it down to play the game.

Some of the sound effects themselves are quite good, such as the gentle thudding of Gambit's cards as they destroy the passable walls in the second stage of his game, or the mechanised laughing of the clowns in the first part of Wolverine's stage.

All in all the sounds are reasonable, but nothing extraordinary.

CONTROLS - 7/10

There are places when you wish the game were easier to control, and there are places when you'll be very happy with the controls. Spider-Man is a perfect example. In some parts of the game he swings and zips about really really well, and very easily ... but in other instances it's really hard to get him to land on that certain ledge, or avoid that certain electrified shrub (or WHATEVER the hell that weed-like thing is !?!?!).

The controls COULD have been better done, but they are perfectly functional, and the game is easy enough to play - the controls won't let you down ;)

PLOT - 7/10

Well it's kinda simple really ... the X-Men are captured, and Spider-Man goes to find them ... from there it's a case of survival of the fittest in a bid to escape from Arcade's clutches - basically it's in keeping with the way Arcade would act, and so is a perfectly reasonable plot for an X-Men (or Spider-Man for that matter) game.

GAMEPLAY - 8/10

Given that there are quite a few X-Men to choose from (Storm, Gambit, Cyclops, Wolverine), and Spider-Man is thrown in for good measure, the game is quite playable. There are a fair few villains to butt heads with (in most cases two per character - Spidey gets the Shocker and the Rhino; Wolverine gets Apocalypse and Juggernaut, and so on), and many of the villains that appear are quite rare - I certainly haven't encountered N'Astirah in any other Spider-Man OR X-Men game I've ever played.

The game is worth playing for those cameos alone in my opinion.

REPLAY VALUE - 7/10

Whilst it isn't the most graphically or sonically impressive offering I've ever played, for a Super Nintendo game it does the genre proud. There are plenty of characters to choose from, and more villains than you can shake a stick at. The replay value to MY mind comes from the fact that many of the villains (I've already mentioned N'Astirah, but Arcade himself is another good example) just don't feature in any other X-Men titles, so it's nice to be able to fight them for a change ...

It is these cameos that have kept me coming back to this game periodically ...

VALUE FOR MONEY - 8/10

Given that this game should be as cheap as the shoes on my feet by the time you read this, I would say that it (as with any other Super Nintendo title you can get your hands on) is good value for money, purely because it's a taste of video games history, and it shouldn't cost you more than a fiver really ... being honest ...

OVERALL - 7/10 (This is NOT an average)

A worthy addition to the X-Men (and Spider-Man) genre/s that brings a host of villains to the fore - many of whom had not been used in video games previously, and many of whom have not been used in video games since. That makes this game a unique piece of video games history.

MAIN GOOD POINTS

* Loads of villains to fight.
* Reasonable graphics and sound.
* Plenty of X-Men to choose from.
* Varied levels keep the game interesting.

MAIN BAD POINTS

* Graphics and sound are just reasonable - not STELLAR.
* The main characters are, in some places, a little on the small side graphically-speaking.
* It would have been nice to see Storm play OUT of water.
* The game is, in parts, rather difficult to complete.

SO SHOULD YOU GET IT ?

Sure - if you can get your hands on a copy cheaply (or you already own a copy and wanna download the ROM to play on your PC), then it's well worth getting your hands on a copy - just to reflect on (not being funny) how far we've come, and how much enjoyment you can STILL get from a title of this age and quality.

LONG LIVE THE X-MEN !! =)

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 08/08/04