"I'm glad my cartridge doesn't work any more"

Graphics: 1
Sound Effects: 1
Music: 1
Originality: 1
Play Control: 1
Challenge: 2
Replay Value: 1
Overall: 1

The X-Men are among the most popular comic books characters around, and so it’s only natural that somebody (in this case LJN) made a video game based on them. What isn’t so natural is the way an excellent comic book was transformed into one of the worst video games ever made. Supposedly, Magneto is up to his old tricks, basically causing havoc or something. So Professor X sends a bunch of X-Men to clean his clock. Unfortunately, they only succeed in making me hate them.

Good Points:
There are none. Absolutely none. I have never played a game this bad before, and I hope I will never play one again.

Bad Points:
The very fact that this game exists is a bad point. The game consists of you and another block of colors that is supposed to be an X-Man fighting a never-ending supply of robotic snakes, robotic blocks, and robotic other things. If you don’t have two human players, the CPU will control one of the X-Men for you, which is a horrible thing since the CPU dies almost immediately. Of course, getting another person to play this game with you will be incredibly difficult, and it’s really not worth the effort.

Graphics:
You control blobs of color that are vaguely colored like the X-Men they are supposed to represent (the yellow and maroon blob is Wolverine, the yellow and blue blob is Cyclops, etc), but other than the fact they take up space on your screen, the characters look nothing at all like the X-Men. At least they look better than the enemies, who are single color blobs. The backgrounds are composed of hideously colored hideous drawings, parts of which hurt you (even though they look just like the rest of the background). Bright red, bright green, and bright purple are all colors chosen for the various backgrounds, which makes looking at this game physically painful after a while. Slamming your face into a wall will provide better looking pictures than playing this game.

Sound Effects:
Have a friend punch you in the temple while screaming in your ear. Now you know what the sound effects are like in this game: painfully annoying. They sound nothing like what they are supposed to sound like, instead providing yet another reason to despise this game. The sound produced by Cyclops’ optic beams is the best sound effect in the game, and even that sounds more like nickels rattling inside a jar than like laser beams.

Music:
Worse than the sound effects, if that’s possible. I would suggest turning off the volume, but that won’t keep you from seeing the graphics, and you need to experience all the horrors this game has to offer in order to fully appreciate my hatred of it.

Originality:
Think of X-Men as “Ikari Warriors that sucks.” Or “Commando that sucks.” Or “any other game with the exact type of play that sucks.” I think you get the point.

Play Control:
Think you’re ready to jump over that beam of electricity? Think again pal, because pressing the A button makes your X-Blob hop straight up, and it only stays airborne for a split-second, hardly enough time to cross an obstacle. Storm and Iceman can fly over obstacles, but even that won’t help them against the fact that you have a tough time turning to face another direction, much less fighting off the waves of robotic foes that assault you.

Challenge:
This game is extremely hard. I don’t think it was intended to be quite as difficult as it is, but nonetheless, if you can survive for ten minutes, consider yourself highly skilled. Choosing anyone but Colossus or Wolverine is nothing more than an acceptance of your inevitable defeat, as they are the only characters that can withstand enough damage to get the next health power-up. The bad graphics and poor play control team up with the hordes of robots to destroy you, and they do a pretty good job. If I didn’t personally know somebody who has beaten this game, I wouldn’t believe it.

Replay Value:
If you played this game once, I’m sorry. If you played it twice, you have only yourself to blame.

Overall:
I bought this game for about $5. I eagerly brought it home, thinking, “Wow, an X-Men game for the NES, this is going to rock!” Instead, it was the worst piece of trash I have ever had the misfortune of playing. The game seems to be comprised of screeching blobs that you have only nominal control over who wander about the screen and with the sole mission of dieing as fast as they possibly can. I’d hate to be the kind of loser who writes a review that says, ‘ThiS G4mE sUXX0rS I H8t iT” but that just about sums up my feelings for this game. All my exaggerations aside, this is quite honestly the worst game I have ever played, but it may be worth playing just so you and your friends can make fun of it.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 09/07/02, Updated 09/07/02