X-Men

"A rough start for the X-Men, with some glaring flaws"

X-Men is the first of three X-Men games that found their way to the Game Gear during the mid 90s. It showcases seven playable characters and six levels of classic platforming action.

These games come from an era when the storyline wasn't all that important. Just a couple paragraphs or a page in a game manual. The actual game doesn't offer anything by way of storytelling. Instead, it gets us right into the action. The stories for all three of the Game Gear X-Men games are remarkably similar. Several members of the X-Men team have been captured by an arch villain, and the two remaining team members must rescue their friends and confront the arch villain while combating hordes of the villain's henchmen. That's pretty much all there is to it.

We have two characters available at the beginning of the game. In this case, it's Cyclops and Wolverine. Each of the first five levels houses an imprisoned member of the team, who is guarded by a boss character. After the boss is beaten, the imprisoned character becomes playable. We can play the first five levels in any order. After that, we proceed to the final level.

Playable characters include Cyclops, Storm, Rogue, Wolverine, Iceman, Psylocke, and Nightcrawler. Each character has his own style of attack and his own mutant power, which can be used when it's activated. Some of the characters are way underpowered here. But if the games were true to comic books (or the movies, for that matter), some of these characters would be nigh invulnerable. To add a level of challenge to the game, the designers gave the characters a mutant power gauge. When his power runs out, he can't use his super powers anymore. A couple of the characters are shooters (they fire a projectile of some sort at their enemies). Most of them are melee combatants, attacking at close range. Some can fly.

Power-ups replenish your health and power, and there are many of them scattered about the various levels. There's a decent variety of bad guys to fight, most of which fire bullets or lasers. Level designs range from linear side-scrolling to quite labyrinthine, and all are pretty large. This game offers us a good deal of exploration through a variety of locales, including a mansion, a city, a jungle, underground caverns, a sewer system, and a high-tech stronghold. Even the straight forward linear levels encourage us to explore, as there are power-ups atop buildings and in caves underground. The labyrinthine levels are full of alternate paths, dead ends with power-ups, and numerous extraneous areas to explore. The level designers did a great job on them, giving us a lot of terrain to cover.

The boss characters here tend to be way too tough for their own good. All are incredibly challenging, and they require strategy to beat. Their attacks are very damaging, and they tend to have a lot of health. Some of the player characters are dramatically outmatched here while others have an easy time of it. On the whole, this is a hard game, one that requires practice to beat. Each player character has one life. If he's defeated in battle, he's out of the game and no longer playable.

Visually, the game is just average. Backgrounds all look good, sporting some nice scenery. The characters are rather small. They're identifiable, but there's not much detail. I prefer the larger character designs in Gamesmaster's Legacy and Mojo World.

Our sound department is a mixed bag. For the most part, unobtrusive techno-dance music plays in the background. There's one level with music that is quite annoying. Sound effects are rather poor. Punches, laser blasts, optic blasts... all are pretty lackluster. This game doesn't have anything by way of snazzy effects. This is a fault I overlook because it's a fun game.

All three of the X-Men games on the Game Gear were brought to us by the same design team. This was their first attempt, and it suffers from some notable flaws that set it apart from the other two (very difficult bosses, small character graphics, a mutant power gauge that continually drains while it's activated). The designers had to confront a few game-play issues and work on larger character designs before arriving at the awesome Gamesmaster's Legacy, my favorite of the three. Still, this is a charming game in its own right. Magneto's stronghold at the end is a nicely designed level.

I love the X-Men games on the Game Gear. Exploring the labyrinthine locales, beating up the bad guys, and collecting power-ups with my favorite character never fails to please. And there's plenty of replay value in the variety of playable characters here. After you've beaten it with your favorite character, try beating it with another. This is a great trilogy of games (X-Men, The Gamesmaster's Legacy, and Mojo World). While they come up short in some areas (most notably the sound effects department), they've got it where it counts. Good-looking environments, expansive levels to explore, and fun game-play.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 02/24/05