X-Men Arcade

X-Men is one of the rare arcade titles that I saw but never played, having seen its wares displayed in a Florida shopping mall arcade around '92. I was swiftly pulled away by parents who saw the glint in my eye and knew full well they didn't spend years' worth of savings on a Dinseyland ticket only for their son to blow the day (and their quarters) on a 2D side-crolling beat'em up.

So eighteen years later and I'm finally sitting down to play the game thanks to a XBLA/PSN re-release, following the likes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Final Fight into the world of HD port glory.It's a bittersweet experience, because while I'd expected the limitations of a game born of the era and that genre, I didn't have the usual wave of nostalgia buffering the eighteen year gap.

You've got the usual licks expected of such a port, graphical smoothing and widescreen support (if you're playing with more than four players) and options to keep the HUD on-screen or off and into the borders that frame the game.

The title follows the genre standards; you progress through multiple levels hacking and kicking a range of noteworthy enemies from the Marvel Comics canon. Robotic mutant-hunting Sentinels (who have somehow been shrunk from their usual building-high size) serving the majority of level-fodder, then the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants for end-level bosses (comic fans will note this is 80s X-Men - Cyclops main squeeze White Queen is still a villain, Nightcrawler is still alive, and Wolverine it garbed in his classic brown costume) with Magneto, Master of Magnetism as the game's big bad.

Nicely Konami has rolled two versions of the game in one package - the US and Japanese ROMs are both available here for selection. For the latter you get to enjoy Japanese subtitles, and while use of your mutant powers saps away at your energy bar in the US version, in Japan you use up collectable orbs before cutting into your life bar.

Each mutant's power doubles as your character-specific special attack, be it the screen-length berserker rage of Wolverine, or the small radius blast of Colossus as the Russian mutates into his organic armour (along with quickly-comedic "Urrggghh!" sound effect.)

Anyone that's played any side-scroller of the era will know exactly what expect and how to exploit tricks to tackle bosses easily. The big draw in X-Men is the six-player online option. It replicates the arcade experience, right down to the occasional bout of slowdown (although we're still unsure whether that was due to a dodgy host connection) and the chaotic on-screen action.

X-Men scales the enemy numbers according to player numbers, and several times during later stages we couldn't tell where we were on screen and what was going on. During later boss fights (which classically throw the same bosses against you again but in greater number), the screen can be ablaze as other players spam special attacks and force everyone into one corner of the screen, making it impossible to see when a boss is about to pull off an unblockable energy-sapping knockdown move.

If you're looking for technical proweress with X-Men, be it in visuals or gameplay mechanics, you're looking in the wrong place. You're best served with either the digital version of Marvel Vs Capcom 2 for cracking animation and excitement or the decent Marvel: Ulimate Alliance games for deeper RPG-elements.

X-Men is a short-lived riot of a game and unless you're a massive comics fan and despite the added player numbers, we'd recommend either Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Final Fight in its stead. At the current cost, it offers too brief and average an experience to warrant essential purchase.