Every X-Men (Sega Genesis) Game Reviewed

X-Men games were fairly popular during the 16 bit Sega Genesis and Super Nintendo era and For good reason, it was right around the timeframe when the 90’s X-Men Cartoon were airing on television. The Sega Genesis has four X-Men Games in it’s library Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge, X-Men, X-Men 2 Clone Wars and Wolverine: Adamantium Rage. Today we’ll be covering them in order of release date.

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Spider-Man and The X-Men Arcades Revenge

We’ll start with Spider-Man and The X-Men Arcades Revenge. The game is a cross between the two sets of super heroes. You start off with a Spider-Man level where you’re diffusing different bombs. He’s got his spider senses on his side to find out which bomb to pick up next.

Then it opens up each of the stages where you get to pick any of the superheroes. There’s this guy by the name of arcade who’s sucked up all of the characters into this murder world and each of the X-Men have their own world to play in.

You have Cyclops riding mine carts, shooting lasers at the enemies. You have storm swimming her way throughout the stages and as you make your way through you have to break these meters that rise the tide while picking up air any way you can.

There’s no real direction or path to follow here, you just have to kind of make your way through and figure out where to go next.

Wolverine is in some sort of fun house level fighting these jack in the box guys with Machine guns, clowns running up to you and these toy soldiers he's up against.

There’s Gambit whos racing to the end throwing his cards almost from his knee, what’s up with that? I never once saw gambit throw cards out of his knee in any of the cartoons, what gives?

To me it feels like most of the characters are shrunk down except maybe storm who’s permanently swimming.

The game is filled with some cheap deaths I have to admit. You’ll be playing these stages over and over again. Luckily the music is fantastic in basically every stage. I mean, There are some serious bangers here, especially in the Spider-Man stages. These guys who composed the soundtrack in arcades revenge have some seriously good games under their belts, we’re talking Plok rock and roll racing, Ken Griffey JR Presents Major League baseball. Just give it a listen.

Overall I would say that Arcade’s Revenge is Simply too hard to be considered a great game. Just slightly above average.

X-Men

Next we have X-Men and right off the bat it’s definitely a step up from arcades revenge visually. You get to choose between four of the X-Men Gambit who Finally is no longer shooting cards out of his Knee. NightCrawler who can use his teleport ability to skip through enemies or parts of a stage, Wolverine’s got his claws that he’s got to put away by pressing a button and Cyclops with his laser beams. You also get to use four other X-Men that you can call in and clear the screen of enemies.

What makes the gameplay great in X-Men is the way you can swap out any of the four X-Men during the stages which was great if you just got through a difficult part and are low on health.

One drag is in order to use your mutant powers you have this blue meter here and when it runs out you have to wait until it fills back up again. Come on, tick tock, I don’t have all day. I mean the game is difficult enough, they didn’t really have to make it more complicated by only letting you use your powers for a limited time.

And what the hell is going on with the sound in this game? You got all these bleeps and bloops going on.

There’s even a part in this one where you’re supposed to reset the game and move onto the final stage. This was definitely a gutsy move back in the 90s and overall, remember that this might be the best X-Men game released on a home console up until this point.

X-Men 2 Clone Wars

X-Men 2 has no intro, menu screen, nothing which I thought was really unique for a Genesis game. You’re just thrown into a snowy mess with a random X-Men and have to force your way through the first level of the game.

You get to choose between Beast, Cyclops, Gambit, Night Crawler, Psylocke and wolverine. The mutants don't have their meter run out like in the the game prior but rather allow you to charge up your meter to generate a stronger attack. This unlocks the game and makes it a blast to play.

Each of the characters have their strengths and weaknesses. You have beast who can take a bit more damage but is more powerful. Gambit can throw his cards in all directions, Cyclops with the laser attack.

Nightcrawler can climb onto walls and teleport which is more of the stealth assassin of the bunch. Wolverine hits you with that uppercut slash guns blazing and Psylocke has some killer agility.

Wolverine is the only character that can use regenerative healing. Don’t expect it to be quick by any means but is a nice touch to allow for his mutant power to be on display.

The graphics are just fantastic. Check out this stage where you have to escape and there are giant sentinels everywhere as you make your way through the fiery blasts. The sprite work is fantastic, Each of the characters looks like they were drawn out of a comic book and brought to the Sega Genesis.

It’s also got a coop mode that you can grab a buddy and go through each of the levels together. This didn’t work as well as I’d hoped since the camera scrolls in favor of one of the players or doesn’t scroll at all.

The story really ties into the comic books as to what was happening back in 1995 where the Phalanx race have returned and are building a sentinel manufacturing facility. Now Professor X sends out the X-Men to destroy the Phalanx Virus and it really puts the X-Men atmosphere together quite well with the bright colors and great gameplay.

X-Men 2 the clone wars is a really difficult game. Probably one of the hardest games on the Sega Genesis. All of the great things going for X-Men 2 will make you want to keep coming back for more.
The best part of X-Men 2 the clone wars is the ability to choose between the characters and really unleash them on each of the stages to the best of their abilities.

Wolverine Adamantium Rage

The developers of Wolverine Adamantium rage were different on the Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis releases. The SNES got Bits Studios and Genesis owners got Teeny Weeny Games. Yes, you don’t need to get your ears checked, Teeny Weeny Games, I swear I’m not making this up.

Where do I begin? The cutscenes are really well put together and give you the whole comic book feel like in maximum carnage. Then it goes downhill real quick, Let’s start off with the first enemy in the game.

You’d think that pressing the A or C button would like you take it out without any trouble. Well think again. You have to press up to swing your claw like Andre Agassi. I feel like I’m swatting at flies while the enemies are just crushing me with overpowered weapons. The hit detection is terrible.

To make things worse, stopping takes at least a second or so in most cases. I feel like I’m on hockey skates in every level, including the ice level and the star of the show is Wayne Gretzky instead of wolverine.

There’s a health meter on the top left hand corner in the form of a percentage. You can stop and regen your health if you’re in a safe area. Problem is, it takes insanely long to actually get your health to a manageable state. Hold on let me just fire up my coffee maker, it’s going to be a while. Better yet, I’m going to go farm some coffee beans, maybe when I get back I’ll be at full health.

Wolverine has to turn around so slowly in case you have an enemy right behind you. He does like a full 2d turn around like he’s a runway model of some sort.

To think that wolverine is a lot of people’s favorite X-Men is a shame that we had to whiteness this janky mess of a game. Wolverine is such a sloth in this game and this is one that should be forgotten.

Wolverine Adamantium rage is just one of those games that if you paid good money for this on the genesis, I feel your pain especially if you want to take it out of your genesis and give it a hulk smash. The rage meter was really building while at least trying to play the wolverine game on the Sega Genesis.

So if I had to rank the X-Men games on the Sega Genesis from worst to best, I would have to go with:

Wolverine Adamantium Rage
X-Men: Arcade's Revenge
X-Men
X-Men 2 The Clone Wars

Every Mutant has it’s own strengths and weaknesses, the levels are just massive that give you the time to use all of the powers however you want.