365//365: Day 059 – X-Men: Children of the Atom (SAT)

Capcom knows how to make a good fighting game.

NO! Dammit, other than that audio and visual molestation!

As I was saying….

Capcom has always been the undisputed king of the fighting game genre.

Oh come on! So they made two fighting games that made me want to bite my thumbs off. So what!

Seriously though, if there was a company that knows how to do the fighting game genre justice, it’s Capcom. They not only created a gaming blockbuster with the Street Fighter series, but they created quite a behemoth with their Versus series, that featured Street Fighter and Capcom elite doing battle with Marvel Superheroes. But before Storm was god tiering it up in Marvel vs Capcom 2, she was scrapping the bottom of the tier barrel in X-Men: Children of the Atom. While it was one of the greatest arcade games I have ever played (one I spent two hours of a one hour lunch period playing at a local bagel shop back in high school), how did it translate to the home consoles? For starters, the Sony PlayStation port was a butchered mess of choppy frame rates, slow as molasses gameplay and punishing load times.

That’s why I’m reviewing the Sega Saturn port.

The load times are bearable, if just barely. It’s about 10 seconds for the first match to load, then about 5-6 seconds when you move onto your next opponent. It’s annoying, but certainly a welcome trade off in order to have a more silky smooth gameplay and retaining as much of the animation as possible.

Akuma's second appearance took place in X-Men: Children of the Atom, as a hidden character. As always, he was a complete tool that everyone loved to play as!

Which brings me to the visual presentation….it’s pretty close to arcade perfect. The action is seamless, free of any slowdown and seems to have retained most every animation without much sacrifice. Audio wise, you’ll notice a one second lag between the stage starting and the song beginning. Not a huge deal though. Everything else sounds unremarkable, just like the arcade version. Although that character select theme is pretty memorable.

If you’ve never played CotA before, you’ll notice some drastic changes in its fighting engine when compared to the frantic paced, combolicious entries, like Marvel Superheroes vs Street Fighter and Marvel vs Capcom 2. This is not slap happy, air combo frenzy game like either of those two games. Think of this as the true middle game between Street Fighter and Marvel Superheroes (which, in terms of chronological order, it is anyway). You have a super meter, which goes two levels. At the first level, you can use specific powers that will drain you back down a level. Wolverine can heal slightly, Psylocke can summon four clones of herself to confuse you, and so on. You can perform super moves with a full bar. You can do most every ground based strategy from previous and future Capcom fighters.

The one thing you can’t do is launch an enemy and perform an air combo after the launch. You can do a few cheap juggles, like knock up an opponent with Wolverine’s Tornado Claw, move under your falling opponent and hit a standing roundhouse and then another Tornado Claw, and repeat until they get dizzy or it gets blocked. Colossus has a somewhat air combo, as in if you’re in the air he can chain together four super slow attacks that all link together. A couple other have the same deal, but if you’re expecting a fast paced romp like Marvel Superheroes, you will be surprised, and if you can tolerate a slower paced ground game, it will be a pleasant surprise.

CotA was definitely a ground based fighting game, as the air combo system had not yet been realized.

Which brings me to the only problems I’ve always had with CotA — the roster size and Magneto. While the game was released at a time where 17 characters to choose from was considered a plethora of characters to choose from, the 10 person roster was a bit light. You had your somewhat Ken/Ryu clones (Wolverine/Cyclops) your Zangief clone (Colossus), Dhalsim clone (Spiral) and so on, although no charge characters appeared. I could have gone for at least four more characters to choose from. Hell, you see Jean Grey during Wolverine’s ending!

The other issue I have always had with X-Men was Magneto. I swear, it seems like he’s at a level where no other final boss has ever reached. I can parry every falling comet from Gill’s super in Third Strike 35% of the time it happens and totally dominate him. I could run rings around Seth, who used to be one of the cheapest end bosses in fighting game history. Hell, Akuma in Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD Remix was like Glass Joe compared to Magneto. His hyper grav is unblockable and almost always unavoidable. He blocks everything you throw at him unless he’s flying, and lord help you if you have someone with no fast anti air attack. His magnetic force-field renders him invulnerable for 15+ seconds, while he can dart around and tear you apart. Magneto defines the words frustration, annoyance and cheap. I can only beat him consistently with Wolverine, just like the arcade days!

Juggernaut was an exciting mid boss battle. Magneto though, raised the bar on broken boss design to astronomical levels.

As with the arcade version, X-Men: Children of the Atom on the Sega Saturn is an entertaining fighting game. One that will definitely feel much different to what you will be used to with Marvel Superheroes, and the Marvel vs Capcom line of fighters. It’s a fun two player game, though the lack of air combos does slow down the flow of combat somewhat. But regardless, it’s still an enjoyable fighting game, and one that has aged rather well.

Rating: 8.1