365//365: Day 239 – X-Men (GEN) [PP]

The X-Men have had a rather unceremonious life in the video game world. From the borderline broken antics of Spider-Man & The X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge, to the completely broken Uncanny X-Men on the NES, you could say that Professor Xavier’s students have had a rocky first and second period. X-Men on the Sega Genesis does little in the way of making their third period more enjoyable than the last two. While the world and the inhabitants of it are vivid and full of color, the rest of the package really doesn’t fare as well. The controls work well enough, with each selectable mutant having distinct advantages and disadvantages with their offense and defense. The problem starts with health and mutant power refills. Yes, your mutant powers are dependent on a bar of the same size, placed underneath your health bar. It regenerates about 5% every 15 seconds, with a replenishment found every 10 minutes. Your health doesn’t regenerate between stages either, so finishing a stage with three out of four characters near death renders them useless for your later progress. Enemies are a bit too plentiful, managing to occupy too much space in the later stages, leading to health loss, leading to a useless mutant. The predominant failure comes with the audio, which is your typical Sega Genesis blend of underpowered sound effects and laughably amateur music. Still, there’s a certain charm to X-Men. The visuals are quite a treat for the Genesis, the controls are diverse and work well (though the mutant powers are under developed) and it’s still the only video game that requires you to press the Reset button in order to progress past a later stage. Unfortunately, you may want to press the other button on the console more often than not.

X-Men is one fondly remembered title that's best left that way. Father time has not been kind on this once uncanny video game.

Rating: 5.4