X-Men

The X-Men is virtually one of the best team of characters for a beat'em-up, but did Konami seize the opportunity to create a memorable arcade?

The premises are all there: choose one (or more, up to 6 players together even though I've never seen such a cabinet where I come from) X-Man among Storm, Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Cyclops, Dazzler and Colossus and help rescuing at first Kitty Pryde, then even Charles Xavier, kidnapped by Magneto and his companions.

An horde of small Sentinels and other minor characters will get in your way, headed by an end-level boss picked-out from the historical X-Men foes (Emma Frost, Cain Marko, Magneto himself...).

The action is interrupted by cartoon-style scenes, developing the plot.

Controlling on of the X-Men will certainly be cool, isn't it? Yeah, it should, but, unfortunately, not in this game: while having a treasure in each character, the game-designers didn't succeed in catching the real essence of the heroes, making them to appear all almost the same.

There are no meaningful differences in the game approach if you choose one X-Man or another (too little changing basically only the special attack).

More negative items: each character has only few different movements, the game is lacking any sort of interaction with the scenery, there are no extra weapons and the enemies (boss included) are dumb.

Can just the 6-players co-op game save this title? Never played it in this way, but I think that 6-players boredom is ultimately the same than 4-players boredom, making me to think about X-Men as a missed chance for a possible blockbuster.

But the question going about my brain is: how can a game released three years before (TMNT, 1989) from the same publisher (Konami) be so much better than this one?

How is X-Men aged?

Media: amusing graphic, but I have the impression that the frames for each character are too few. Movie-style dramatic soundtrack.
Playability: it's easy to start, thanks to the X-men charm and the co-op mode...
Signs of the time: ...but you'll soon realize that the game is flat, like its scenery.
Overall: unfortunately the memory of this beat'em-up released in 1992 was better than reality.