PixlBit

Magneto, we meet again - only this time, I don’t need quarters to beat you. Your hordes of henchman and sub-bosses with cheap unblockable attacks - no longer a threat to my allowance! Having to conserve my wonderful, room clearing mutant attacks that eat into my life energy - not this time. You’re getting beaten down as many times as I want, and I only have to spend $10 once, as an electronic transaction. The day is mine!

That’s right everyone, the game you spent countless hours and quarters on at the arcades and movie theatres is back on XBLA and PSN and all the campy nostalgia of the early 90s is back with it. Hopefully the outfits and hairstyles stay lost in time, though. Although many people thought it wasn’t going to be possible for this arcade classic to make its way onto the new console market, Konami and Marvel finally agreed on a deal that allowed the developer, Backbone Entertainment, to recreate with exacting detail X-Men Arcade; one of the best games of the arcade genre, right up there with The Simpsons and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

X-Men takes place sometime during the 21st century when Magneto, with his unstoppable army of evil mutants and sentinels, have started a war with mankind. Six, and only six, of the X-Men are sent after him in an effort to restore peace. Each of the six X-Men you can play as - Wolverine, Colossus, Cyclops, Nightcrawler, Storm, and Dazzler - have the same set of basic moves; punch, jump, and mutant power. Each person’s mutant power is a room clearing attack that will eat into your life each time you use it. You will die, on average, once a minute. Luckily you have unlimited continues to keep going.

Setting out on a plan that makes no real sense, the X-Men travel the streets of New York, go underground, jet to the Savage Land, and eventually outer space onto Asteroid-M. Your opponents range from various sentinels, robots typically attacking all mutants, to lizard men and some sort of giant heads that grow from the ground. At the end of each stage, and sometimes in the middle, you get to fight some classic villains like Juggernaut, Pyro, and Wendigo. The best, and worst, part of the game has been kept with the dialog with such lines as “Welcome to die!”, “I am Magneto, Master of Magnet!” and “X-Chicken!”

With the ability to constantly be hit without fear of 25 cents being drained from your account, you can beat the game in a little over thirty minutes, perhaps one of the issues in the game was that the Konami-Marvel deal wouldn’t let any of the gameplay be altered, so no new missions or characters could be added. Backbone Entertainment did everything they could though to make the game right, letting you set up each game in the various modes it had come in; Japanese vs, American, 4 players vs. 6 players. The online components are actually exceedingly well done, with little lag during the game and matchmaking being insanely fast. I am sure it will wear off eventually, but right now you have to actively try not to get a full game going in a quick match.

For those who never played X-Men, either because you were too young, too old, or living under a rock, this game is something you will probably not enjoy. This game is fun for one main reason, nostalgia. It was designed, like many of its brethren, to do nothing but eat as many quarters as possible from kids lining up to play it. It is difficult and ruthless, as a very small number of hits will kill your character. Of course it doesn’t help being constantly swarmed by different colored enemy models who try every cheap trick possible to beat you.

Nevertheless, I never stopped smiling as I played it, I laughed at every awful line uttered with utmost sincerity. For those who played this game growing up it is well worth the $10 to go online, find five random strangers, pray you don’t end up as Dazzler, and have nostalgia thrown at you.