After nearly two decades since X-Men arrived in the arcade, is this classic beat ’em up better left as a memory?
Re-releases of classic games are an odd group as your enjoyment of the product is generally more reliant on your nostalgia than it’s actual quality. The very notion of being able to take a good replica of a childhood favorite arcade game in your pocket with you, might be enough for many, but read on as I attempt to spoil one of your childhood memories.
For those who weren’t visiting arcades twenty years ago then you should know that X-Men is a multiplayer beat-em up much like the old Simpsons and Turtles arcades that were released just a couple of years beforehand, but a little more advanced. You can choose between six X-Men and X-Gals and fight a fist full of bosses along with series of enemies who are mostly made up of the same few foes painted different colors. The game is roughly half an hour long and with infinite continues the only real challenge comes down to how high you can score before your lives are depleted, although the OpenFeint achievements also set some pretty good goals for added replayability. The biggest issue with the gameplay is that it just doesn’t offer enough variety, with a limited selection of available moves and foes, the combat becomes quickly repetitive. Multiplayer restores some of the entertainment, but if you can find a buddy with the game be prepared to jump onto the same wireless network and exchange IP addresses. Fortunately through all of this one of the most entertaining aspects of the original remains untouched: It’s still littered with terrible voices over the absurd story, it’s all just so bad that it’s good.
The transition to onscreen controls here isn’t a graceful one and the simple act of moving around can often be troublesome. Where as many games have worked out a few tricks with the onscreen directional pad where a direction will continue to be active even if your finger should drift off the small area on the screen, X-Men requires that you press exactly on one of the four directions. An issue such as this would be a huge problem for any game that requires a lot of accuracy and it can still be an issue here as you’ll often find yourself with enemies on both sides and you’ll need to change direction quickly but without any major consequence to death it’s easy to shrug an issue like this off.
Re-releasing old arcade games on Android can be a great thing, but when the game’s premise revolves around cheap tricks to kill you and use up the quarters of yours and your buddies, then much of the old magic is lost once the quarters are never-ending and there’s no buddies around. There’s nothing wrong with taking a walk down memory lane, but at $3 for half an hour of entertainment, it’s an expensive stroll.
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