1995, Earth.  A race of genetically altered humans known as "mutants" are under heavy persecution.  People are enjoying their widely popular Saturday morning cartoon show, yet they are still incapable of starring in a video game that isn’t outright painful to play… UNTIL NOW. 

I made you a video!  Actually, that’s a lie.  I made me a video, and I’m sharing it with you out of the graciousness of my heart.

To say that X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse is a game that isn’t outright painful might be a bit of a stretch.  It did pave the way for Marvel Super Heroes: War of the Gems a year later, which using much the same engine and concepts, brought intense pain upon any who dared lay hands upon it.  It also competed with X-Men 2: Clone Wars for the Genesis, which, released that same year, out shined it in nearly every non-graphical aspect imaginable.  Yet, Mutant Apocalypse towered upon a foot stool like the lord of flies that it was when placed next to games like the original X-Men for Genesis, its SNES predecessor Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade’s Revenge, or the unspeakable X-Men for NES.  It was still undeniably painful, and yet where these past games cause undesired agony, Mutant Apocalypse seems much more like masochism.  When I’m told just how much this game sucks, I find myself agreeing in an overly pleasant tone.

Ultimately, I believe this game to be a good game, like a good dog might still chew your slippers.  At its core, you have a slug-fest that takes several popular cartoon and comic icons and lets them put their iconic facilities to work in your hands.  Its predecessors all upset fans for denying us this one right.  How often were we stuck with a Wolverine who could only leave his claws out for short durations or a Cyclops who’s beams were tied to an ammo bar?  When playing as these greater-than-life icons, it is frustrating to be limited in our iconness. 

Mutant Apocalypse mostly delivers, where others did not, and does so with a great visual flare to back it.  Cyclops can spam his devastating beams of power, which do considerable damage (albeit a bit slow on the draw), so long as you can perform a quarter-circle "hadouken" motion reliably.  Now, I’ve long since mastered my thumb roll, but in my young teens, I had not.  This is a bit of a sticking point, and the first painful mark it leaves on your fleshy underside.  The SNES comes equipped with four face buttons, two triggers, and even two function keys, should those run out.  This game uses one for jump and one for attack.  Special attacks (you know, the meaty mutant power stuff you signed on to get to experience) are done by performing Capcom trademarked arcane gestures upon your d-pad in conjunction with the attack button.  Four perfectly good buttons go to waste in favor of pimping their beloved Street Fighter.  To further rub it in your face, the game offers a "Training Mode" in which you can play through just the first levels with an extra life and each character having a move or two mapped to the X button.  The only training this accomplishes in practice is to hone your hatred for whoever decided to deny you this button that they obviously took the effort to program into the game.

Speaking of the "first levels", that hits the second mechanic that frustrated us kiddies back in the day.  Each of the five characters, as great as they are, has their own individual first level.  Each begins the game with two lives, and you have to beat all five levels before you can continue on with the game.  Once you’ve done so, you can use which ever character amuses you, but should you lose both lives from a character before the opening stages are completed, it’s a big G.O., and you get to start over.  I find it an interesting mechanic now, but as a kid, I tired of certain characters quickly, and just wanted to play who I wanted to play as.  The game is reasonably challenging, which meant I didn’t see much of the later levels, instead resetting after beating the levels with the characters I wanted to use.  The good news is that if you can clear all five, there’s a password in it for you so that if you’re not dead set on getting the full ending (which requires a passwordless run through), then you never have to see those opening levels again.  Then again, there are only 4 more full levels after that, as many are just boss fights, so skipping on those is cutting out almost half of your game.

I could go on.  The game is hard, yet the AI is borderline-retarded.  Most of the bosses are pattern-factories, and are almost beatable blindfolded, once you figure them out.  Your life bar feels more fragile than rice paper.  Etc, etc.  But, at the same time, Wolverine can climb walls with just his claws.  Cyclops can one-shot a row of minions.  Psylocke is a crazy ninja chick.  Gambit has his cards and agility.  And Beast.  Ceiling ambushes and bouncing on heads with Beast has yet to grow dull.  The game isn’t great.  Good might even be pushing your luck.  But at least the X-Men kick ass.  And that’s all I ever asked of an X-Men game.

 

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