X-Men, the good and the bad

[Thenewguy]

Low frame-rates and ear-piercing sfx appeared to be Software Creations' trademark, at least going by their work on X-Men and Spider-Man.

They were more of a SNES company really, their Genesis stuff always seemed very half assed, I think most of it was just rush ported from SNES to be honest.

This is sooo good.

Yeah this is the one I always think about when people talk about the soundtrack, shame the sound quality is sooo bad in that game, doesn't really bother me though to be honest, this "wasps fighting in a jar" style stuff just feels like one of the facet's of Mega Drive sound to me, for better or worse.

[Aarzak]

Woops, I mistakened Software Creations (Spider-Man/X-Men, Maximum Carnage, Separation Anxiety) with Western Technologies (Genesis X-Men, Spider-Man Animated Series), my bad.

[Bones Justice]

Both X-Men games are cool. I really like how they were fairly true to the source material. The first game actually has a good story, too, with appropriate dialogue for each character. The Danger Room is supposed to be holograms projected over solid objects so the "platform" look to each level makes sense; each level is supposed to be the starting room with different overlays. The idea of the Danger Room gone wild has been done in the comics and the animated show (not to mention Star Trek: The Next Generation). I like how it makes sense that one moment you are fighting in the Savage Land and the next you are on Shi'ar. When you play with two players plus the "helpers", it almost feels like a real team of X-Men fighting to survive, especially compared to other games of this type back in the day. Also, each X-Man plays like his comic-book counterpart and quite differently from each of the others so it's fun to replay with each character.

I see complaints written about this game that the characters are too small. I dunno if they could have made them larger or not but I think they need to be that size to allow all of the action. Could you imagine four X-Men and a couple of bad guys all crammed in if they were twice the size? Though, yeah, it would have been cool if Juggernaut was a little bigger. He's "gianormous" in the Saturn X-Men game, hardly any room left on the screen but very cool!

They also had an awesome print ad for this game:

I think the first was 1 player only

The first X-Men game is also two player co-op. You can even do some cool team-up things like sharing health with your injured teammate. Nightcrawler can teleport a teammate, as well.

Maybe you are thinking of X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse for the SNES. It's a great game but is only a one-player game.

[Tsar]

I found the first one a lot harder than the second one.

But MY fav has to be the second one. What a great game. My fav game ever.

[Bloodreign]

Nah I was thinking the first one, my friend would play it solo, I never got to play the game with him, if I played it it was solo as well. These days I own a copy, and since no one I know still plays these types of games (none of my real life friends do, they are all modern console junkies), I'm stuck playing solo....again.

Now X-Men 2 was a different story, I rented it for my friends Genesis, and I'll be damned if we didn't have a good time alternating between 4-5 people the controllers after we ran out of lives.

Chalk it up to not knowing about the 2 player support all these years ( I do wish I had that SNES Capcom X-Men game to compliment these 2 Genesis ones, all I have is Arcade's Revenge, ugh).

[NostalgicMachine]

I still prefer the second X-Men title to...pretty much all of them.

[Bones Justice]

Chalk it up to not knowing about the 2 player support all these years ( I do wish I had that SNES Capcom X-Men game to compliment these 2 Genesis ones, all I have is Arcade's Revenge, ugh).

The co-op mode is definitely worth playing if you can get someone to join in. I don't have any friends that play retro stuff, either. I can get other people to play by showing up with a Genesis where there isn't anything else. Like at work, most would rather play Sega with me than fill their downtime playing cards or doing crossword puzzles.

X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse is a great game, too, though I haven't played it in years. I don't care as much for playing games alone so though I enjoyed it, I don't tend to go back to it because it's a single-player only game.

[Bones Justice]

Another cool thing about the first X-Men game is that you can call on Jean Grey to fly you to the other player in two-player mode. Maybe they should have added that to X-Men 2, also.

[Saturn Fan]

If this game is ugly then I'd say games like Chakan and Eternal Champions are also ugly.

Agreed on all counts then