If you ask people who grew up playing in arcades of the late 80s to mid 90s what kind of games they want to see ported to downloadable services, a lot of them will name side-scrolling brawlers like Final Fight, The Simpsons, and those CPS2 Dungeons & Dragons games. The 1992 X-Men arcade game would also come up frequently, and for good reason; it offered six-player co-op action and until now it hasn’t had a console release. Surprisingly thorough for an arcade port, this version of X-Men is pretty fun and perfect for quick sessions with friends.
Like most games of its kind, X-Men has players take control of one of Marvel’s famous mutant heroes (your choice of Colossus, Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, Cyclops, and Dazzler) in a series of side-scrolling stages while using basic combos to beat up hordes of generic enemies. It’s really easy to learn and play, since the controls consist of move, jump, attack, and an extra button for using your mutant power to clear out several enemies at once. There is a basic story here, told in very short cut-scenes, about Magneto trying to conquer the world... but it’s really just an excuse to go through the game and beat up various iconic Marvel enemies.
While X-Men is easy to play, this port shows more polish than you would expect for such a simple game. Up to four players may go at it offline, and the online mode lets you have up to six players. You even get your choice of which cabinet to play on; the six player widescreen version or a four player rig with less viewing area. From there you can even pick which region’s rules you play by, as the Japanese and US versions of the game are both included and they play a little differently from each other. While not perfect, online play seems to work pretty well overall; lag is present even on good connections but it’s very minor and won’t hurt your ability to play. Much more impressive is the ability to do drop-in co-op; you can start a game with just a few players and have others join in or leave as they please. Given online play is the only way the Xbox 360 version can get six players involved, having it work as well as it does is a very good thing.
One of the major selling points for this game is the early 90s arcade nostalgia, and X-Men for the most part lives up to that. The old visuals are intact, albeit with little adjustments here and there, and the titular heroes are using the same 1989 "Pryde of the X-Men" designs they had in the original release. Even the music is the same, which is great since it had some very nice tracks. The only problem here is the voices, which were redone for whatever reason. Thankfully, most of the new voices sound at least passably close to the old ones and all the great mangled English lines ("Welcome to die!", "Come, X-chicken! I kill you, ha ha ha ha!", etc.) are intact. So long as you’re willing to live with minor changes, X-Men for the most part will live up to your fond memories of the original.
X-Men is gaming’s equivalent of fast food, but in a good way. It’s quick to play, easy to learn, and is the sort of thing that a group of friends can readily agree to play either offline or over the internet. While no one session is going to last you a while, it’s a lot of fun with friends and will probably get a few repeat sessions over several months. Like most of its peers, X-Men gets boring in a hurry if you’re playing alone but makes good ’party fare’, and the developers did a good job porting it. X-Men: The Arcade Game will probably be worth its $10 USD/800 Microsoft Point price for those interested in this kind of game, especially if you have a good group to play it with and expect to do repeat sessions every few months.
