When it came to vibrant, appealing arcade beat-em-ups in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, Konami absolutely dominated the scene. While the company’s TMNT games and 1991’s The Simpsons are perhaps the most widely remembered today, for my money, nothing can top the sheer spectacle and excitement of 1992’s X-Men. Sure, the TMNT games and The Simpsons let you and three friends clobber enemies to your heart’s content, but X-Men arcade came in two variations: a standard four-player cabinet, and a deluxe, widescreen option that let all six of its playable characters tackle Magneto’s forces at once. The six-player support allowed for considerably more onscreen mayhem, and boy, did the game’s wonderfully vivid visuals benefit from all the extra real estate the widescreen effect afforded. Even in a busy arcade in 1992 that was packed with games like Mortal Kombat and Street Fighter II Turbo, this bad boy stood out from the crowd.
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By today’s standards, the gameplay may seem a bit on the simple side, but “simple” was not a bad thing when you and some buddies just wanted to hop into a game and enjoy slashing baddies as Wolverine or flinging tornadoes at them as Storm. The colorful, detailed graphics made it all look like a cartoon, and who could ever forget when Magneto, self-proclaimed “master of magnet,” struck fear into the hearts of players by declaring, “X-Men, welcome…to DIE!”? I kid, but X-Men really was a spectacular beat-em-up that made great use of its source material.
