X-Men Arcade

Memories can sometimes play tricks on us...I am happy to say that X-Men Arcade lived up to my memories.

I played this game alot in a local arcade & always had a blast with my friends! The XBLA version is a nice representation of a classic arcade game.

Plus, if you were one of the people that picked it up for 200 msp like I did, it was a steal!

My biggest complaint is people backing out of online games (still missing that one Mystique 6-player achievement).

We all love side scrolling beat-em ups. What better feeling is there, then teaming up with your friends and beating the hell out of hordes of bad guys with pockets full of quarters. We would stand for hours in one spot with both arms out playing arcade games until your mother calls the shop, to get you home for dinner. I have fond memories of playing X-Men in the arcades with all my friends. When i found out X-Men Arcade was coming to XBLA, i went out and bought 800 MSP for a first day purchase. Did the game stand the test of time? What are the changes and or updates? Lets take a look.

The game still looks awesome. Not much has changed in the way of an HD update, but the colors are vibrant and the art is 16 bits of pure joy. Characters still look like walking tanks, with choppy animations (especially the bigger ones). The controls have been speeded up a bit for analog use. The levels are very detailed and go through a bunch of locations. This game gives you the option to play both the US version and the Japanese version. Theres not much of a difference between both of them, but in the Japanese version, you get random power-ups dropped on the levels for you and your buddies to fight over (NO, thats MY power PILL!). The character selection is still limited to the original arcade cast of 6 guys (Dazzler, Wolverine, Storm, Colossus, Nightcrawler, or Cyclops). Sadly there was no more characters added to the new game. The point of the game is to make it to the end to defeat Magneto. The controls are as straight forward as ever, Thumbstick to move, an attack button, jump button, and super powers. You can also jump kick which helps get out of a sticky situation. So is there anything wrong with such a great arcade throwback? Maybe.


Back then in the arcades in real time, it seemed like the game would never end after spending all those quarters. But unfortunately this game seems to be over very quickly with a full party of six people (there's even an achievement for beating the game in less then 25 mins). This is why. With the ability to Spam your super powers, then die, only to come back to life with more super powers, AND infinite continues, the game itself is a breeze to beat. I wanted to love this game so much when i first picked it up, but its truly just for hardcore fans of X-Men or old school arcade beat-em ups. Lucky for me i am both, but it still lacks alot of stuff that could have been added to lengthen its replayability factor. I would say try the demo before a purchase (800 MSP), or just wait for a deal of the week if your not a big fan of X-Men or brawlers.

Okay, so I'm not the biggest X-Men fan out there but I did watch the cartoon series when I was a kid. Even though I had never played this game before, I loved seeing all those characters the way they were (kind of) in the 90's show.

I found the controls to be some of the best I have seen in any arcade beat-em-ups. Usually, those types of games feel slow to me, but with X-Men everything seems fast and very responsive. Much better than TMNT 1989 or Streets of Rage (even though they're both great).

The game also looks very pretty in its whole. The 16:9 ratio is obviously a plus here ;) Menus are just as cool as the rest of the visuals.

Liked it a lot ;)
P.S. Turn the smoothing filter off, the game looks better without it!

If you can remember playing video games at an arcade, then you must remember the highly popular Xmen arcade game! In it's huge two screen arcade cabinet that allowed players to take control of 6 classic Xmen characters to battle Magneto, the master of magnet, and his mutant army has finally been released onto XBLA! 

Xmen the Arcade Game is pretty much a straight up port of the old arcade classic.  Little upgrading was done to the XBLA version.  The few changes that were done add a nice little touch. There are 3 difficulty levels to choose from. An English version to play as well as a  Japanese  version.  The number of enemies also scale to the number of players. They also did a nice job implementing the Xbox Live Party feature into the game, making it easier to team up with friends. The graphics look okay as is but it would have been nice had they been remastered to look better on hd TVs.

Besides wishing for some updated graphics, the only issue I had with the games was some connection issues while playing co-op over Live.  It had some strange quirks that need to be patched right away. Jigsaw and I played through the entire game a couple of times and ran into problems each time. Besides the normal lag there would be instances where the game would freeze and when it returned we would still be in the same match but playing different games. On my screen I would see Jigsaw up in the corner punching the air but on his screen he was actually punching enemies and I was hitting nothing. One of us would then have to end his game and rejoin the other, which started to get annoying after awhile.

This game would have been a steal at 5 dollars, 10 dollars seems a bit to high for what it has to offer. However if you grew up in the '90s I'm sure you won't have trouble spending the money to take a trip down memory lane!

I'm interested to see what a younger generation thinks of the game. It's a pure classic arcade brawler- it's short, filled with cheesy dialogue and puts a limit to your power usesge! But back in the '90s we didn't care because we were finally playing a game as the Xmen!

Let's just get this out of the way: I AM A HUGE X-MEN FAN. Okay, that being said, I LOVE THIS GAME. If you played it in arcade and liked it you should definitely pick it up, it's by far one of the best side scrolling beat-em-ups on XBLA! The game also provides great replayability with the addition of the Japanese version of the arcade game, that (along with being a helluva lot easier) has fallen enemies drop power pills to give you more Mutant bang for your buck!

X-Men Arcade is one of those few nostalgic titles that are still a blast to play even now. Sure the graphics look dated but when you have 6 people playing co-op over Xbox Live it is a riot. For the most part things run smoothly but every few levels things would get very laggy and someone would get kicked from the room. Fortunately when that does occur the game handles it and keeps the room going for both parties. So, you don’t lose your place and get thrown back to the menu. Most of the time you can just jump right back into the game in progress but it would be nice if the issue did not occur in the first place.

The game play is classic beat’em up with just one attack button, jump and your special mutant power. The whole game takes maybe 40 minutes to complete and normally less than that. There is even an achievement for doing it in less than 25 minutes. All of the achievements are fairly strait forward to get as long as you can get a group of 6 people playing together and working towards them. You’re going to have to play through 6 times at least to get tall 200 gamerscore points but with both the USA and Japanese Roms available and multiple difficulty levels there are options to keep things interesting.

X-Men is a great trip down memory lane and still a lot of fun to play. It is just too bad there are network issues to flaw the otherwise great game.