When it came to lively, engaging arcade beat-em-ups in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Konami absolutely dominated the scene. While the company TMNT games and 1991s The simpsons are perhaps the most remembered today, for my money nothing can beat the sheer spectacle and excitement of the 1992s X Men
. Sure, that
TMNT games and
The simpsons Let you and three friends beat up enemies to your heart’s content, but
X Men Arcade came in two variants: as a standard cabinet for four players and as
a deluxe widescreen option that left everyone
six One of his playable characters immediately attacks Magneto’s forces. Six-player support allowed for significantly more chaos on screen, and boy, did the game’s wonderfully vibrant graphics benefit from all the extra scope that the widescreen effect provided. Even in a busy arcade in 1992 that was full of games like…
Mortal Kombat
And
Street Fighter II Turbothis bad boy stood out from the crowd.
The gameplay seems a bit simple by today’s standards, but “simple” wasn’t a bad thing if you and a few friends just wanted to jump into a game and have fun knocking down bad guys as Wolverine or hurling tornadoes at them as Storm . The colorful, detailed graphics made everything look like a cartoon, and who could ever forget when Magneto, self-proclaimed “Master of the Magnet
,” terrified the players by declaring, “X-Men, welcome…to DIE!”? I’m kidding, but X Men was truly a spectacular beat-em-up that made excellent use of its source material.
