Spider-man and the X-men in arcades revenge! Now that is a title you can't say three times fast. I always call it Spider-man and the X-Men, since as a kid I had no idea who Arcade was. In fact, I think I've only seen him appear in the comics a handful of times. Why put him as a main villain in a pairing of Spider-man and the X-men? Oh hey, said it three times!



What to say about this one? Well, my half brother when he was staying with us had a super nintendo. So that opened up a whole other section of my old rental place to me, nd I guess him too. One game that we rented was Spider-Man & The X-Men Arcades Revenge. I remember him leaving to go back with his mother and taking the game with him. Eventually ending with us being charged late fees for the game. That is partially why we changed video places when I was a kid.



The controls vary from stage to stage. Character to character. One button attacks another jumps. You have another attack button. And depending who you are you can have your claws come out, shoot lasers from your eyes, or swing from a web. To start off with your Spider-man on a mission to collect bombs or something. You use your spider-sense to track them down. I love watching people play this and not have any idea what their doing. Swinging and jumping are all difficult. Typical of LJN licensed games. I must say that when I replayed it, I found the controls not to be that tough. Maybe that learning curve is to people that don't play a lot of games? I don't know for sure.



After this first stage you're given the option of picking between Spider-man and several of the X-men: Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm, and Gambit. Not a bad selection of characters. Wolverine can turn his claws on and off when fighting enemies. His levels take place in a toy box carnival type world. His second level in particular being an interesting one where Juggernaut chases you. I should point out the brown and tan costume Wolverine wears. Everyone loves the fan favorite brown and tan. Cyclops has a level full of pitfalls and ranged combat with his laser blasts. His levels require you to ride around on some mine cards blowing up explosives along the way. I also want to point out his costume, its this giant white X over a blue outfit. If I ever get in a position to do X-Men comics, Cyclops is wearing that outfit. Storm has underwater levels where you have to manage her air supply and pick up power ups for her weather powers. And Gambit. Gambit has one of the coolest levels in all of video games.



Gambit's first stage has you being chased by a giant rolling spike ball. That makes no sense at all for any reason. You fight robots. Mostly chess pieces and card related stuff. I can't figure out the why of it, but its there. Like most things in a comic book, just sort of go with it. I always have that problem with the X-men especially. So many characters show up and I don't know who hardly anyone is. Even now I can't tell if Gambit is a good guy or a bad guy in the comics. I've a friend whose favorite character is Gambit. Every game with Gambit he loves. Mutant Apocalypse, Marvel Vs Capcom, X-Men Legends 2, all that stuff. He's a gambit dude. Not just his level here, but in general. At least once when I started up a conversation about comic book stuff, I got asked what was going on with Gambit. I tried to explain, but I ended up telling them to go to Wikipedia. If you can decipher all that stuff about Apocalypse and Marauders.



Every character has a second level as well, but no one can beat this game. I can't. I've tried. I've tried and tried. The game has too much going against you and takes far too long a time investment to really do. I've come close before. Beat almost all the levels before, but you run out of extra men eventually. Wide bottomless pits are the most devastating. Enemies do far to much damage. You're at a disadvantage. I still like this game, despite all the times I've died playing it and having never finished it.

I found a video of Cyclops level on the you tube.


Today I pulled out the genesis version. Controls weren't as difficult as I recalled at all. Game had lost none of its difficulty. I beat the first level with the bombs no problem. Then I decided to just go through each selectable character's first stage and hopefully I would have enough leftover chances to try each one. Spider-Man's first level killed me. Took to many hits, tried to kill this one robot guy and he was in such a position that when I tried to hit him he would hit me. I took to many hits and died. Wolverine's first level killed me. I don't know what happened. Usually I can beat Wolverine's stage, but for some reason I thought it would be funny to punch saw blades and make that strange sound effect. Took too much damage, couldn't collect enough hearts to regain my life and died. Cyclops level killed me. Rode down the mine carts, then took a missed jump, but then just before I fell onto the tracks and died of electrocution, I paused the game. That's a new habit I've broken into now. Pausing a game to admire my death. Unpaused and watched sixteen bit electricity course through his body. And then, Storm's level had me beat within two minutes. Gambit's level which made laugh with glee as a giant menacing spike ball chased me, ended way too quickly. I missed a little jump and died. Then the game over words crawled across the screen. One of my gaming dreams is to beat this game. If only just once. I also played a little of the Super Nintendo version and noticed it looked a little better.



There have been a few other LJN Spider-man and X-Men games, but the only one I know of that contains both playable was this one. The only other time that I know of where you can team them up is in Marvel Ultimate Alliance developed by another company many years later. Please video game companies and marvel comics, make more games that team up the X-Men and Spider-man. I like that. Specifically Wolverine, Gambit, Cyclops, one or two female X-men, and Spider-Man should team up in a game. Selectable from the start, not later on in the game like in Spider-Man & The X-Men.

Box arts:





Did you guys ever play Spider-Man & The X-Men Arcades Revenge?