Lets say you're a big comic book fan and close to ten years old. The X-Men cartoon is on regularly and everyone loves it. Lets also say you're a big fan of video games, what happens when X-Men comes to the SEGA genesis? A fun action platformer, that's what. Did you ever play X-Men on SEGA?



Now I am a comic book fan. As a kid, I was foaming at the mouth crazy for comic books. Valiant, Marvel, DC, Image, and any other random comic books I could get my hands on. X-Men of course being the most popular during that era, what with the time travel and age of apocalypse. Just before I was ten years old, the local video place that I so loved got in a new genesis game: X-Men.



In the X-men you pick one of four of the X-Men at the time. Nightcrawler, Cyclops, Gambit, and of course Wolverine. The four of them can use the B button to punch and kick, jump is the C button, and the A button uses your mutant power. Nightcrawler can telaport. Cyclops shoots optic blasts from his eyes, that are chargeable. Gambit can throw chargeable cards out. Wolverine pops his blades out of his hand. Wolverine plays a little differently, he can occasionally go uncontrollably crazy. No really.

Video shows off some gameplay. Shows off how you can switch your characters in mid level. Shows off the fight with Juggernaut.


Levels take you into danger room simulations of places all around the X-Men's corner of the comic book worlds. You'll visit the Shi'ra aliens, you'll fight in the savage land, and you'll even meet up with Mojo in his universe. One thing that I've heard about that I never got to work was in his level, after you beat him, you have to physically hit the reset button. I never got that to work. I made it up to him twice, I think, and both times the reset never works. My reset buttons never work. I've never beaten this game, that I can remember. Boo hoo. Boo hoo hoo. Oh well. Still one of my favorite genesis games, especially since this one was exclusive to the console.

Another cool feature is that you can call for backup from the other X-men. Archangel shows up and can clear out a screen of enemies. Rouge comes out flying and punches bad guys. Storm does a storm. Yeah, I could have said something a little better well though, but storm more or less does a storm. And Iceman shows up doing a slide move that creates an ice bridge for you. Not exactly useful all over the place, but occasionally, maybe, I don't know. Its cool that these other characters are featured. A lot of X-men villains show up as well. Deathbird, Juggernaut, Sabertooth, and Apocalypse all show up for fights. If I'm remembering the game correctly.



Time for a replay! Hooray! Superhero mode for extreme hardest difficulty yay! Now all I did was just run around with each of my X-men until I died. I started with Wolverine and appropriately murdered people. Cyclops laser blasts apparently aren't chargeable, neither are Gambits cards. Must be thinking of X-Men 2: Clone Wars. Nightcrawler's power seems just disappear that power bar of his. He does this sliding dropkick move that had me flying around the screen. Cyclops and Gambit both have a spin jump move. Gambit's packing around that big pipe he used to always use. Wolverine can do a twirly jump move when his claws are out, like whirling death spins. It is just so much to play as the X-Men for me. Even though I didn't even make it to the first boss. I used Storm just on some regular enemies to make sure I was right about her power. I was correct, a regular storm comes out and just attacks enemies. Not that bad of a power up. One power I didn't mention was when you fall off of a ledge, Jean Gray shows up and uses her psychic powers to pull you up. She's in that yellow costume she occasionally wore in the comics and in the cartoon for some reason as well. You'd think she would have read minds and had a second thought about that silly costume. Also fighting Juggernaut on the first level is awesome. He actually looks like Juggernaught, unlike in the Avengers game. He looks like some sort of cyclops robot. Not Cyclops of the X-men, cyclops of greek mythology.

X-Men on genesis was followed up by the extraordinarily awesome X-Men 2: Clone Wars. Lots of other games feature the X-men as well. Spider-Man & X-Men which I already wrote about. X-Men on Nintendo, which I'll write about soon. Please avoid that one. Wolverine had some solo games across all the old school platforms. X-Men had some Street Fighter style fighting games come out. And of course, X-Men Legends 1 & 2. X-Men Mutant Apocalypse is the Super Nintendo solo X-Men game. There are appearances by Wolverine in the Super Heroes War of The Gem game. There are tons more that I've not mentioned, but give me enough time and I'll write about as many X-Men games as I can play. I've played quite a bit of them over the years. The only one directly related to the SEGA X-Men, is the direct sequel to it in Clone Wars. Also an excellent title. Anytime clones are involved you know its good fun.

TV Commercial


American box art


European box art


Did you ever play X-Men on SEGA?

Additional - Last week I wrote about Spider-Man & The X-Men, but for some reason I didn't put up this video. This is a commercial for the game, that I find to be hilarious. It seems like I had set it somewhere and wanted to place it in my article, but apparently I'm silly and forgot about it. Now enjoy it in all its awesomeness.

Spider-Man & X-Men Aracades Revenge commercial.