One of the Worst NES Games: The Uncanny X-Men

I wasn’t into comic books when I was a kid. There wasn’t a place where I could buy them, so the only way I could learn about them was from video games and cartoons. This was how I first learned about the X-Men.

My friend Joey rented the X-Men game for the NES, and when he told me he had rented it, I got really excited. The game I was thinking about was amazing, but the game I played was terrible. I can’t remember how long we played it.

There were parts of the game that reminded me of the X-Men, but it wasn’t even close to what the cartoon was like. I’m not sure what I was expecting from the game, but this was not it. I remember having no idea what I was doing when I played this as a kid, and now that I know what to do, it’s nothing I would want to play again after this.

One interesting thing about this game is that we don’t know who made it. I can understand that no one would want to put their name on this game, but it does make things a bit tricky when discussing it. We know that LJN published the game before the company was sold to Acclaim, and we might never know who the developer was.

TLDR: I really didn’t like this confusing mess of a game.

Narrative

I have no idea what the story for this game could be. Nothing makes any sense, and the levels don’t feel connected. I’m guessing you have to fight Magneto or some other classic X-Men enemy, but who knows.

Gameplay

The gameplay is bizarre to say the least. This could be anything, and it wouldn’t surprise me if the developer took an existing game and quickly slapped the X-Men branding on it. LJN and the developers they worked with seemed like they didn’t care much about the end product.

LJN was the publisher, and the developers they contracted to make games treated this as a chance to experiment. At least that is the impression I got from all this. Especially here, it felt like the developer was messing around with something because they knew the publisher didn’t care about the game.

There are six characters to choose from, and you have to pick two no matter what. Three characters shoot, and the other three nudge people. I get it, but I don’t like the idea at all. Here is the roster:

• Cyclops
• Storm
• Iceman
• Colossus
• Wolverine
• Nightcrawler

Most of what you’re doing is wandering around aimlessly as you try to kill off your computer controlled ally. You’ll be better off without them, but it won’t make the game any more enjoyable. This is one of those games that needs to be experienced to understand how bad it is.

There are a bunch of enemies and obstacles for you to fight and avoid. It is a top down shooter or adventure game. You really just wander around aimlessly until you find teleporters.

If you manage to beat this game, then you’ll be met with some bullshit that tells you that it isn’t the true ending. Sometimes, developers get creative with this, and it results in something fun. That isn’t what happens here.

The gameplay is horrendous. You can play the game, which is the only saving grace to all this. It is also possible to rope in a friend to suffer alongside you.  

Visuals

If you were to tell me I was playing a hastily put together prototype, I would believe you. X-Men looks like the developer took a bunch of random art assets and threw them into the game. Yes, they tried to assemble them into something, but my god, did it turn out terribly.

Like many of the LJN games for the NES, SNES, and Genesis, the character sprites are simple palette swaps of a single character. You can kind of tell who each of these characters is supposed to be, which I guess helps. This game exemplifies peak LJN laziness in its visuals.

I’m aware that the game was made by someone else, but there are certain things that make you know that it is an LJN game. Most of the games they published feel like they were quickly assembled into something that could be sold.

The levels are a random assortment of assets that don’t really fit together. This is an ugly game. There are no real redeeming qualities about the way this game was put together from a visual standpoint.

This game was released in 1989. Using the other games from this year as a standard, I would say that X-Men is one of the worst looking NES games from 1989. I was hoping to find something I liked in this game, aside from it being an X-Men game, but I didn’t find anything that appealed to me.

Reviews at the Time

It has been an adventure to find reviews for this game. The confusion about the name has been around since the game’s release, which hasn’t helped me at all.

If you want to see an example of the Nintendo Power propaganda machine, then check out the review for X-Men. It doesn’t help that no one seemed to know what to call the game. They gave it a 3/5, if I’m reading it properly, which I’m not entirely sure.

I looked through Game Pro and EGM magazines from the period, but I only found advertisements for LJN games. These publications had to fit as much as they could into them, and I couldn’t find a review for the game. I’m sure there are some out there, but I wasn’t able to find them.

Finding reviews for this game from 1989 and 1990 has been painful. It felt like other publications either didn’t get review copies or didn’t want one. At the time of writing this, I’ve only been able to find the Nintendo Power review, with which I completely disagree.

4/10. This game was worse than Back to the Future. Neither are good games, but X-Men felt like a prototype that was rushed to publication. It is like an abandoned early access game, or similar to what Atari did with their Pac-Man game back in the early 1980s.

Pros

• It’s Playable

Cons

• Horrible Level Design
• Awful Gameplay
• Pointless AI Companion
• Lazy Graphics

Conclusion

I did find one thing that I liked about this game, and it had nothing to do with the gameplay or graphics. I like that I can play any stage I want. After that, it is all downhill.

If my memory serves me correctly, I played this game before Konami’s arcade game. I don’t remember going back to the NES game until I was in high school. That was when I started playing and collecting retro games.

When I researched the game, it seemed that no one ever knew what to call it. The label calls it “The Uncanny X-Men,” The title screen and Nintendo Power call it “Marvel’s X-Men.” I just don’t know what is going on with this thing.

I can’t think of a reason why anyone would want to try this game. It is up there with other retro games where you might dare someone to try, but it isn’t as rewarding to play as something like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. With that game, you can at least make it to the end if you really want to try.

This is just a sloppy game that was pushed out to fulfill a licensing agreement. The nicest thing I can say about it is that you can play the game, which is better than most unlicensed NES games.

If you liked this post, please check out my other reviews of NES games like Back to the Future or Superman.