This time, as foreshadowed at the end of that last article, we’re up against a very mixed assortment of software. On one hand, we have easily one of, if not the worst, game of this era but then also two of the best. Oh, and The Incredible Hulk.
The Incredible Hulk
Developer: Probe SoftwarePublisher: U.S Gold
Platform: SNES, Genesis
Year: 1994
We’ve previously played the GameGear version of this game, and everything that has been changed save for the obvious graphical improvements (Hulk has movement now in his idle animation!) has been negative. This game is pretty rough.
It's been awhile since I played that GameGear version, but I don't remember the enemies being as frustrating of an experience as in this SNES/Genesis one. They all have some form of ranged attacks, and will uniformly spam them at rapid speeds and it’s often just as soon as they appear on the screen, before you’ve had a chance to react. Weirdly, every attack will miss you if you crouch down. The gameplay became this entirely bizarre dance of me crouching down to dodge an enemy's attacks, then moving forward about half an inch for half a second before crouching down again as the enemy started firing again. They don’t even move closer or away from me as I was doing this; they just stand entirely stationary and keep attacking. It’s so bizarre, and was so frustrating to be an active participant in.
That’s just like the Hulk; slowly creeping up a step or two at a time to punch someone. Really made me feel like the character, the unstoppable rage monster.
You once again turn into Banner when you lose all your health as the Hulk, and this time around it really felt like essentially a slow-burn game over to do so. You can turn back into the Hulk by getting enough ‘gamma pill’ power-ups then getting hit once, but I found so utterly little of them in my time with the game that I never was able to actually transform back. You can also find a gun with up to two shots in it, but it’s so weak that you will never kill anything with it other than boxes that maybe hold a gamma pill. It’s a gun reserved for only breaking boxes; what a fun game.
Be prepared to see this a lot.
Your health is also sort of your power-up meter, as you can only do the actual fun moves when you have more health. It was like this in the GameGear version as well, but here it’s made once again more frustrating by how silly the enemies are. You’re constantly taking little pot shots from enemies just appearing on screen, and so you can rapidly lose health quickly; meaning that you then lose the ability to do anything cool. These special ‘Hulked out’ moves are pretty fun, but they also have some of the strangest button commands to pull off. You can do the classic Hulk power clap, but to do it you have to hit all three buttons at once which is not really the easiest thing to do when also trying to move around and dodge the neverending assail of projectiles.
At least you get to uppercut the Rhino. That’s kinda fun, I guess.
That’s all I have to say about the 16-bit Incredible Hulk. Just don’t bother. I tapped out near the end of the second stage as it just wasn’t worth the time I was spending. How does a game make playing as the Hulk feel this bad? This has been the first instance so far of an ‘upgraded’ 16-bit game being worse than its previous version, not that the GameGear version of this was of particular quality.
Score
2 Gamma Bombs out of 5.
Spider-Man and Venom: Maximum Carnage
Developer: Software CreationsPublisher: LJN
Platform: SNES, Genesis
Year: 1994
This is a game I have advanced knowledge of, and actually a game I’m particularly nostalgic for. This and Turtles in Time on the SNES were some of the first beat ‘em ups I remember playing as a wee cephalopod, and one I’ve always remembered fondly. I was originally going to feature this in my article on my honourable beat ‘em up mentions, but I couldn’t spoil the sanctity of the Marvel retrospective like that. Its purity has to be maintained. Does it hold up after all this time?
It's a basic beat ‘em up but it's filled with just enough small things to make it worth a playthrough at least. There's plenty of extended Spider-Man ally cameos sprinkled around, including very rare video game appearances at the time from Iron Fist (**** yeah, Danny Rand!) and Cloak and Dagger; you can summon them by finding power ups around the stages, and they’ll come in and do the customary screen clearing move.
Thanks, Cloak old buddy; you’re not a terrifying creature of infinite darkness at all.
Spidey has his basic attack button, but he also has a ‘web’ button that has a few different attacks you can do in a sort of weird way. If you tap the button you shoot a little web ball that doesn’t do damage but stuns enemies briefly, and if you hold it down you bring out a little web shield that I never found all that useful. It mostly works, but it is easy to hold the button down for a second too long and pull your shield out accidentally. You can also grab enemies with a web and pull them to you for a grapple which is by far the most useful web ability. The game is also hard as ****; the street thugs of New York have had a serious glow-up evidently as they are capable of beating you senseless quite easily. There’s a lot of them, they will swarm you, and you will go through lives quickly.
Why’s Spider-Man worrying so much about Shriek and Carnage? The random umbrella twins here are an Avenger’s level threat.
At a certain point your old pal Venom joins the fray as a playable character, which follows the comic event adaptation the game shares a name with. Venom plays much the same control wise, but is slower and stronger than Spider-Man. Small aside; when was it that Venom was decided to be a hulking, less agile brute compared to Spidey? His first appearances he was physically bulkier but just as fast (he still has super-agility, after all), but nowadays he’s usually portrayed as a bruiser style monster. I also have a disdain for the complete over saturation of Eddie Brock Venom in Spider-Man media, so maybe I’m just a hater.
Sometimes you just got to break into the Baxter Building while the Fantastic 4 are on vacation. Reed doesn’t mind if people ‘borrow’ his inventions, I’m sure.
The music deserves some mention as it’s **** ing sick, dude. Just some classic 16-bit era banger guitar riff with a driving beat. Seriously, give it a listen. Funny story about the soundtrack; that song I just linked there, the main menu theme, is a digitized version of a song by the comedy rock band Green Jellÿ (aptly titled ‘Carnage Rules’ off of their first EP) . This was provided entirely legitimately through licensing, but some of you more based people out there may recognize this boss battle music ('Heroic Assault') as being a little familiar sounding. It’s actually just an uncredited version of Black Sabbath’s ‘The Mob Rules’, entirely ripped off note for note.
Death and darkness are rushing forward, to take a bite out of the waaaaaaall! Oh! You’ve nothing to say, they’re breaking away, if you listen to foooools; the mooooooob rule- sorry, got carried away there.
There’s a few other inspirations I picked up on in some of the other songs; one track has the amazing verse riff of Pantera’s ‘I’m Broken’ prominently in it. Am I complaining? Absolutely not. It’s just something to note. Acclaim or Software Creations never faced legal repercussions for any of these musical ‘homages’, so I guess it was kosher.
Remember that time in comics when a feral, six-armed duplicate of Spider-Man was running around? Good times.
It’s a nostalgic trip if nothing else, and is maybe worth a playthrough if you’re itching for some actually decent Spider-Man themed beat ‘em up that is hard as hell. It’s all around one of the more consistently solid Spider-Man games of the retro variety and that’s a rare breed, trust me.
Score
3 Thwips out of 5.
Wolverine: Adamantium Rage
Developer: Teeny Weeny Games (Genesis), Bits Entertainment (SNES)Publisher: Acclaim
Platform: SNES, Genesis
Year: 1994
Here we go, probably the worst game of this era. This game ****ing sucks, both the SNES and Genesis variations. This was the video game that made me realize how low effort a lot of licensed games were as a kid. I rented the SNES Adamantium Rage one day, going “wow, I love Wolverine! Ergonomic, dude!” and it ended up teaching me what a bad game was. Even like a maybe 8 year old Octopus knew that this was bad, and that I hated it.
Adamantium Rage taught me what hate was. I ****ing hate this game.
You play as Wolverine, obviously, as he claws around and misses jumps due to atrocious controls. Every level has a time limit before Elsie-Dee, a little girl robot created by Weapon Plus to specifically hug Logan then explode on him in a very niche purpose, will hug you then explode. It’s a typical action-platformer, nothing else needs to be said. This is just the colossal comic book nerd in me, but if you’re going to include Elsie-Dee and not her best friend Albert, the robotic clone of Wolverine with super-intelligence, why even bother in the first place? They’re a combo pair, really.
The SNES and Genesis versions are incredibly different from one another, being made by two separate companies from the same general outline. The SNES version requires you to kill a certain amount of enemies in stages before you can progress, has a more forgiving Elsie-Dee time limit, and has some of the worst hit detection I’ve ever had the displeasure of playing with. There’s like 20 odd moves Wolverine can do it in, and they are the most esoteric inputs and are all terrible. You don’t have an air attack in the game, and instead you have to hold down, hit the jump button then X while continuing to hold down the jump button which will launch Wolverine claw first into the air; good luck hitting absolutely anything with it. This is your only option to hit aerial enemies.
I don’t know what’s happening here.
In the Genesis version, you have more combat maneuvers and claw attacks that at least have some slightly more competent hit detection. There’s also a handy visible meter showing how close you are to being hugsploded; it’s a much shorter time limit than the SNES version, so all the meter shows is how close you are to dying. Why even bother with the meter if you hardly have any time anyway? **** you, it’s Adamantium Rage, that’s why.
The story is also slightly different, but mostly ends the same way and follows mostly a similar beat. The Genesis version has more cameo appearances by the X-Men and an opening level set in a Weapon X facility, while the SNES version has more boss appearances from Wolverine staples such as Lady Deathstrike and Bloodscream. You remember Bloodscream, right? The 1500’s pirate turned living vampire by a Native American witch doctor who fights Wolverine as he needs the blood of an immortal to reverse his vampirism, which Wolverine is of course not? Pale guy with a really long white ponytail in an all black, oddly wrinkly looking suit? He can turn into a monstrous form sometimes that doesn’t at all resemble a knock-off Violator from Spawn? Comics are so cool, man.
Love this guy.
These goddamn turret robot spawner things are too high in the air to ever hit from the ground, but then they’re too low to hit with your nonsense aerial claw jump thing. **** this game.
I cannot put into words just how terribly both of these games play. They are both baffling in execution in wildly different ways, and will drive you insane trying to figure out what both of these two developers were thinking. 8-bit games, sure, you can forgive them a little bit and say that people were still figuring out how these video game things should play. By 1994, there was no excuse.
The game does capture Wolverine’s healing factor by having him heal over time, but you’re on a time limit meaning you never really have a chance to take advantage of this before you’d get exploded by a little girl robot. Why, Adamantium Rage? Why are you like this?
I couldn’t even get past the second part of the first level in the SNES version, and I can’t get past the first level of the Genesis version. I cheated to see the later levels on the Genesis version, and I don’t even care. **** this goddamn game.
According to the internet, the Genesis version's soundtrack is apparently one of the first instances of ‘grime’ EDM and is considered the earliest version of that subgenre. Apparently this OST of Adamantium Rage was released on vinyl by its composer to great sales? I don’t even know what to say to that.
Don’t play Adamantium Rage, either console version. Take that from my review and do not play Adamantium Rage. Don’t even look at it. Shame it, like it deserves. Call it names and laugh at it. It controls like complete garbage, it's brutally hard in all the wrong ways, badly designed and infuriating to play for more than 5 minutes. It's Uncanny X-Men tier. **** this game.
Wolverine, the eternal boomer. Wait, he’s even older than that…
Score
0 Snikt’s out of 5.
X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse
Developer: CapcomPublisher: Capcom
Platform: SNES
Year: 1994
This game absolutely slaps. This is probably one of the best beat ‘em ups on the SNES, and that’s saying a lot. It's tough but fair, action-packed, the perfect length; hell yeah, Mutant Apocalypse.
Psylocke, the Marvel character likely responsible for the most jump-started puberties.
You of course play as the X-Men, set first to destroy the mutant prisons of Genosha then a lot of other stuff ends up happening. At first, there’s a unique level for each of five playable X-Men; Gambit, Cyclops, Beast, Wolverine and Psylocke. Each of them have Street Fighter style move inputs to do special moves (usually two or three, depending on the character) and it just works. Even with a relatively small move list, they managed to make each of the characters feel unique, whether it’s from Psylocke’s bouncing aerial attacks, Beasts ability to walk on the bottom of platforms and ledges, Wolverine’s wall climbing and multi-hit claw flurries, or Cyclop’s borderline OP optic blasts. Oh, and Gambit’s there.
Sorry, Gambit fans.
Each X-Men has two lives, and if anyone fully dies it’s game over. The game can be brutally hard, but only so it may teach you. Once you lock in, once it all starts to click, you start to see how smartly designed the game is. The bosses are nasty until you discover the one little secret or trick to beating them. The game honestly I think has almost a Mega Man feel going on in that sense, particularly when you combine that with the selectable levels you can do in any order, and the fact that the X series was in full swing by '94; I wouldn’t be surprised if they took some inspiration. You don’t steal the powers of the bosses you defeat unfortunately, so you don’t get some sweet Omega Red tentacles.
Remember my rule; any game with Omega Red gets a pass from me. Love that guy.
Once you beat each of those initial levels, then you go through five more that you can complete with any X-Man you choose, then five more unique levels for each of them; then the final boss, against someone who shouldn’t be that surprising. That’s a lot of levels, but luckily the levels themselves are generally very short and so the game can be completed fairly quickly once you get into the swing of things.
Spider-Who? Never heard of him.
It’s packed with 90’s X-Men villains, and a lot of love clearly. This came out the year before X-Men: Children of the Atom, and started the whole Capcom X-Men/Marvel winning streak that would go on for quite a few years. Ah, the good old days (that I was barely there for).
The graphics are just what you expect, being amazing. The sprites are chunky and beautifully animated, and have plenty of little details and characterizations. Psylocke’s hair moves when she does her various acrobatic moves, and Beast’s hunched ape-like stature really sells the adaptation. It’s these small touches that Capcom consistently always got right, just in general and that plenty of lesser games and developers never quite get.
Next time Apocalypse gets all “taking over the world, I’m immensely powerful, something something survival of the fittest”, just remember he still takes an adamantium crotch slash like a little *****.
Absolutely play Mutant Apocalypse. You will suffer at first, some of the open X-Men selection levels are a bit of trial and error, but if you persist you will play a damn fine SNES brawler, maybe even one of the finest on the entire system.
Score
4 ½ X-Genes out of 5.
X-Men 2: The Clone Wars
Developer: HeadgamesPublisher: Sega
Platform: Genesis
Year: 1995
This is a new record; not just one amazing X-Men game, but two in the same article. X-Men 2: The Clone Wars (not that Clone Wars) is a sequel to the previous X-Men, and both are Genesis exclusives. Thank god the X-Men have redeemed their video game performance, honestly. They went from being the worst games to some of the best in a matter of a couple of years.
Once again I’m going to repeat myself; this game absolutely slaps. It took the formula of the first X-Men, and tweaked some stuff here and there to deliver what is to me an ever so slightly better game.
The opening level is a literal cold open; once you hit start at the main menu, it drops you into a snowy level with a random character.
Here are the big changes; you no longer have ‘assists’ to call in, there’s more playable characters with Beast and Psylocke joining the cast (they both ate good at this point in the 90s), and you no longer have a mutant energy meter to worry about and can now use your power as many times as you want. I liked the assists from the previous game, but they weren’t a major part of the game. The change to the mutant powers is the biggest one, and makes the game much more fun in my mind. Why hold players back from using their cool abilities, you know?
There’s also an additional playable character you get a little into the game, a certain master of magnetism which I think makes this his very first playable appearance.
Mag-freakin’-neto, master of magnet; seen here humiliating the inferior villain.
The story follows a fairly loose adaptation of the ‘Phalanx’ arc that was freshly new in the comics at the time. They’re an techno-organic alien race that had gotten up to no good, taking over a Sentinel manufacturing facility and cloning some Hand ninjas, for some reason. You journey your way across a great variety of levels, typical fare. The game can be brutally hard until you learn which characters are better suited for which levels, and I would never call it unfair. Like Mutant Apocalypse, it is harsh so that you may learn.
Something that needs to be said of the game; it is I think some of the crispest and greatest Genesis graphics, in my humble opinion of course. I love the look of the game. It has a darker overall vibe than its predecessor, but still has great popping and saturated colours. The character models are absolutely flawless, and once again have great characterization baked in.
If you’ve played the game, this is probably a picture you can hear in your head. The sound design of this game is impeccable.
The controls are perfect, and I have literally no complaints in that category. You have a great variety of moves that cover any angle you could need, they’re responsive and have great flow.
The game has a few weaknesses, I’m always fair here. Its technical performance is pretty rough at times, with the framerate getting very low in certain sequences and if too much is going on in a given second. I think there is a little bit of imbalance between the characters, as well; Wolverine and Nightcrawler seem much stronger than most of the other characters, other than Magneto who is rightfully OP, and Psylocke doesn’t really have anything going on with her. She has some good speed and reach with her katana, but doesn’t have much else. It's also likely a little too long for what it is, and it does drag a little past its prime by the end.
Fairly minor issues aside, this is a fantastic goddamn game and honestly in the running for my favourite Genesis game of all time. It’s top 3, for sure. Absolutely play this game.
Score
4 ½ X-Genes out of 5.
Another article down, one step closer to the finale of the 16-bit generation (one more article!). This has to be one of the most lopsided articles in this whole retrospective so far; we have two 4 ½/5’s next to a literal zero with Adamantium Rage. I cannot fully articulate how atrocious that game is, and how infuriating it is to play. It has to be one of the worst officially released 16-bit games of all time, to me, and absolutely deserves that 0/5. **** that game.
This 16-bit leg of the journey has been rather interesting as I think it’s been relatively consistent in quality for once. There’s still been some unfortunates, but overall I think we’re looking at the highest average as of this part two. We’ll see how it plays out when the numbers are crunched in the finale, as the numbers never lie…
Next time in the finale we’re up against the last five games. I don’t think it’s going to be as imbalanced as this one, but I think it’s going to be up and down. It’s also entirely a Spider-Man article; he is the lead role in four of the five, and is part of the ensemble cast of the fifth game. We have the last game that I’ve never actually played in it, being a tie-in to a certain very popular 90s Spider-Man cartoon so there’s going to be some surprises even for me.
Until next time.
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