Revolution X
	Genre: Shooter (Light Gun) Developer: Midway
Publisher Region Released Midway NA ??/??/1994

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Staff Review

Review by Gary Hartley
June 11, 2008

You have to feel a little sorry for Revolution X. It never really stood a chance. I vaguely remember the first day it was wheeled in to the 'local' arcade (it was a good hour away on the train, but we still swarmed to it on weekends or the odd day we bunked school) and was given pride of place next to an also-new Alien 3 light gun game. People would often give X an initial try, but would more likely select to spend the majority of their money not shooting identical gimps in yellow jumpsuit, but to plough bullets into acid-bleeding monsters that want to eat your face.

But both machines shared the same flaw that would lead to their eventual, and rapid, downfall mere months after they moved in. To shoot the radically-differing foes, you had to employ a fixed machine-gun that sat riveted to the arcade's cabinet. This was an adventuresome and exciting prospect -- back in 1987 when Operation Wolf was released, but, shortly after they were wheeled in, both games took a back-seat to Point Blank, which usurped their prized position next to Super Blastman and relegated them to the dark corners where the 5p fruit machines lurked.

Point Blank did, frankly, everything that Revolution X didn't. The premises was light-hearted and goofy, not laughably inept and dumb. The guns were loose, leashed to the machine by a cable but free to be wielded like a handgun should be -- ~~by overpaid STD-infested rappers~~ there in your hand, not super-glued to a flat surface. It was the future of light-gun shooters and, while Alien 3 hung around in the arcade a little longer, Revolution X simply didn't have the licensing power to squeeze those last few miles from. It's a game about Aerosmith saving the world, for Christ sake! Any world with Aerosmith as its driving force is a world not worth saving.

So, yes, I feel sorry for it. Before the absurdity of the game's premises (for which I feel naught but sadistic amusement) could step in to cause the title's extinction, it was quietly done in by the genre's evolution. Maybe I feel sorry because it gives me less of a chance to rip on the idea of a heavy-duty assault rifle's secondary weapon hurling CD's so destructive they effortlessly destroy APCs and helicopters. Maybe I feel robbed of the opportunity to tell you how Revolution X is set in a world that revolves around Areosmith, while, at the same time, hates Aerosmith so much that a dedicated group hell-bent on their silence grew large enough to effortlessly capture the planet. It's led by a serious looking woman with a serious bob hairdo who still manages to show off a lot of cleavage, too. But these things, poorly planned as they were, could have so easily generated enough kook to ride off. Steven Tyler vs. the world, man! There's enough tassels on that microphone for everyone!

But soon SEGA released its House of the Dead's, Time Crisis threw the pistols out the window and offered stub-nosed sub-machineguns and Cop 24 outfitted its cabinets with motion detectors so you could literally dodge bullets. The leaps and bounds made by the arcade cabinets asking you to throw lead at people were merciless with their onslaught, each new venture pulling out all the stops to one-up the last contender, and it left the ordinary and the antique laying broken and twitching in their path. It's all too easy to poke fun at Revolution X for the game itself, but it's perhaps more fitting that it would be its inability to keep up with the times that would ultimately doom it. Forever to be remembered as one of the worst games ever made -- and rightly so -- but also the worst possible way to pass the torch on to the future. Flat on its back, reeking, and so ugly that not even desperate necrophilia freaks would go anywhere near it.

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