Wolverine (NES) review "This isn't what Wolverine is best at what he does."

As a big comics fan I was always on the lookout for any videogames starring characters from such mediums. It’s not a big surprise that I immediately picked up a copy of NES' Wolverine at the now defunct Funcoland, having the berserk mutant on his own game and his arch-nemesis Sabretooth waiting for a huge final duel made my blood run cold with anticipation. The only other time I felt like this was when I played Batman on the NES, along with their version of Strider. And while both games were Nintendo hard, they were enjoyable and quite fun to play. I cannot say the same about Wolverine sadly.

It wasn't that I was disappointed on playing Wolverine; it was more in the lines of being frustrated on how the level designs were such a chore to transverse through, and how BIZARRE most of said stages were to begin with. Some stages had Wolverine going through metallic platform after metallic platform over pits and with strange, green backgrounds while others had him on top of clouds and more platforms suspended by metallic bars. Yet there were other stages where he would go underwater for most of the stage and another where he had to leap impossible gaps to get past floors laden with spikes, something that would be out of MegaMan's nightmares. The water stage being my much hated stage of them all.

The control was not hard to get used to but having Wolverine punch and kick enemies during battle was awkward. His movements played too stiff and the animations were silly to look as he punched with left and right jabs finishing the combo with a simple kick, as if he were kicking away at a stool for being on his way. You can activate his claws to make short work of most enemies, but this means risking Wolverine turn berserk, losing all control as he just lashes about until he calms down. There's also the bit of having 1Ups scattered throughout and making you perform incredible feats to reach such. Would be wise to get as many free men as you can here, being that lives are limited and so are continues. To top it all off, Wolverine loses health pretty darn fast, more so when enemies run a collision force towards him. Makes me wonder just what happened to that healing factor of his. Health items do not heal much on this game either. Between stages Sabretooth would come up taunting you as if you didn't had enough tolerance already playing through each stage.

For all its drawbacks Wolverine features a pretty decent soundtrack, mainly the title theme making you build up anticipation when starting to play the game. Some tracks remind me of Ocean titles on the NES, having that "twang" on them every now and then. However this would not be enough to entice anyone to play the game more than once, probably in long, long intervals even. The awful level design and mechanics on difficulty pretty much can turn off anyone once they begin playing the game.

If there would be a reason to own this game it would be that in comparison to other Marvel games by LJN, Wolverine does not stand out as badly, and you could find closure in collecting it as a novelty title from the famous comics line in the NES library. This however, would be the only reason as to why you would hunt and collect it sadly.

Community review by CptRetroBlue (October 04, 2018) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.