 | Hip mutant heroes in the 90s in your consoles |
With the sudden rise in popularity about comics' favorite mutants, videogame licensing was never far away. After its debut on TV in the 90s, FOX's X-Men gathered ultra success along with other kids favorite shows like Mighty Morphing Power Rangers. Marvel knew that it had something going on after seeing how big the show made it into the airwaves and before you knew it, there was an X-Men game for any other console that was available at that time. While the 16-Bit era was tussling with the "console wars," gamers were treated to an X-MEN game on their systems, from SEGA Genesis to SNES and even the Arcades.
On SEGA Genesis we had an adventurous title where the X-Heroes would transverse holographic level after holographic level in a virus-assaulted Danger Room courtesy of Magneto. Sometime later, the SNES crowd would not be left behind as X-MEN: Mutant Apocalypse made its adamantium-raged debut, having the same type of gameplay as The Ninja Warriors where you could use any member of the mutant team with their own moves and skills that would have a combination of joypad and buttons to execute. Meanwhile the Arcade would shower us with the amazing X-Men Children of the atom which was a one-on-one fighter like Street Fighter II, having heroes and villains duke it out until a victor would face both against the gargantuan, unstoppable Juggernaut and the master of magnetism himself. I quite digged the Sentinel. Massive and with such a huge arsenal within its metallic body.
Of course Marvel would not stop on showcasing the mutant heroes alone. Capcom would later introduce the likes of Marvel Superheroes which would introduce Captain America, Spider-Man, and Dr. Doom among others to face off to collect the infinity gems all while confronting the mighty Thanos who would use his infinity gauntlet to destroy any who dared challenge his might. The following years Marvel and Capcom would align with each other further by releasing the first crossover game X-Men vs. Street Fighter, and its countless crossover sequels which made quite a name for themselves as well. There was also a Konami-released 6-player X-Men game which was designed to look like the comics books of old, which made it very artistic and you could duke it out with the members of Magneto’s Brotherhood of Mutants along with sentinels left and right.
Home consoles would still get X-Men games even in the late 90s before the 32-Bit revolution was in full swing. The Genesis would get a sequel to X-Men called the Clone Wars which was released in '95, years before Lucas went on releasing that particular Star Wars sequel in theaters, and Wolverine: Adamantium Rage, which was a mixed bag in gameplay overall. SNES would get Marvel Superheroes: War of the Gems which was its own spin on the popular Infinity Gauntlet comics storyline. There would be other Marvel titles released on SNES as well such Spider-Man and X-Men: Arcade's Revenge.
On Game Gear there would be news of an X-Men game of its own, followed by a sequel named Mojo World, and also a canceled game where you would play as the female members of the team seeking a cure to a released virus that only affected male mutants.
The popularity of the heroic mutants would only rise even more after the first movie came out in the 2000s, which had a splendid cast and was received quite well. Of course games based on the x-men movies would follow suit, but there would be rarely anything that would resemble the 90s theme during this time, focusing more on how the live action films would represent them.
It is uncertain where does X-MEN go from here in videogames, being that the point of focus has been more on the likes of Avengers and such. Even if the mutants were to come back to popularity as they did in the 90s, I would not consider it as big as they were during that timeline, but that's just me.
I can tell you however I am still a big fan of the X-Men, whether they are solely in comics or not.
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