Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge

The 16-bit era. A golden age for video games and I'm very grateful for having the opportunity to savor the great aspects of the decade which had the best to offer in movies, cartoons, comics, the works. Since I have been an avid gamer (and still is) I thought I take a trip down memory lane and alas this one popped up. This was an very difficult but fun game; no mistake about it. I heard of the Genesis version, but lucky for me I got the SNES version which is by far the best one out there with solid gameplay and graphics and fun, innovative level design. Not only do you play as everyone's favorite web slinger, but you also get a crack at the X-Men. What I really liked the most about this game is the different play styles from the characters. The music rocks, even until this day and age of more advanced hardware. Oh the memories of playing this game makes me very sentimental; a game featuring some of your favorite heroes and villains from the Marvel universe. What's not to like? One of the best games to come out on the system at the time and quite a cult classic.

Here's a piece of trivia: Believe it or not this game is actually a sequel to X-Men: Madness in Murderworld that was released on the Commodore in 1989!!! Betcha never guessed that one.

I looked forward to this game when I heard of its release. I so wanted to buy it, but my dad insisted I rent it first. I have to say he was right as this had to be one of the most disappointing games I have ever played. I was a huge Spider-man and X-Men fan and this game promised to give me my favorite heroes in one game going against the insane Arcade. The premise was good, the opening story was good, the game not so much. First, it is insanely hard...I don't think I was able to complete but a couple of levels. I think the Spider-man levels were the ones I could actually do. Wolverine was in it as well...someone had a swimming level I think Storm. Other than that I can not clearly remember other X-men used. Maybe Cyclops and NightCrawler. All in all thanks to the hard and relatively short gameplay this game would be the typical X-men game released during this time. They had many games released and they all were usually really hard or short or both. Spidey had a couple of better games, but his greatness did not really start till that game for the playstation one came out. So if you want a game that really sucks and is to hard featuring the x-men and Spidey then go for this pile of crap.

I only even made an account to write this after nostalgia made me look the game up.

There's two specific reviews on this that made me do it.

The guy saying it's "the most horrible game he ever played" being the biggest one.

After he admitted he didn't even finish a Spidey level, let alone try any other character? So weird to write a review for a game you basically didn't play

I remember the steep difficulty as a kid getting my genesis.

We were a somewhat poor household. I was born in 93. And we got our first Genesis (3rd version) from a garage sale. Real cheap tbh I was 5 or 6 when I started gaming. We'd go to funkoland, en games a couple times as years went on to get our games at the time (now just GameStop) That went from genesis, to N64, to PS2 before GameStop even became a thing.

I'd judge games just by the art.

You didn't have much else at the time.

I remember this being one of the very first I got to pick out and take home.

I also got terminator 2 the same day. (Insanely good game, i still remember when I learned you can pick things up like the shotgun) While I wanna pretend the gameplay wasn't good. It was The original review claimed the Spidey controls sucked... I mean. Dude. Huh? How responsive were you expecting in 93 with a six button gamepad and basically no ram in the console?

For me? I thought it was superb.

You can't twitch though like modern games like Arkham asylum or even the new amazing spiderman, let alone Spiderman 2 for ps2. But they did what was possible.

The gambit levels are my favorite. The difficulty definitely comes into play here. You can't stay still. But man, they nailed his abilities for such a small scale Sega game.

What a disgrace to Marvel! Neither Spidey nor the X-Men come out of this with integrity left. It's seriously one of the worst games I have ever played on the Genesis. Terrible graphics, worse gameplay and awful music. For what it's worth it's a platformer (like the previous Spiderman game on the Genesis, only nowhere near as competent) in which you play different characters but start out as Spidey himself. I honestly didn't stick around too much to play as anyone else as it really did begin so badly and I can only imagine that it got worse.

Don't be like me and assume that it must be good coz Spidey is involved. It would be a total waste of money. I guess I should have researched it first coz it seriously is a bad, bad game. Stay away!

Spider-Man/X-Men is basically a bad game. There are a million like it: sidescrolling platformers from the 16 and 8-bit eras starring licensed comic book, movie, and television characters. It's not innovative, it's incredibly difficult, there's not much about it that's really entertaining, the story sucks, etc.

But the music rocks. It just rocks, it's like putting ELO, every 80s hair band ever, and the Spider-Man TV show from the 60s into a cement mixer. Out comes love with very good compression strength. Okay, so some of the tracks aren't that good, but most are at least fun, and a few of them will make you want to go outside and eat gravel, because it's the closest you'll ever come to feeling the rock inside you.

Also, Spider-Man's swinging mechanic is actually pretty fun, considering when this game was made. The webline actually attaches at a specific point, and the swing speed and trajectory is based on the length of the webline and how soon you jump from it. Nothing to get excited about, but it's there.

The best music is actually in the title screen and the first stage, and you start off as Spider-Man, so you don't have to play the game for very long to get the most you can out of it. Give it a try, if only for a few minutes.

PS: You can find a rip of the game's music in SPC700 format. SNESmusic.org has more information on SPC700 and should have a rip of this particular game's.