Review of Spider-Man and X-Men in Arcade's Revenge (SNES)

Spider-Man and X-Men in Arcade's Revenge was released for the Super Nintendo in 1993. Overall, a very frustrating game and not worth your effort even if you're a fan of either franchises. Let's go over why.

Story : Not much to say here. Fight the bad guys, win the day, save the world. You play as Spider-Man, Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops, or Gambit. Most levels force you to play as a certain character. There are 12 levels in total.

Graphics : This game was released early in the Super Nintendo's career so the game isn't as good looking as it could be but still not too bad. Despite this, some of the sprites, even the hero sprites, are not well done and poor animated. Cyclops' kick is quite hilarious looking though and it's an inside joke to people who I know have played the game to this day. The backgrounds are mediocre at best, save for Wolverine's stages which feature plentiful amounts of colors.

Sound : There are only ten or eleven songs in the game, and most are unworthy of your attention. The introduction song is very good and Wolverine stage's clown theme is okay. Other than that there's not much to remember, though there's nothing too grating overall. One major exception is the fact that nearly all of the male heroes in the game share the same voice effects. Very disappointing and shows a real lack of effort on Software Creations' part.

Game play: The difficulty in this game is legendary. You will be throwing your controller at the screen and probably everywhere else while cursing whatever entity allowed this game to be on the planet.

The controls aren't responsive or fluid in any sense of the word. Everything feels stiff and most of time you die because your selected character refuses to do what you want. There are far too many instant kill traps in the game and most are impossible to avoid unless you know they're coming. There's no password or save game system, and you only have a measly 3 lives per character. Extra lives are extremely rare.

Every character has the bare bones minimum of the power they have the comics. Spider-Man's move set is alright, and his stages aren't bad. However, web slinging is somewhat limited and more often than not gets you outright killed. Wolverine has the hardest stage in the game, where he must kill Juggernaut before you reach the end of the stage. I've never beaten this stage and I never will.

Storm is the lone female of the game she has the strangest stages. She has no health bar, instead she has a air meter which is also a semi-health bar. Cyclops stage's are notoriously difficult and have a plethora of instant kill traps. Gambit's stages, likewise, have an unbearable amount of these traps.

Re playability : Not fun the first time, not fun the second time, this game will never improve.

Overall: 1/10. Avoid like the plague.