Developer: Unknown Publisher: LJN Release: 12/89 Genre: Action
Take a trip down memory lane with me. Imagine being 10 years old in 1990 with a cool $50 in Birthday money burning in your pocket. The video game aisle in Toys R Us with its endless array of tickets for more games than you can imagine is practically heaven. The world is your oyster and you have the pick of the litter. Of all the games you pick the Uncanny X-Men because, hey why not? The comics are awesome! But it takes all of three minutes to realize you have made a terrible mistake. Now you understand why I have a special hatred for this game. This is one of the worst games of all time.
Where do I even begin? The Uncanny X-Men has six playable characters: Wolverine, Cyclops, Colossus, Nightcrawler, Storm, and Iceman. The first thing you need to know is that melee characters are useless. There is no attack animation; the sprite simply bumps forward. The awful hit detection makes defeating any enemy a chore in melee combat. To this day I have never been able to defeat any of the bosses using a melee character. The long range fighters are only slightly better. Your attack is off center and just as prone to missing although you are at least safe at range. There is another, far more insidious issue with the game however.
When playing alone you must choose a partner on every stage. The computer controls the second character. I am not exaggerating when I say this might be some of the worst partner AI I have come across. They get stuck on walls immediately, run into hazardous ground, or will frequently stay in one spot and spam their attack with no enemies present. Your partner will gleefully run in to a pack of enemies with no regard to their safety. Any character that dies is gone permanently, meaning you will have to either babysit them every step or willingly sacrifice someone to play the game properly. I have managed to keep them alive for an entire level but it was not a satisfying experience. This design decision is baffling and mars an already bad game.
As a top down action game Uncanny X-Men looks and plays a little similar to Gauntlet. Enemies spawn infinitely but there are no monster generators. Many of the power-ups are similar such as speed, invincibility, health, and items that freeze you in place for a few seconds. The goal of every level is to locate the boss at which point a timer begins. You must defeat them and return to the start to clear the stage. This is easier said than done however. Every level is a massive maze of teleporters and dead ends. Some require keys to reach the end level boss (unless you are Nightcrawler) which will require thorough exploration. The bosses are an all-star lineup from the comics such as Sabretooth, Juggernaut, the White Queen and Magneto.
If it sounds compelling trust me it is not. The level design is atrocious. The maps are a confusing mess of mismatching tiles that give no sense of direction. A floor tile you could walk on one moment might be an impassable wall the next. What looks like a ground hazard usually turns out to be a safe zone. The teleport pads often blend into the background and are easy to miss. Trying to navigate this chaos with your partner is nearly futile. You have to manually stick to them like glue and hope they follow you but more often than not they will not. If you do manage to reach a boss prepare for disappointment. The graphics are so ugly you will barely recognize the characters.
The difficulty feels so random I cannot measure it. Having to pause to check your health is stupid. Enemies spawn so fast it sometimes feels impossible to move more than a few inches at a time. Sometimes they will drop more invincibility and health power-ups than are necessary. Other times it feels like the game breaks and they either do not spawn or drop junk. Your partner does not help. More than likely as soon as the level starts they will die in under a minute. On one hand this is a god send. But at the same time you lose a team member. There are no continues or passwords so the game needs to be completed in one sitting. Good luck with that.
I have to mention the cherry on top of this shit salad. To access the final level you need a code. The game box provides half of this code. You find the other half by killing thirty special enemies in each of the first four stages. The end level text will highlight certain words in red which gives the first part of the code. Combine the two and you can access the last level. This method is far too obtuse for its own good. I knew no one who figured it out back in the day and just assumed there was no ending. In fact technically there isn’t. You get a single screen of text after beating the last level and that is it. There I spoiled it for you, you’re welcome.
In Closing
The Uncanny X-Men is an absolutely awful game and truly earns its place as one of the worst games ever made. There are no redeeming qualities here, not graphics, not gameplay, nothing. Anyone who says it is simply misunderstood is a liar. Everyone involved in this game’s creation should be embarrassed to have this on their resume. It is telling that to this day no one knows who actually developed it. Even after all these years I am still baffled as to how the game turned out so bad. To all of you reading this review I am sorry. You were better off now knowing of this game’s existence.
