X-Men: Children of the Atom (Arcade, 1994)

 

Another arcade game from the Marvel Vs Capcom Fighting Collection, this one's a fighter rather than a beat 'em up. I know very little about the X-Men except that they're mutants with super powers who other folks are afraid of, so they were all bound for tough lives until Professor Xavier took them under his wing and gave them purpose. Essentially turning their disabilities into super powers (as being different from everyone else IS a social disability, regardless of the context, and it's been well-documented by now that someone with say autism can potentially excel at life if steered in the right direction and able to find opportunities in the field that interests them... thus, being different can sometimes be turned into an advantage, and thus, the X-Men have a positive message behind them).

Pretty much all the other kids liked X-Men when I was a kid, so I heard about it all the time circa 1994. The advertisements for this game touted that it has five times the megabits of Street Fighter II, for smoother animation, so I've got high expectations. Also Psylocke is really, really hot. Let's go.

IN MEMORIAM: Ted Turner

The last time I did a Marvel post before this week, Silver Surfer, it was also made on the day of a major loss for old-school wrestling fans with Hulk Hogan. There's some irony that the two most significant figures in breaking up the McMahon wrestling monopoly (at least for a decade) would pass on during two weeks when I'm covering Marvel, the company that broke up DC's monopoly over comics. It's unfortunate that at the turn of the century Turner lost control of WCW - and CNN for that matter - and that the new owners decided wrestling was too lowbrow for their portfolio (while the news network became less about news and more about narrative management). Turner would later say that losing control of both companies to Time Warner was a big mistake, and he was right. I imagine the propaganda-rich news media landscape of 2003 would have looked very different if he hadn't.

Of course, Turner did lots of other good things for the world too. Rest well, Big Ted.

The X-Men! Some of them are X-Women.

The bad guys! I recognize Magneto, of course, and his Nappa, Juggernaut.

The battle begins! I'm guessing Cyclops is kinda the unofficial leader of the X-Men, even though Wolverine is the popularest guy in the group.

Hold on, Storm From X-Men ISN'T the same character as Sue Storm from the Fantastic Four? Well that's confusing.

Sue Storm is The Invisible Woman, and doesn't have any storm-related powers.

Wonder how often superheroes get sued. Probably a lot. Any collateral damage to anything and they get raked over the coals.

Storm From X-Men on the other hand DOES have storm-related powers, as well as the power of being hot as hell (socially, the strongest of all superpowers). Fun Fact, this character inspired the entire look for AEW->WWE star Jade Cargill.

Playing as Wolverine seems like the general default for this game, but instead I'm going to go Psylocke. This woman looks a lot like Olivia Munn.

::holds earpiece:: What's that? Olivia Munn played her in a movie?

Indeed, she got the role for 2016's X-Men: Apocalypse.

Well, I know what I'm watching this weekend.

Looks like Munn's Psylocke is only in that one movie, unfortunately. Was considering watching a few as catch-up. How many X-Men movies were there anyway?

...Dear God!

Looks like there were two main trilogies: X-Men, X2, and X-Men: The Last Stand make up the first trilogy from the 00's. Then First Class, Days of Future Past, and Apocalypse make up the second trilogy in the 2010s. The second trilogy takes place BEFORE the first trilogy. There's also X-Men: Dark Phoenix which is a fourth movie in the second trilogy and bridges things with the first trilogy. The rest are more or less spinoffs and single character movies.

I guess I'll watch all seven when time permits. Do I watch the second trilogy first (chronological) ending with The Last Stand, or the first (release order) ending with Dark Phoenix? What a jumbled canon. At least it makes logical sense, unlike say the Zelda series. Given how timey-wimey things get (I think Days of Future Past might actually be the last one timelinewise), I'll probably just do release order.

Anyway, back to the game

Psylocke has the most elegant flippy leaps I've ever seen in a fighting game. It's too bad the ice dude can't freeze time, because right now he's getting boob-teabagged. Tea-boobed.

Ungrateful bastard that he is, he fires back with an Ice Kamehameha. That's a pretty sweet move, have always liked the idea of taking Dragonball Z attacks and adding elemental properties to them.

Psylocke eventually wins with the world's sexiest handstand.

This post is just going to be Psylocke: Child of the Atom

Silver Samurai, not familiar with this guy at all. The character sprites in this game are huge, I love it.

He has the super sword powerup from Ninja Gaiden 3 on the NES, the powerup that made me rank NG3 way higher than I probably should have on the big NES ranking list.

He also hurls gigantic shurikens. Now that is a projectile attack.

Psylocke has the most graceful falling pose.

She glides down like an elegant swan doing ballet, before...

...palm-thrusting her foe right in the neussen!

Wolverine is next up. I see where all those megabits went. This game really DOES have impressive animation. It's a joy to take screenshots of.

Psylocke's tremendous ground-based PUNT TO THE NEUSSEN: If do right, no can defend.

Two notable things here, Psylocke's awesome jump kick and Wolverine's x-strike with his claws.

There's no pause button (it's arcade after all), and pressing start causes your character to taunt their foe. This does nothing except show off in a two player match.

Psylocke's knocked-down animation is gorgeous. She isn't actually knocked down, she's just resting. It's like how women don't sweat, they glisten.

When a fight first starts, Psylocke leaps in wearing ninja garb before quickly transforming into her fight garb.

Cyclops has a devastating eye beam! Well, it'd be devastating if I wasn't blocking. Blocking by backing up is so intuitive, and makes me wonder why the Mortal Kombat games made block a separate button. I just end up mostly ignoring it under those circumstances. It isn't as egregious in the arcade, because the block button is at a center location between all the attack buttons. However on consoles, the block buttons are separate from the rest.

Psylocke can unleash twin energy swords and do a mighty spinning attack with them, one of her best moves.

Cyclops' super move is a very large beam. Probably the best super move out of any of the characters, good luck avoiding this.

Before long, Cyclops kneels in awe of Psylocke's goddesshood. I'd be worshipful too if my girlfriend could split into 3 identical twins at will.

Omega Red (who?) is some dude with a scorpion spear. Here we see Psylocke clearly casually ducking under the attack and definitely not actually taking any damage. This fight is totally under control!

Spinning energy swords!

Psylocke: The Post continues.

Her throw move involves tumbling around and sitting on her opponent's face. I thought the objective was to damage them, not show them a good time.

Don't know who this is, but she's got a bunch of arms.

Spiral slash unleashed!

That thing in the background is straight out of either Hellraiser or Berserk.

There's a dashing energy sword attack that can be administered as a super move; win with this and we get a big X onscreen. I prefer the Street Fighter series displaying a bright sun background when you win with a super.

Things get serious with the penultimate boss, Juggernaut. He backhands Psylocke so hard, her ancestors felt it. Why does a guy this size need brass knuckles on top of everything else?

She fires back with her fierce punch, an energy sword jab.

What a compulsively screenshottable game. Every other frame is a solid screengrab.

This was the hardest fight in the game, no doubt about it. Juggernaut no-sells like crazy.

The ending of the fight was incredibly close, and I'm not even sure when I got the killing hit. His no-selling was brutal and his barraging with strikes was fast and furious.

Final boss is Magneto, the erstwhile friend and/or foe of the X-Men.

He unleashes...something projectile-related en masse!

He also has beams, lots of beams.

I was missing out in the mid to late 90's by paying so much attention to MK and not noticing these Capcom/Marvel fighting games popping up.

Not sure if these guys are Magneto allies or are here to apprehend him, but either way, he's defeated. No idea what this game was about, but it's finished!

It do be like that sometimes.

Psylocke now does interviews while wearing a lavish Lightning Returns style purple dress.

I think Cyclops was trying to get her attention or something. Our boy is smitten!

Brought to you by Capcom superstar Poo.

So, thoughts on this game? It was fun, the big sprites were great, no complaints. Hard to believe that the first of the Marvel vs Capcom series of games got it right so immediately. I expected this one to be pretty rough around the edges until they found their footing later. Not the case. I'd go so far as saying that I like the first two games (this and Marvel Super Heroes) more than the next couple of games; they have giant colorful sprites and flashy moves, while the later games move more towards being standard Street Fighter likes with normal-sized characters and more restrained animations. I like the over-the-top-ness of these first two. Though I'm turning the scanlines off after this one.

More X-Men later.

Other Marvel Posts