Insert Coin: X-Men

“The game takes place in the Danger Room, a training area for the X-Men inside the X-Mansion. A virus transmitted via satellite has infected the Danger Room, disabling control and safety limits. The X-Men must endure the unpredictable behavior of the Danger Room until the virus can be located and eliminated. Once the virus is eliminated, the X-Men discover that Magneto is behind the computer virus and the final stage involves a battle with him.”

This game was so badass. I had seen the X-Men cartoon (the old one that wasn’t on Fox Saturday mornings) and read about the characters in Wizard magazine but did not own a single damn issue of the comics. I knew which ones I liked though. I wanted to cut some shit using Wolverine. I wanted to charge up some playing cards and wreck shit as Gambit. I wanted to, uh, appear a few feet away as Nightcrawler. Cyclops? Whatever. He’s always lame. Laser eyes? Get that shit out of here.

"My mom thinks I'm cool..."

This game was fun but one of the honked up things about it was the fact that you could run out of your mutant ability. Wolverine was cool because he could just keep healing himself. That is if you just stood there and hoped that no one hit you. But could you imagine having the ability to fly and then going “Holy shit, I am parched! I better grab some energy so I can get that whole 3 feet off the ground…” Wolverine would seriously not be able to use his claws! That cant take that much energy! Can it? Nightcrawler could not teleport if he was tired. Gambit could make his hand shine in your face if he felt like it. Cyclops would warm some toast. Something cool was that if you were getting your ass handed to you help would arrive in the form of Storm, Jean Grey, Iceman, Archangel, and Rogue.

Save now. Sex later. This is Gambit's way.

Probably the coolest and the dumbest thing about this game was this secret thing you had to do to keep playing the game. When you got to a certain level the game appeared to freeze. All these numbers would pop up on the screen and then…nothing. I’d get pissed, kick my Genesis, and then play all over again assuming that the 80th time was the charm. Nope. Turns out you had to reset the game at this point. Not too long or you would just reset the game period. Not too short or the game would just sit there breaking your heart. It took a long time before this secret got around. Now I’m mad at this game all over again. Well, if you got stuck and bored you could call Storm to show up and make a strong breeze where even though you were on a spotless ship trash would appear.

Halle Berry does this for fun.