A Closer Look at X-men

[gamerz]

Here is the latest edition of a Closer Look from StanJr.

 

Click Here

[figgler]

Stan's Closer Looks are always worth, well, a closer look

 

Thanks for posting

[StanJr]

For those who are interested, I just did a speed run through X-men and I can beat it in 24:43 minutes!!

 

See it doesn't suck!

[gamerz]

A little bump for those that havent read it.

[+thegoldenband]

Hmmm, it looks like this site is gone. And it's not in Archive.org or Google cache. StanJr, any chance of getting the text of your "closer look" posted here?

[number six]

I can't remember being more dissapointed in any game more than NES X-Men. This was at the height of me being into Nintendo AND X-Men so I was so ready for this. I think I even had the damned thing on layaway and had to save up for it.

 

Then I finally got it. Then the whole stages of having purchased a bad video game started. I denied it was a bad game, maybe it just needed a 2nd player? Got a friend over. Maybe I just needed to play more.. it was a lost cause. Acceptance was hard but soon followed.

 

Damn you LJN, damn you.

 

Back on topic, i was bummed to see the link was broken. Would be interesting to see if anyone could have a different take on this mess.

[+thegoldenband]

Yeah, StanJr had a total turnaround in his opinion of the game, and pretty much owned it by the end -- he was doing speedruns IIRC. Personally I made it to the last level at some point but never did beat it; I remember something vaguely about a code, and certain words being written in red. It seemed like a stinker to me, but a lot of that was the terrible computer partner AI.

[StanJr]

Oh wow! Yeah, Uncanny X-men is GREAT! Maybe one of my favorite quick hit NES games now.

 

All of my old content from gamerz's site got moved over to my site Electric Frankfurter.

 

You can see the X-men article here (and then why not poke around the site a bit and see some of my other fine work!)

 

http://www.electricfrankfurter.com/2010/08/closer-look-at-uncanny-x-men-for-nes.html

[+thegoldenband]

Oh good! The possibility that it'd been moved to EF crossed my mind, but somehow I overlooked it. I enjoy your site, especially when you cover things like this! I've linked to your list of the hardest NES games a few times...

 

EDIT: BTW, you've noticed that the game shows the code words in red, right? I remember when I figured that out, must've been sometime in the mid-1990s, I felt pretty pleased with myself. So you could say that the label gives you most of the code, but not quite all...

[StanJr]

It's certainly one of the best kept secret codes in gaming history! Ha!

 

Thanks for the love. Once I wrap up FFVII, I'm hoping to do some more true classic stuff.

[+thegoldenband]

Beat this today! I'll admit that, in addition to StanJr's wise guidance, I used a GameFAQs walkthrough to tell me where to go. But since I'd made it to Magneto back in the day, I didn't feel too guilty. I lost Colossus in the living starship, so I finished the game with Wolverine, and didn't use the resurrection cheat. Having to backtrack through the whole stage to exit is a draaaag, but fortunately I made it in time.

 

I think there's too much cheapness in the game for me to call it a good game -- and it's too frustrating when you get paralyzed & pulverized for me to say I like it. But it's certainly satisfying to beat it after all these years.

 

Unanswered question: what determines whether the code words show up in red on the stage-ending scenes? I feel like I used to know, but I don't remember anymore. That's how you know the full code, and explains the "abel" pseudo-typo. I think the decision to make it not quite right on the label was deliberate, BTW, so that you still had to play the game to get the whole thing.

 

EDIT: See here for more on this, but it claims the words were the same color. But I've absolutely gotten the red words on the "L....ABEL" clue at the very least; I got 'em today, in fact.

 

Also, I was repeatedly able to just not bother fighting some of the stage bosses, and I still got the disk. On my winning run, Juggernaut was stuck in the wall and I couldn't hit him even if I wanted to! Is that normal? I was playing in emulation, but I sort of remember doing the same thing on real hardware.