Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge

Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge
Ah, yes, another bad Spider-Man game from our good friend LJN, and it's obvious how it turned out to be.
Protagonist(s): Spider-Man X-Men Genre(s): Action Platform Platform(s): Super Nintendo Entertainment System Sega Genesis Game Gear Game Boy Release Date: SNES NA: November 1992 EU: August 19, 1993 Genesis EU: November 1993 NA: 1993 Game Gear March 1994 Game Boy NA/EU: 1994 Developer(s): Software Creations Unexpected Development (Game Boy) Publisher(s): Acclaim Entertainment LJN (SNES/Game Boy) Flying Edge (Genesis/Game Gear) Country: United Kingdom Series: Spider-Man X-Men

Spider-Man and the X-Men in Arcade's Revenge is a video game first released for the Super NES in 1992 by LJN. It was later released for the Genesis and Game Gear (under the Flying Edge brand), as well as the Game Boy. The game features Marvel Comics characters Spider-Man and the X-Men as they battle their captor, the villainous Arcade.

Why It Sucks

1. It has a horrible story that doesn't explain much. Arcade's minions kidnaps the X-Men and forces them to face their fears in a death-defying simulation. Spider-Man has to save the X-Men from the simulations and team up against Arcade.
2. A troubled game development: Software Creations were threatened with litigation by Acclaim Entertainment which at the time was the parent company of LJN and Creations being forced into three teams for one game. This at least explains the game's less than stellar quality.
3. The first level in the game is a boring fetch quest with Spider Man where you have to collect those spider senses in order to complete it. Also, the buzzing sounds (which sound more like farts to be honest) can annoy your ears! Thankfully, those noises are not in the Sega Genesis version.
4. The difficulty is extremely brutal for no reason. You get no continues, and once you die, it's back to the start of the game all over again. To make matters worse, all the heroes share lives with each other.
   • Wolverine's second level where he is being pursued by Juggernaut is easily the hardest of them all: You're supposed to attack him and hit him with anvils and weights by using Wolverine's claws. All while he is chasing you and if he catches up to you once, you're immediately dead. To make things worse, there are bottomless pits by bins of toys and clowns attacking Wolverine, and it's a timed mission of sorts. If you didn't finish him off at the end of the stage, you're forced to restart it by either touching Juggernaut or falling into the huge toy bin. Don't try outrunning him - he can easily chase you.
5. Wolverine doesn't receive health packs, and he must sheath his claws to re-generate. But, you don't know if you're going to heal or not, making this process a waste of time.
6. Gambit's level is extremely confusing and you're bound to lose lives trying to figure out how it works.
7. Storm's level is a water level.
8. Cyclops' level involves you having to jump on carts. If you fail and jump on the train track that causes instant death. It also has blind leap of faith jumps that you're never sure if it's a platform below or an electrified rail until it's too late.
9. If any character loses a life in one of the two stages of every level, you will go back to start of the stage. There are no checkpoints because of this!
10. For most of the releases, it had okay, but not great music.
    • The Genesis version's music is notably terrible due to the poor use of the already bad Sound Images sound driver. It also removes two songs and replaces them with different songs for no apparent reason. Despite this, both songs cut are still in the game's coding.
11. The sound effects are quite poor in quality.
12. The controls feel unresponsive at times.
13. Some of the levels are mazes and they're easy to get lost in. You can easily spend a lot of time trying to find where the boss is because the areas in stages look similar to each other.
14. The Game Gear version has the smaller screen resolution that makes it feel a lot more artificially difficult because of not being able to tell where offscreen enemies are, or if there's a bottomless pit below you.
15. There are noticeable hitbox issues with enemies in this game, both with your attacks and with enemies.
16. If you miss a jump in some stages, be prepared to do quite a bit of backtracking.
17. The ending is also not very good: Arcade escapes when the base explodes, meaning all the effort the characters had to go through defeating Arcade were for naught.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The graphics are decent.
2. The SNES soundtrack by Tim and Geoff Follin is actually good.
3. Enemies don't respawn when they're killed for that life only.
4. If you lose all your lives after clearing the intro level, you are given the option to skip it.
5. Despite the Game Gear having a lower screen resolution, it made the previously-mentioned Juggernaut level much easier. The instant kill ball pits no longer occur, along with making Juggernaut slower.

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