This is an LJN title for sure, but one that's been judged unfairly.

User Rating: 6 | Spider-Man / X-Men: Arcade's Revenge SNES
The Good:
-Multiple playable characters, each with their own stages and powers
-Colorful comic book style and solid animation
-Impressive soundtrack

The Bad:
-Some presentation inconveniences, like background and sound flaws (minor gripes)
-Frustrating enemy and level design
-No saving, passwords, continues, or even cheats


Anyone who played console games in the late 80s and early 90s has probably heard of and played a game developed by LJN, and those who have were generally disappointed. They are well known for taking movies like The Karate Kid, Back to the Future and Terminator 2 and turning them into games less appealing than root canal. The same thing happened to comic book characters like Spider-Man and the X-Men, such as Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge. However, this game does have a few things going for it that make an almost complete and engaging experience worth trying at least a few times.

In Spider-Man and the X-Men: Arcade's Revenge, you are immediately shown a comic book page that serves as the intro to the game. Spider-Man is swinging through the nameless city streets when he finds that X-Men Cyclops, Wolverine, and Storm are captured. Suddenly, Spider-Man catches Gambit being sucked into a truck and he decides to follow it. This begins the first level of the game, which will serve to be the only level you have to play, since after you complete it, you get to choose between five different characters and play through each of their two levels in any order you choose, much like in the yet-to-be-released Mega Man X.

Spider-Man can utilize his Spider powers, including swinging from building to building, climbing walls, shooting nets of web at his enemies, and his Spidey-sense, which consists of lines blinking around Spidey's face and a somewhat annoying fart noise for a buzzer. Wolverine can use his claws to slash through enemies and walls and can put his claws away to recover lost health. Cyclops can use his visor to blast enemies from a distance and at three angles, but he also gets the option punch or even kick his enemies to death. (a tad excessive, but whatever) In Storm's levels your mission is to swim through a maze, blasting obstacles with some laser projectile and surfacing frequently to maximize your oxygen supply. Gambit can chuck a limited yet easily replenished amount of cards at foes and obstacles to get away from something out to kill him. He can also unleash a windmill of great big balls of fire to take out anything on the screen. Each character gets two stages (each with a boss), excluding the first level where you play as Spider-Man, and then they all come together to complete one final level and kick some final butt.

Unfortunately, it takes a lot of time, effort, and luck to make it that far, and I've never gotten too far in this game. Maybe someday I'll finish it, but knowing LJN, doing so probably won't be that satisfying, even if it takes twenty or so years. This is because, like you may have already heard, this game is way too hard. These are problems that can easily be fixed, too. My most major complaint with this game is that there are no saving games, passwords, or continues. Many old school games didn't have saving or passwords, but at least you could continue so you can get through whatever stage you're stuck on, but not here! If you loose all of your lives, you go all the way back to the first level with Spider-Man. There are no cheats or Game Genie codes either, which would at least make getting to the end of the game possible for everyone, but nope. The three lives you do start with can be lost pretty quickly if you're not careful, and this is because of some lame level design issues. The levels are big, but often too big, meaning you may have to make blind leaps of faith and suffer the old 'trial-and-error' style of play, which would be fine if you had continues, but nope. Also, some parts of the levels are too small, making them time-consuming to maneuver, particularly in Gambit's stages. Also, in one of his stages, there are several opportunities where you can get stuck and doomed to die, which is undoubtedly unfair. I do commend LJN for their efforts, however. Control for each character is great, and their abilities are fun to use. This is a much better presentation of comic book characters done by LJN than in previous titles.

The graphics are hit-and-miss, for the most part. The foregrounds and sprites are nicely detailed and varied, whether you be searching through a city at night, a crazy circus fair, or a deep dark mine. Sadly, the background graphics aren't as impressive. Most of them seem like a mess of colors which somehow manage to blend in with the foreground, meaning some places that look like platforms really aren't. The graphics are very colorful and fitting for the comic book style that the game presents. The animations of the sprites are all cartoony and smooth, which gives more of a movie feel--another nice feature.

However, nothing in this game can top the soundtrack. From the moment you boot up the game to the end, the music never ceases to engage the player and somehow engrave itself into the mind. There's many tracks, including one for each character, and all of them are long, contain a variety of instruments, and are crazy catchy. It's really cool how they pull off a number of styles of music to make playing as each character more exciting in their own ways. My favorite has to be the relentless techno bash that is Gambit's stage. Look it up on YouTube for a track you might be surprised to hear on the SNES. While you're at it, look up the entire soundtrack, because it's easily the best part of this game, and one of the best the system offers.

So in a nutshell, this game is far from terrible, and one of the few LJN games worth a few hours of play, at the minimum. I often see people complain about how awful it is without experiencing it enough, and this is a game you really have to spend time with to see if it's for you or not. If you're up for a challenging, old-school 2D platformer with a variety of characters and stages to play, check it out. Otherwise, at least listen to the soundtrack.