X-Men: Children of The Atom Review

X-Men: Children Of The Atom Review 

My favorite types of videogames are beat-em-ups and fighting games. Very disability friendly. There are no complex puzzles (aside from maybe Special Moves.) to solve. You just jump right into the game and start being awesome. My favorite types of these games are often X-Men games. While browsing the Internet recently, I  came across a list of the so-called top 10 X-men games. I won’t do that, since I can’t really think of 10 good X-Men games that weren’t crossovers with Capcom. In my mind, there are only two real contenders for good X-Men games. X-men Arcade and X-men: Children of The Atom.
 
X-Men: Children of the Atom was so good with character animation that they used the same sprites for games as recently as Marvel vs. Capcom 2. I already reviewed X-men Arcade, so now I’ll review X-men: Children of The Atom. Now, the game has like 10 characters. And for some reason, one of them is Ice Man. Ice Man wasn’t even in the 90s cartoon that much. At least, not regularly. The game also used the original voice actors from the 90s cartoon, which is cool.

    As per usual, the game is obsessed with combos, and you can do super jumps, and meter-dependent “X-Moves” similar to Marvel vs. Capcom’s super moves. On my Dingoo system, these attacks are triggered by pressing L+R at the same time. No doubt in the arcades it was HP+HK. Other things I like about this game are that you can knock people to different parts of certain stages, which later X-men fighting games would follow. I love Ice Man’s cheesy lines like, “When I say chill out, I mean it!” and the fact the Colossus’s stage is besieged by sentinels. Spiral’s stage spirals downward! Little details like that are fun to me.
 
 The game has two boss characters and unique endings for each character. One boss is Juggernaut. Magneto is the other one. (Both would show up later as playable characters in Marvel Super Heroes!) I do know that Ice Man, in his ending, stands around on a beach making ice sculptures to impress babes. For the life of me, I can’t figure out why Rogue wasn’t added until X-men vs. Street Fighter! Wasn’t this based on the cartoon?

    Anyway, with it’s attention to details, cartoon sources, modern combo chains, and two-button super moves, this might be my favorite X-men fighting game! In my mind, there can’t be a top 10 because the rest of the games just aren’t that good, and/or are way to easy to get stuck in. Children of The Atom basically invented the modern fighting game before Killer Instinct or any of the Marvel-Capcom fighters.

And yes, I know Ice Man’s moves are cheap, but “cheap” is also accessible. The modern button-mashing in fighting games has it’s genesis in a game based on the Fatal Attractions comic storyline. If they had gone one step further, and added fatalities, Magneto might’ve been able to rip out Wolverine’s metal spine! Truly, this game was ahead of it’s time.
   
 What do you think? Did I miss any good X-men fighting games/crossovers? What other games are there? Let me know. Comment away! Until next time…I think next week I should have some new comics to review. Mostly DC! Although I’m a Marvel guy! Stay tuned!

                                                                        Arcade Art

                                                                Spiral vs. Psylocke!                                                          

                                                                   Cyclops's X-Move!
                                                   

                                              With Colossus's stage, you end up on a boat!