X-Men 2: Clone Wars is an action platform game developed by Headgames (now Activision) and released by Sega for the Sega Mega Drive/Genesis in 1995 as a sequel to a previous X-Men game on the console. The game is based on the adventures of the popular Marvel Comics superhero team, the X-Men.
I was a fan of the comics but never liked the previous X-Men game. Thankfully, this one was great and kids in my country could bypass the difficulty by adding more lives via a cheat code at that time.
The Story
The Uncanny X-Men engage in a battle so world-threatening, that even Magneto their mutant arch-enemy switches sides! As mutantkind races to the edge of disaster at the claws of an evil techno-bio cloning organism called the Phalanx. Go, be one of the heroic X-Men and defend the world!
The Graphics and Sound
The 6 playable characters you have available in the game are all beautifully detailed for a 16-bit game. The X-Men look like they did in the comic books. You could see their muscles and motion of breathing too.
The rest of the graphics, including the environment and the enemies, are still fine, but a step down from the player character models. The enemies are less detailed than the bosses, and the levels range from good-looking to pretty bland like the explosions. Overall, the graphics are good.
The sound effects are okay. But the sounds of gunfire, explosions, and the grunts your characters do make when they get hit are all mediocre.
As for music; it is not at all memorable. From the title screen music to the level songs are not much better. The music composer has got lazy on this one.
The Gameplay
You can choose any X-Men character you want. The best part about it is that you don’t have to stick with just one because the character menu shows up after every level. The characters are pretty equal in value. Each has their own special abilities you could use to beat the levels.
The game has 2 player mode too. It is more fun to go through the levels with a friend.
Some of the bosses are big and it requires a little bit of thinking about how you beat them.
The controls are easy and the replay value is pretty good. Trying to beat the game to unlock the secret character and using each character to beat the game makes it good enough to play again.
My Verdict
X-Men 2: Clone Wars is one of the better comic to video game translations of the 1990s. You will enjoy this whether or not you are an X-Men fan, though. It's a simple, good game, and the different styles the various characters offer should keep you playing it for a while.
Play it on the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive console or play it on a damn good emulator.
Let's keep on gaming in the free world!
