X-Men Arcade Game For Sega Saturn Work in Progress Reaches V 0.3

Do you remember the kind of horrible X-Men cartoon? No, not the one with the rocking soundtrack that went harder than it had to. The other one. The one before that. The one that had Wolverine voiced with an Australian accent. He sounded like Crocodile Dundee with claws (not really, I just wanted to reference that character). Other than Dazzler, this earlier cartoon had a very similar team makeup as the much better cartoon version. Well, in the early 90’s Konami was on a arcade brawler high having games based on both The Simpsons and X-Men. Over 30 years later a fan is bringing the X-Men game to the Sega Saturn, probably the hardest console to program for, ever.

Konami Had a Double Header and Did Nothing with Them

Both The Simpsons and X-Men arcade games by Konami are held close to the hearts of many gamers that played them. Konami could have probably made some decent money by porting these games to a home console.

They didn’t.

The only thing I can think for a reason why they didn’t do this was the absolute mess gaming was in the early 90s.

Sure, Sega and Nintendo were top of the heap with the Genesis and Super Nintendo (respectively) but gamers were faced with more selection. Consoles that might, just might but did not, take off and dethrone Sega or Nintendo.

Gamers were being inundated with coverage of the next generation consoles like the Atari Jaguar and 3DO console. Nintendo was busy stabbing Sony in the back over the CD-ROM addon/console for the SNES and Sega was pushing their Sega CD hard.

Then the other side of the coin is probably licensing rights. Konami probably only had rights to the arcade version of X-Men (and The Simpsons). This would leave anyone, including Konami, wanting to port to a home console in an uphill battle having to license with more than a handful of companies (Konami, Marvel, then the console manufacturer).

Where X-Men on Saturn Stands Now

Recently, X-Men for Saturn saw a version 0.3 release which added Nightcrawler to the mix and other updates. There is a new boss added, a new level and a handful of new enemies to defeat.

You can grab the download from Sega Saturn Shiro. It is a Zip file that, according to Sega Saturn Shiro, contains the BIN and CUE files needed to play. You can play this on real hardware via SD card (if you have the modifications) or burned to a CD (again, if you have the hardware fixes). Others can enjoy this work in progress via emulator.

Unfortunately, the developer feels they are safe from being shut down by Konami because they are not using any code from the arcade game. They are using the arcade sprites though. Plus, Disney/Marvel is a potential concern as they are VERY litigious over their properties.