X-Men Video Game Previews & Reviews

During the '90s I read a lot of X-Men comic books and watched the animated series Saturday mornings on Fox. Disney is reviving the show, titled X-Men '97, on March 20th so I decided to put together some X-Men coverage leading up to its debut. I'll have at least three posts, maybe four, that cover some video games, television appearances, and toys. I scanned quite a bit of coverage from video game magazines but I'm only using some of it in this post.

The scans include a GamePro "ProView" of The Uncanny X-Men (NES), a preview and review of X-Men (Genesis), a preview and review of X:Men: Mutant Apocalypse (SNES), a preview of X-Men 2: Clone Wars (Genesis), a review of X-Men: Children of the Atom (PlayStation), and reviews of the computer games X-Men and X-Men II: The Fall of the Mutants. For Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM) reviews I place the review next to the writers that appear on the first page of the column to show who wrote each one. There is also editing on the reviews that appear across multiple pages and sometimes you'll see review scores and or screenshots for other games as well.

GamePro - March 1990

        EGM #44 - March 1993                              EGM #46 - May 1993

EGM #65 - December 1994

                                EGM #65 - December 1994                    Next Generation #40 - April 1998

Video Games & Computer Entertainment - September 1990 & June 1991

Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden Previews (Electronic Gaming Monthly)

Akira Toriyama
April 5, 1955 - March 1, 2024
(Image Source: Jiji Press)

As I was flipping through my gaming magazines in search of Mario and X-Men articles this past weekend, I came across previews for Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden and its sequels. Although I've seen a little of the anime and tried some of the Dragon Ball video games, I don't know a whole lot about Dragon Ball Z other than its significant impact on anime and pop culture. Unfortunately, Dragon Ball creator Akira Toriyama recently passed away. He began working on manga (Japanese comic books) in 1978 and launched the Dragon Ball manga series in 1984. Other than his writings and drawings being used, I'm not sure if he was involved with these particular games. During his career he did provide character designs for other video games too, such as Chrono Trigger, Blue Dragon, and the Dragon Quest series. Of course, Toriyama-san wrote and illustrated other manga as well, including Sand Land, which is receiving its first video game adaption next month.

These previews are all from Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), appearing in its coverage of Japan's Super Famicom games. All three released in Japan and Europe but not in North America for the Super NES. More recently the first one was available as a special pre-order bonus for Dragon Ball FighterZ on Switch and the second game was a pre-order bonus at Amazon for Dragon Ball Z: Extreme Butōden on Nintendo 3DS.

Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden (EGM #51 - October 1993)

Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden 2 (EGM #57 - April 1994)

Dragon Ball Z: Super Butōden 3 (EGM #65 - December 1995)

Its-a-Mario Day!

The proper line is "it's-a-me, Mario," but "Its-a-Mario Day" works well enough, and today is indeed Mario Day. Abbreviate March to "Mar" and view the number 10 as "IO" and March 10th or "Mar10" becomes "Mario" and thus, it is Nintendo's Mario Day. I don't believe I've ever actually posted anything for this day in the past so I flipped through some magazines to find coverage of Mario games. Below are reviews of Super Mario Bros. 3, Super Mario All-Stars, and Mario RPG from Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), and a review of Super Mario Bros. 2 from Video Games & Computer Entertainment. As I often do with EGM reviews, I copied the review over to page one of the reviews section so that you can see who assigned each score. I'm also including a preview of Mario & Wario, a Super NES game planned for the West that ended up never releasing outside of Japan.

As I've stated numerous times, I grew up with Sega platforms so I'm not too much of a Mario fan, though I did get a Game Boy in 1989 and own a variety of games where Mario makes an appearance, like Alleyway, Golf, and Baseball. Super Mario Land is the only Mario game I own and the only one I've completed, though I have tried quite a few others. If you're a Mario fan you might want to check out the Shigeru Miyamoto interviews post as well.

Reviews

Mario & Wario Preview (EGM #50 - September 1993)

Hot Wheels Cargo Plane

This is the 1983 Hot Wheels Cargo Plane set from Mattel. It's a jumbo jet that carries six Hot Wheels cars and includes four plastic workers (I'm missing one), boarding stairway, ground engine test stand, cardboard runway, and cardboard parking lot with a traffic control tower that is rather flimsy and hasn't held up too well. The vehicles can enter through a rear flap and exit out the front that splits open as the ramp is expended via a lever. There are sound effects too that are powered by a 9-volt battery. If the sounds worked I might have made a video for this toy but, unfortunately, they no longer do. You can see on the front of my box is a Caldor price tag showing that it retailed for $29.99. 

Joe Montana Quarterbacks Another Super Game (Sega Visions - Winter 1990/91)

This Sega Visions article is about signing Joe Montana to endorse -- and assist in the development of -- Sega's football video game for the Genesis. In addition to that, I'm adding the Sega Visions review, Sega football ads that can also be found on Facebook and Google Photos, and my annual Super Bowl prediction which I sometimes post about here or sometimes only mention in a "Let's Play" video on YouTube. While I'm not a football expert by any means and am only taking a final score guess for fun, I was actually only off by a point in last year's post (Kenner's Starting Lineup). I have mentioned Joe Montana games in a few other posts previously, and I opted to go with a Montana post here because of the Super Bowl matchup. Montana is, of course, one of the greatest 49ers players and one of the best quarterbacks of all-time. However, late in his career he played for the Kansas City Chiefs as well and appeared on multiple Sega video game covers in the Chiefs uniform.

Sega Visions - April/May 1991

In the early issues of Sega Visions the reviews read more like overviews than an actual review. You won't find much in the way of opinion as Sega was simply promoting Genesis games, its own and those of the third-party publishers, and it avoided being negative. Eventually it did start rating games on a numerical scale. I lightened the green background on this scan which is somewhat difficult to read in the actual magazine with black print against a dark green page.

Sega Ads

Super Bowl LVIII

This year the Chiefs haven't looked like the Super Bowl champions they were in the previous season but they still have the best QB in the NFL which is why they are in the big game yet again. The 49ers have a young QB with less than two years of NFL experience but a good defense and the better all-around team. I'm going to lean toward the better team over the better QB and predict a 31-20 49ers victory.

Sega Champs Square Off in (Not-So-) Sunny Hawaii (Video Games & Computer Entertainment - April 1991)

Yesterday I posted Video Games & Computer Entertainment's (VG&CE) 1990 coverage of the Nintendo World Championships debut in Dallas, Texas. Not to be outdone by Nintendo, Sega hosted its own competition that same year. This three-page article from VG&CE's April 1991 issue details the Sega Genesis World Championship finals held in Honolulu, Hawaii on December 22, 1990. Unlike Nintendo, Sega didn't cater to all ages as the competitors were all college students who earned their spot in the finals by winning events held at American universities. There also weren't any special cartridges created for this event as Sega used the regular Genesis cartridges of Shadow Dancer, Mickey Mouse in the Castle of Illusion, and Joe Montana Football. The top prize was an Eagle Talon vehicle valued at $18,000.