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Print-N-Pixel: X-Men the Arcade Game

Is the pixelated and physic defying world of video games a perfect playground for the over-the-top characters found in comic books?  There is only one way to find out:

What is Print-N-Pixel?

Print-N-Pixel is an in depth Group look at Comic Books In Video Games. Print-N-Pixel is more than just playing comic book related video games, its also a “book club,” a month long comic book club.

I hope that people join me in playing the featured games, but more importantly I hope people join in by discussing, reading, and recommending comics that correspond or inspired the featured games.

Even if you don’t play video games and you read comic, or vise versa, stick around and participate in the discussion of either the game or the comics. And if you missed the introduction to Print-N-Pixel you can find it here.

Part 1: X-Men the Arcade Game

Whether you were a hardcore or casual gamer in the 1990’s you probably have fond memories of mashing buttons and fighting off the Foot Clan in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Arcade Game. For comic book fans and button mashing beat ‘em up video game fans, you probably have even fonder memories of the X-Men arcade game.

KONAMI’s X-Men arcade game was amazing. It was the first game, other than racing games, that I remember seeing that had two screens side-by-side. Two full size monitors full of mutant mêlée madness in widescreen with up to six-players fighting together at once put the four-player TMNT game to shame. As a kid, I spent many quarters and hours slashing sentinels as Wolverine on the smaller four player, one monitor version found at the local mall’s arcade. The X-Men arcade game was never ported to any consoles, and if it was, the consoles in 1992 couldn’t recreate the widescreen six-player action of the original arcade cabinet. With malls and arcades almost extinct in the US and no home console port of this game, we are not without the ability to play the X-Men arcade game. Using MAME, the Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator, we can relive and replay this great game. (Instructions and more information on getting MAME can be found later in this post.)

History of the Game

Based on an animated cartoon, the X-Men arcade game was released in 1992, eight months before the hit animated series debuted on the Fox Kids network. The arcade game’s look and design was not based on the popular 1992 cartoon series, but instead on a failed 1989 television pilot “Pryde of the X-Men.”

“Pryde of the X-Men” told the story of the X-Men thwarting Magneto and his “Brotherhood of Terrorist Mutants” plans of sending a comment on a collision course with Earth.


Watch “Pryde of the X-Men” Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.

While the game is based on the cartoon’s story, the level settings, characters, and the animations are the only distinct similarity between the two. The story in the game, told during the intro, explains Magneto leads his army of sentinels and evil mutants against humanity – whom, by the way, we are told are powerless against him. After being told that humanity is powerless against Magneto, I feel it is our civil duty to deposit a quarters (or press the credit button in MAME) and take him down.

Recommended Reading


X-Men Volume 1 #112, #113, and #150
We will talk about these comics in more detail over the next two weeks.

If you can’t find the original copies of the featured comics, you can find them in the following collections and trade paper backs:

X-Men #112 is reprinted in:

X-Men #113 is reprinted in:

X-Men #150 is reprinted in:

reprint list courtesy of The Marvel Database Project

Game Play

To play the game, each player starts by choosing one of the six members of the X-Men featured in the cartoon: Cyclops, Colossus, Dazzler, Nightcrawler, Storm, and Wolverine to control in the quest to take down Magneto and his “Brotherhood of Terrorist Mutants.” The game plays similar to other popular beat ‘em ups like Final Fight, Double Dragon, Streets of Rage, and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade Game with the player moving from left to right of the level using a three button setup: attack, jump, and mutant power.

How To Play

Most of us do not have an arcade in our basement, but if you are reading this you probably have a computer. MAME (Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator) is a great way to play older arcade games. If you are using a Windows based computer I recommend downloading and using MameUI to play X-Men the Arcade Game. Once you have some version of MAME you will need to locate a working ROM. Please don’t ask me where to find the ROM for this or any other game, instead use google and search for either “xmen.zip” which is the 4 player single screen rom and/or “xmen6pu.zip” which is the double screen 6 player game perfect for widescreen monitors.

For those of you who are new to emulation and MAME, here is a quick guide to running MameUI:

MAME is setup to be used with a keyboard, but if you have a gamepad or a Xbox 360 controller I recommend configuring (by hitting the “tab” key while in game) and using that using that instead. If you don’t have a gamepad, here are the default keyboard controls for MAME:

Remember you can change the setting for the controls at any time while playing by pressing the “tab” key. If you are used to playing games on your computer that used “w,a,s,d” and the mouse to move, I recommend that you reconfigure the controls to:

If you have any problems with the emulator check out the Emulation thread in the forums.

This week’s SpaceBooger Achievements

SpaceBooger Achievements are earned by playing the featured game, and also for comic book related tasks such as reading and obtaining recommended comics. SpaceBooger Achievements can be earned for any game or comic at any time, but I encourage all participants to attempt to earn the achievements when they are posted.

This week’s SpaceBooger Achievements are:

“Press Start”

Play the featured game at least once during the time it is featured. (Easy)

“Hard Copy”

Obtain and play an Original Hard Copy of the game. (Hard)

“Comic Book”

Read one or more of the “Recommended Reading” books. (Medium)

“Comic Collector”

Obtain a Hard Copy of one or more of the “Recommended Reading” books. (Hard)

Past Achievements:
“Member” – Become a member of the SpaceBooger.com forums. (Easy)
“Input” – Suggest a game and/or comics for upcoming Print In Pixel features. (Easy)

Remember to leave a comment letting me know what achievements you earned by using the “Comment” link at the bottom right of this post, along with posting them here in the forums .

Next on Print-N-Pixel:

References:
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-Men_(arcade_game)
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pryde_of_the_X-Men
The Marvel Database: http://marvel.wikia.com/Main_Page

  3 Comments  

Posted by Fred on January 14, 2010 @ 6:25 PM Under: Comics, Pint-n-Pixel, Video Games
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Arcade Cabinet: Day Two

After making a trip to the local hardware store to purchase some paint and some material to fix the piping to my sink I continued working on the arcade cabinet around 1pm.

Having a new box of screws I began attaching the left over leads to the left side. After the rest of the leads were attached it was time to move the project from the garage to the basement for final assembly.

Knowing that the completed cabinet would be to heavy to carry into the basement bar, my workout room was transformed into a work room where the two sides were connected with the front and rear braces.

braces

After putting the braces in I added the floor, monitor shelf, and back panel. Around 3pm my father showed up with his reciprocating saw so that I could cut the nasty old galvanized pipe and replace it with a new pvc pipe… a whole other project. Once the plumbing project was complete my father stuck around cutting out the rest of the panels.

finished

While my father cut all of the other pieces, I attached them and made the keyboard drawer completing the project shown above (minus the bottom door, it is not attached for painting purposes).

At about 8pm I added the casters and rolled it into the bar where I could add a coat of primer and clean up the workout room.

primer

I removed the keyboard drawer and finished up this evening with a nice coat of primer. I did notice that I forgot to drill some more ventilation holes on the back panel, these along with the speaker and controller holes will be drilled before the final paint job.

Now I just need a cool marquee and side art to add after I paint the final black coat…

Posted by Fred on April 20, 2008 @ 10:40 PM Under: Other, Video Games
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Arcade Cabinet: Day One

Today around 1pm I began building the arcade cabinet that will house a computer dedicated to playing arcade games.

At 10am my father who is a retired engineer and I went over the plans that I designed and headed out to the hardware store. At 1pm we returned to my house and started to lay out the side design on one of the boards.

Design

This process took longer than I expected because we had to readjust some of the measurements and dimensions once seeing them in real life size. After playing around with the measurements we finished drawing the design on the board and began to cut out the side around 2pm.

Numerous precautions were taken and with careful alignment of the straight edge we began to cut out the side of the cabinet with my circular saw. The cuts were horrible and the blade was smoking and burning the wood. My dad thought that the wood was just too dense so we tried numerous methods only to end up back at the hardware store to purchase newer sharper blades.

After shrinking the measurements down from the original size, because of the bad cuts, we finally cut out the first side around 6pm.

9pm

I stopped working around 9pm this evening after cutting out both sides and attaching the leads for the front and back.

Tomorrow I will cut out the front and back boards, assemble the whole cabinet, and primer a completed arcade cabinet…

Posted by Fred on April 19, 2008 @ 9:46 PM Under: Other, Video Games
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PreFight Kombat!!!

As all of us in the comic blog community prepare for Bahlactus’ newest Friday Night Fight: Classic Edition – Black & White, take a quick peek into the future before the Klassic Kombat begins:

Mortal Kombat 8:
Mortal Kombat vs The DC Universe

Batman's back was once broken... what will Sub Zero do to it?

Mortal Kombat Online and Blog@Newsarama has confirmed the rumors that Midway will continue to put their unique, and violent, twist on the fighting genre. The Mortal Kombat was created as a reaction to Street Fighter II and now it seems that Midway is again responding to the success of Marvel vs Capcom with – Mortal Kombat vs The DC Universe.

Today, Midway Games confirmed what had been rumored for a while: the first next-generation Mortal Kombat title, up until now called “Mortal Kombat 8″ by the community, is officially titled Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe. As the title suggests, it will be a crossover with the characters and setting of DC Comics.

Mortal Kombat Online

[youtube gUGk3ddjpKE nolink]

I am a huge fan of Capcom’s fighting games, and only Capcom’s fighting games. Marvel vs Capcom was the first game that I played when testing the hardware for the MAME arcade machine. I never had much love for the Mortal Kombat series since I played my fighting games at the arcade and there were only so many quarters I could waste mastering Street Fighter II and not many more left to learn Mortal Kombat.

With the love I hold for the DCU, I can’t see myself passing this up seeing how I spent many hours playing Justice League Task Force for the Sega Genesis.

Posted by Fred on April 18, 2008 @ 2:04 PM Under: Comics, Video Games
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