X-Men vs. Street Fighter

X-MEN VS. STREET FIGHTER

T-1226G
Copyright © 1997 Capcom Co. Ltd.
X-Men TM and © Marvel Characters Inc.
Fighting game, 1-2 players
Sega Saturn
¥7800 (with 4 Meg Ram Cartridge)
Available Now (Import)

— by Charles McCarter

If you are a Sega Saturn owner, unless you've been living under a rock, you've heard of this game. And by now, with all the reviews that have flooded the net, you are probably a bit skeptical. An arcade-perfect (or so close as to be indistinguishable) port of a game for a home system? Could it possibly be true?
In a word, yes.
Capcom, unmatched king of the 2D fighter, has come out with another amazing game for the home system. Combining two of their most popular franchises, The Marvel Line and the Street Fighter Line, X-MEN VS. STREET FIGHTER also adds some additional new features of game play. Each player picks a team of two characters, which can be switched in and out at any point during the match. Matches are one round 99 seconds long. The winner is the one who is left standing at the end.
The game engine is modified X-MEN/MARVEL SUPER HEROES/STREET FIGHTER ALPHA 2. Of course, there are the usual special moves done with now-familiar joystick motions and multiple button presses, and there are super moves. But there is also now a tag-team attack, where both of one player's characters can gang up on the opponent.

The list of characters includes most of the heavy hitters from X-Men, and several new X-Men characters, including Rogue, Gambit, and Sabertooth. Other characters on the side of the X are Cyclops, Storm, Magneto, Juggernaut, and of course, Wolverine. Noticeably absent is Psylocke. The Fighters include Ryu, Ken, Chun-Li, Cammy, Vega, Dhalsim, Zangief, Nash, and Gouki as a "secret" character. (Push up at the character select screen and there he is).
For those who like fighters, this game is a great deal of fun, and offers a lot of new and interesting opportunities, including the Aerial Rave, which is basically a mid-air combo. Some of them are quite impressive and damaging.
The animation in this game is incredibly smooth, thanks no doubt to the 4-Meg RAM cart that came with the game and is required to play. After playing this game, going back to MARVEL SUPER HEROES is somewhat painful as the slowdown and the missing frames are that much more obvious.
The bad news is that, unless you have a modified Saturn (or a Japanese one), you won't be able to play this game, because the RAM cart sits in the same slot the converter occupies. And although I have heard that you can swap out the cartridges, I would not recommend such a thing. So, for the time being this game is available only to a specific set of import Saturn gamers.
Capcom has announced plans to release this game in the United States, and is trying to work some sort of deal with Sega regarding the release of the RAM cart. Given the situation of the Saturn in the United States, however, I am not sure that this will come to pass. U.S. releases of Sega Saturn games have declined drastically and Sega has announced that it is phasing the system out in the United States. This is really too bad because X-MEN VS. STREET FIGHTER really demonstrates what the Saturn can do.

Rating: **** (out of 4)