We Broke The Universe In X-Men Arcade

When classic arcade titles are re-released on XBLA, we're as guilty as anyone when it comes to buying them on pure nostalgia. More often than not, they don't exactly hold up the way they used to (anyone played Joust recently?). In the case of X-Men Arcade, we were more optimistic thanks to its six-player nature and online support. If it gives you any indication of how much fun we had, our team of six planned on playing through the game once. We ended up beating it six times in a row.

We had a revolving door of teammates throughout the night, but the original team consisted of Reiner, GI user Ghostpig, fellow gaming journalist Mitch Dyer, Twitter followers, and myself. On our first playthrough, things went pretty smoothly for the first couple chapters or so. Then something odd happened once we got to the cliff level. After we beat up a bunch of spandex-wearing alligators (but before the Ice Blanka level boss), Mitch somehow got disconnected from the game. He was able to get back in, but something wasn't right.

We'd see Mitch (playing as Colossus) wandering to corners of the screen where we couldn't see any enemies, yet he was still throwing punches and spamming his mutant attack like he was in the fight of his life. Seconds later, we'd watch him walk straight into a hole and die. After asking him what was going on, it became apparent that he was somehow at a completely different part of the game than us. We'd be fighting what appeared to be Oscar statuettes on the moon while Mitch was in a fight with Juggernaut, yet both parties could see all six players onscreen at all times.

Mitch would even have me help out by saying "Nightcrawler, punch up here in the top-left corner!". I'd go swing wildly for a while and hear Mitch say "Yeah! You're kicking their asses!". Even with all this confusion, we managed to beat the game (and we actually didn't mind the glitch because it was cracking us up). For the next five playthroughs, the alternate timelines managed to combine successfully and the glitch didn't pop up again.

We did break the game in one other spot. On about our third playthrough, we had the boss fights and enemy patterns basically memorized. When Emma Frost dropped down from the ceiling, our team of six mutant powered so hard that it broke the game. It totally locked up, and the gameplay would occasionally stutter and freeze for the next couple of playthroughs.

I know I've spent a lot of time talking about bugs in the preceding paragraphs, but they didn't actually interfere with our enjoyment of the title. It's a great reminder of one of the best arcade beat-em-ups ever, and playing over Live with six players is an absolute blast. It's a short game (there's even an achievement for beating it in under 25 minutes), but as we proved last night, it's highly replayable. Grab some beers and some friends and you'll be glad X-Men Arcade is in your game library.

Actually, here's a code so at least one of you can get the game right now. Enjoy! V2W4M-KTYQF-JTVKQ-VW6J7-GW72Z