Review #502: X-men - Mutant Academy(GBC)

 The only X it deserves lies over the game's title.

Same cover as the PS1 game, but not even half as good.

 Putting fighting games on a 2-button handheld is quite the task, but back in the day, it was our only choice when it came to fighting games. X-Men Mutant Academy was one that caught my eyes, reviews were pretty negative, but the screenshots looked oh so very pretty. And now, about... 15-ish years later, I can hold the game's cartridge in my hands and... I wish I couldn't.

 In the game's defense it offers a rather surprising amount of modes: Story Mode, in which you battle against every character, Versus Mode, if you have another person that owns the game, Battle Mode, 3 on 3 team-based battle against the CPU, Survival and Training. Honestly, it's a nice selection and way more modes than one would expect out of a Gameboy Color game. As for characters, there're 10 different characters: Cyclops, Wolverine, Gambit, Storm and Phoenix are the good guys, while you get Magneto, Sabertooth, Mystique, Toad and Apocalypse from the bad guys. Every character is outfitted with 2 special moves and a single super move.

The game only looks good in Screenshots.

 A punches and B kicks, and you have two types of each attack, one by tapping the button and another, stronger but slower attack by holding down the button. Each character has two super moves, but the controls can be rather stiff and unresponsive, charge attacks are nigh impossible to pull off. Supers can be performed once your rage bar is full, and this is done by pressing A and B, and only A and B, and the same time. The control scheme is, well, the only thing they could do with the Gameboy Color's limited buttons, but the unresponsiveness of the special moves leaves a lot to be desired.

 The game as an overall package is heavily lacking, however, for instance, the game doesn't have an internal battery, so you have to input the obnoxious codes to unlock Apocalypse and Phoenix every single time you boot up the game. Character sprites are very ugly and are oddly proportioned, which compliments the absolutely awful sound design.

Both of those things are supposed to be Gambit. They kinda nailed it. Kinda.

 It's a fact that you can't do much with only two buttons, but even then the game is devoid of any fun. I know that some of us clamored for fighting games on the go back in the day, but maybe that was a dream not meant to come true, at least until the Gameboy Advance entered the scene. Mutant Academy on the Gameboy Color is a terrible game that's better left off as a curiosity, it's more fun to see how they 'de-made' and crammed the 32-bit counterpart into this 8-bit cart than to actually play it.
 2.0 out of 10