Countdown to MVC3: X-Men: Children of the Atom

In lieu of the impending release of Marvel vs Capcom 3 in a few months I'm doing an ongoing series of reviews of some underrated, time forgotten Marvel based video games.

Today:

X-Men: Children of the Atom

The beginning of the long road to Marvel vs Capcom 3.

It was 1994, the X-Men comics were going strong, the X-men cartoon was the best comic based cartoon on TV. It was dark like the comics, and followed the story lines petty faithfully. It showcased several of the more acclaimed story arcs: Dark Phoenix Saga, Days of Future Past etc... X-Men was booming for Marvel. So they teamed up with Capcom for the first time to create a fighting video game. The Result? The first in a long line of fighting video games featuring characters from both companies.

X-Men: Children of the Atom Revolves around the core group of X-Men at the time fighting against themselves, and a selection of baddies to stop Magneto's evil schemes.You've got such choices as: Cyclops, Wolverine, Ice-man, Psylocke, Colossus and Storm for the X-Men, and Omega Red, Spiral, Silver Samurai, a Sentinel and a secret character whom I'll discuss later for the "bad guys".

Juggernaut, and Magneto are the bosses, and are not playable in the Arcade version of the game.

The game proved so popular it was ported to several home consoles later on, including the Sega Saturn, and the Playstation.


The fight unlike subsequent games was 1 on 1. No assists, and no partners. Capcom having recently released their final chapter in the Street Fighter II saga: Super Street Fighter II Turbo, took a few of the concepts from that last game, and expanded upon them. Concepts such as the super bar. In Super SFII Turbo the super bar would fill up during a round as the player performed moves and attacks. Once full it would allow the player to perform a Super Move. These moves would inflict more damage and be flashier than their regular counterparts. In SFII however, if you did not use your super meter before the round was over, it would reset back to empty upon starting the next round. X-MEN:COTA changed that so the super bar would maintain its level if not used across rounds. The Super bar also acquired a mid level, and some characters had power moves or X-Abilities that could use only part of the gauge. Moves likes Wolverine's healing factor, Colossus Armor Up move, or Ice-man's Ice Boulder fist would use up just half of the super gauge. Capcom also increased the flashiness of the Super Moves and called them Hyper-X moves. Moves like Cyclops' Hyper Optic Blast, Wolverine's Beserker Barrage etc...

Capcom designed the character Sprites to resemble the cartoon animation style at the time for the most part. It would be these same sprites with a couple of adjustments, and tweaks for added moves etc.. which would persist in the versus series up to Marvel vs Capcom 2.

Control options followed the six button setup implemented in Street Fighter II games. Weak, Medium, Fierce kicks and punches. Capcom refined its combo system allowing for easier and better combo chains.

Single Player would match you up against 6 random opponents, and the 2 Boss characters at the end for a total of 8 stages. Each character had his own unique stage, sometimes related to the character himself, others not so much. Stages ranged form the Danger Room with its changing environment backgrounds for Cyclops, through the Savage Land for Wolverine, all the way to Magneto's Asteroid M.

Capcom went for the more interactive and in some cases multiple leveled stages. Stages such as Colossus' and Spiral's Stages would start off in an area, but as the fight progressed the stage would become damaged, and collapse under the players feet, dropping the player to another area. Cyclops stage would change from the empty Danger room, to a couple of different environments such as a jungle, and an aquarium. It actually made the game feel more involved, as you would see the stages be battered, and/or change, and the floor crack as your battle raged on.

Similarly during the fight, the head shots of the characters next to the health bars would change to show damage inflicted in consecutive blows. Hit the opponent 4 or 5 times in a row, and he would be dizzied. The head shot would spin and flash red, until they recovered at which point the head shot would return to the normal undamaged one.

The game progresses until you've defeated 6 random characters. You are then placed against the unstoppable Juggernaut. This guy is twice the size of any other character in the game and twice as wide. He gets a special stage to fight in. Its a space shuttle launching bay. The stage has a few iron bars sticking out in the foreground which Juggy can pick up and use against you. He also has his signature dashing head butt, and his earthquake move. However since he's so big, he's also very easy to hit.

Juggernaut's attacks will cause damage to the stage, and eventually if you don't defeat him fast enough, the space shuttle will collapse down. It adds a sort of sense of urgency, though nothing really happens if you let it collapse.

Once you deal with Juggernaut, your off to asteroid M to fight Magneto. His stage moves around different areas of the asteroid as you fight. And he can summon pieces of steel and metal plates from the base around him for one of his attacks. He also is the only one who's super meter fills up on its own. He doesn't need to do anything and it still fills up. That means he'll shoot out Hyper moves very often. He likes his Magnetic Shockwave a lot, but he'll annoy you with his Force Field super way more because he basically encases himself in a reddish bubble which makes him close to invulnerable. It also lasts for an annoyingly long time, and allows him to do any power he wants, while you are limited to ranged powers, and even they do pitiful damage. He'll pull it out when you least want him to.

The game features one more thing that cements the connection to the versus series of games that would follow this one. And its probably this specific thing that caused Capcom to think that a crossover game would work really well. Besides the X-Men characters and the bad guys, there is a secret character that can be chosen via a cheat code at the character select screen.

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Highlight Spiral at the character selection screen, wait two seconds, then press Left until Iceman is highlighted. Wait two seconds, then press Right, Up, Right, Right, Down to highlight Silver Samurai. Wait two seconds then press HP + LK + HK.

Who is this mysterious character? Its Akuma (Gouki) the evil Shotokan warrior from Super Street Fighter II Turbo. He has similar moves to Ryu and Ken. This marked Capcom's very first attempt at bringing in a Street Fighter character into a Marvel based game. This would change the landscape of fighting games. As more and more Franchises attempted the crossover. Some with more success than others.

Anyway, for Capcom it was a resounding success as they would go on to produce not 1 not 2, but as of this writing: 5 versus games off of this idea.

The game was a departure from the current fighting games of the time. It was a fast paced, and dynamic arcade game with very flashy moves which compared to the sober and more realistic fighting games of the time was a welcome difference.

All in all a fun game to play. If you can find it in any way shape or form, you should play it before MVC3.


Next time, we leave the arcades for a while, and take a look at another Capcom game, this time for the Super Nintendo.