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Average Customer Review: ( 26 customer reviews )
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On one hand:

a) Excellent representation of the comic-book characters, both in terms of image and personality. It's a huge attraction to me because I used to read the comics, and I think fellow readers (or ex-readers) would also enjoy this aspect.

b) Lots of innovative touches, such as dressing Player 2 characters in the movie's costumes, even if they're much inferior to the comic-book costumes, and offering up great cover art for X-Men past issues during the (pretty long) loading times.

c) Including the movie trailer, even if I think the characters' image created for the X-Men movie is laughable, Cyclops, Magneto and Jean Grey being especially dorky-looking.

d) The inclusion of Phoenix/Jean Grey, one of X-Men comics' most complex characters (and my personal favourite), but rarely used in X-Men-related games.

e) Beautiful graphics overall.

f) Innovative "multiple-level" super-move system.

g) Great backgrounds.

Countering these strengths:

i) Sluggish response. It's hard to take advantage of an opponent's mistakes because of this. Also, the "hard" attacks become nearly useless because they take forever to come out.

ii) Imbalance. Mystique's gun is overwhelmingly powerful, and Beast can pull off a barrage of nearly-zero-recovery attacks with little risk to himself, but Storm and Gambit are too weak.

iii) Too little push-away for ordinary attacks. The chain-combo system leaves plenty to be desired.

iv) Some computer characters are pretty cheap -- Toad will toss you three times in a row if you don't retaliate, and that is made difficult by the slow response.

v) Terrible, terrible manual. Not only does it not give you a list of moves, but it's rift with typos and mistakes. To get *most* of the moves you have to go through the "Academy" mode, which is too slow and also doesn't teach you everything. I've already found one super move for Phoenix that isn't taught to you, and nowhere does it say how to pull off Counters, which the computer uses liberally (and fairly cheaply) against you.

vi) Too few characters. In the beginning, in fact, you can only choose from six X-Men. After beating the game four times you can select Toad, Mystique, Sabretooth and Magneto, but even that only brings the tally to 10, pretty flimsy for a modern fighting game.

vii) Bad endings. The developer should look at Tekken 3's beautiful, story-rich endings. X-Men: Mutant Academy's Arcade endings are very skimpy -- even the Academy mode's endings are better. Mystique's Arcade ending is especially bad.

Even if it's riddled with flaws, damned if I don't keep playing this game. The Capcom "Vs." titles, though pretty good, didn't offer up the more offbeat X-Men characters (Phoenix, Beast, Toad). If the mechanics of this game were better, it could really give Capcom a run for its money.

14 of 15 found the following review helpful:

Awesome!Jul 28, 2000

I went out and bought this title and I was quite surprised when I started playing it. First of all, the graphics are pretty impressive considering PlayStation being a 32 bit system. The character textures are very well done but the fighting backgrounds lack some detail. You can choose from 10 X-Men characters, 6 of them are the good guys, 4 of them are bad guys (and gals). I was a little bummed that there were only 10 playable characters but I didn't get bored using all of them. Second, the sound is excellent. The voiceovers were well done. It sounded like the voices from the X-Men animated series. The Academy option isn't that good, you just learn how to pull off different moves. The Cerebro option is cool because you can watch the movie trailer and view quite a few comic book pics and some pics from the movie. You can also unlock some character movies and some extra costumes. All in all, I think this game is worth buying and it is pretty entertaining.

10 of 11 found the following review helpful:

X MANIA!Jul 18, 2000

This is one of the greatest games I have played this year. It brings fighting games to a new level. The fact that you are X men Characters are even better. I saw the midnight showing and was outside of Toys R us the next morning waiting to buy this game and it was well worth it. A must to any X Men fan. Can't wait for the Sequels and Prequels.

4 of 4 found the following review helpful:

Great game but could've been betterOct 11, 2000
By Britt Schramm "Comic Book Columnist"
Before the start of this review, I just want to say that I am a fan of the X-Men since The Dark Phoenix saga. That aside, this game has the makings of a good start in truly representing the comic book medium. In this incarnation of the comic book series, you must fight all of the heroes in order to advance to the villains and ultimately, Magneto. While the 3-D renderings look great on the characters as a whole, the implementation onto a 2-dimensional environment loses the overall effect. While that may be a minor blow, the bigger problem is that it uses basically the same game engine as Street Fighter Alpha, which is very outdated. The makers should've went all the way and created a rich 3-D environment for the characters to interact with, similar to the far superior Spider-Man (just released). If you really like the X-Men, buy this game and overlook its shortcomings. But for the casual fighter fan, wait for PS2's Tekken Tag Team.

4 of 4 found the following review helpful:

The Best Fighting Game Out!Aug 11, 2000
By Robert R. Green Jr.
X-MEN Mutant Academy by far is one of the best fighting games I have ever played. The price is reasonable for any new release Playstation game, and it is well worth it based on all the extras this game offers. It will definitely make the bestsellers category and be affordable for anyone. The cast consists of Cyclops, Wolverine, Gambit, Storm, Beast, Phoenix, Toad, Mystique, Sabertooth, and Magneto. The graphics are the best yet and utilize all the resources the 32-bit playstation console offers. Each character has 2 different costumes and for all the characters from the X- MEN movie they get a bonus movie costume. There are 4 levels of play, Arcade, Versus, Survival, and Academy Mode. In Arcade mode you can play as your favorite X-MEN or Brotherhood Villain. In Versus, you can play head to head with your friends in a no limits grudge match to the end. Survival mode requires you to have perfected your mutant fighting skills in an endless match against everyone. The quicker you defeat your enemy the more health you are rewarded with, but just one KO and it is over. The most unique feature is the Academy mode where you can pick from the cast of characters and learn from Professor Charles Xavier himself how to use each of their fighting moves along with their mutant powers. X-MEN Mutant Academy also comes with a CEREBRO feature which enables you to see the movie trailer, movie pictures, behind the scenes shots, extra costumes, extra comic pictures, and various story mode intros, and outros for each character and then the final complete story with graphics that will blow you away. With all the extras, the different modes of combat, the awesome graphics, and the great mutant powers X-MEN Mutant Academy is by far the best fighting game out!

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