The Retro Critic

Wolverine

Yup, it’s THAT time again:

LJN time!

Eric Vole listed his 10 Favorite LJN Games recently and, with The Wolverine coming out in theatres soon, why not take a look at a game that didn’t make the list but is worthy of mention: Wolverine on the NES.

The thing about a lot of LJN games is that, whether they’re decent or not, they tend to occasionally stray from the source material a little. This Wolverine game starts off and ends appropriately but about halfway through it kinda loses its mind. This means that, as an adaptation of the Marvel character’s stories, indeed, it does technically fail quite a bit but otherwise, this adds some fun lols to an ok-enough, challenging game.

The main villain you face throughout the game is Sabretooth.

Well, when I say “face” I mean you see his picture over and over as he taunts you and says silly things to you between levels.

REALLY silly things.

(it’s a fire level…)

Luckily, you get to eventually physically fight Sabretooth:

I use the word “fight” lightly since all you really need to do to beat him is punch him repeatedly until he falls off a cliff.

Bummer.

Other villains Wolverine encounters are much less entertaining but still deserve a mention. They are, after all, everywhere in this game!

Especially these guys:

Those Silver Surfer-looking dudes blast balls of energy at you constantly in that first level but there is a slight delay before they actually shoot you so if you know roughly where to go, you should be able to avoid them relatively easily.

Oh, also, some of them have electric guitars:

Ok, I think they’re bazookas but still.

I can dream, can’t I?

At the end of the game you also face Magneto, who becomes one of Sabretooth’s allies. And before you get excited and cry out “Magneto’s awesome!”, he’s not. Not in this game, anyway. He just shows up, becomes a mild inconvenience then you just chase him away!

Shoo, Magneto! Shoo!

One of my favourite villains in the entire game (before it drives WAY off-course, that is) has to be:

Man In Blue Jeans!

Wow, Sabretooth really isn’t all that picky when it comes to henchmen, is he?

John Travolta from the movie Grease? Really?

Fair enough.

I guess he is electrifying…

Alright, enough build-up. Let’s talk about the game’s shark-jumping halfway point, shall we? When Wolverine stops being Wolverine and instead becomes…

The best Scooby-Doo episode since that Batman one?

Seriously, look at these guys!

You’ve got these weird, green plant things that spring up from the ground, flying skull-holding Grim Reapers, robot Frankenstein monsters… it’s like they took some Halloween-themed game then dropped Wolverine in it without thinking!

I don’t mind it, though: it’s pretty funny.

I like how you have to literally PUNCH skulls at those Frankenstein-bots, by the way.

It’s oddly satisfying.

There are other random levels in this game but before we take a look at them, let’s check out some of the other weird stuff poor old Wolverine is made to do during the course of LJN’s opus.

First:

Punching bubbles.

Punching bubbles may sound silly to you but it is a necessity in this game! You don’t know how mean, how irritating those bubbles are! They follow you around, it’s very frustrating.

I personally fully condone punching these particular bubbles.

There’s a water level which sees Wolverine swim around a bit:

Look at him: isn’t he adorable?

Wolverine should never be doing anything classy like majestically swimming away from halved robot Pacmans, it feels out-of-character somehow…

I should give a shout-out to the pickups in this game.

They range from standard:

To loltastic:

(that’s in a pit of death, by the way)

Then there’s the wine:

Logan never drinks… wine.

I seem to remember him preferring whisky in the comics.

I would like to mention something that I’ve been noticing when playing retro games recently: what’s with all the random skeletons? How come in so many games you find skeletons lying dead in the background?

Atmosphere?!

Anyway, later on, Wolverine is made to survive a fire level where he battles tiny little robots which are a long way off from Sentinels, a LONG way off:

If anything, they’re more like Lost In Space robots!

Wolverine sure has his work cut out in this level but it could be worse, he could be this guy:

Can we start a Kickstarter campaign to find this dude a new job?

Wolverine is made to face what is quite probably one of the pointiest levels in gaming history:

Those levels aren’t too hard, you just need to constantly keep moving, be aware of the delays villains have before they attack, and watch out for platforms that break apart. It’s challenging at times but you can play it without losing your mind, for sure.

The controls are straight-forward enough, the graphics are simplistic but not unappealing and the whole thing, honestly, is really not that bad. You even get the promise of an X-Men game right at the end with Jubilee and Psylocke showing up to support you:

No thanks to you!

A little help would have been nice…

See, this is why Logan hates you guys!

Look at him:

He’s not happy!

You could even say he’s “Miserable.”

(Hugh Jackman joke, sorry)

Overall, I would actually recommend trying out Wolverine: there are better X-Men retro games out there, even LJN games but this one is harmless enough.

I enjoyed it ok.

Having said that, do check out Eric’s review of the game which takes a different approach to the whole thing. I must admit that having Wolverine’s claws cause any kind of damage to the character is pretty darn stupid.

Like, SO stupid.

About as stupid as this title card which pops up at the end of the game:

Huh?!

Whatever, Wolverine on the NES: won’t make you smarter and might annoy you at times but in the end it’s really not that bad. It gets a bad rep.

THE END.

YES!!!