Description

In a dark future, Mojo has his own TV show where the participants fight to death. He has imprisoned some X-Men from the past to recreate their greatest battles. Wolverine and Rogue have to enter the game and rescue their friends, then defeating Mojo to return back home.

In this platform game, the player starts choosing either Wolverine or Rogue. At each new level beaten, a new X-Men will be available: first Gambit, then Cyclops, Havoc and finally Shard. If one of the X-Men dies, the player has to start the level again, choosing among the remaining X-Men the one to play. After all the X-Men have died, the game is over.

Each character can activate his/her power at will. Wolverine can use his claws, Rogue can fly, Gambit can throw explosive cards, Cyclops will fire optic blasts, Havoc fires plasma blasts and Shard fires energy blasts. The characters have an energy meter and a power meter, which will worn out as they are hit or use their powers, respectively. They can find items to restore their energy and power.

Gameplay consists basically in finding the way out of each of the six levels. Once finding it, the character will face a boss, usually known characters from the comics like Magneto, Fitzroy, a Sentinel, etc.

-Developed by Sega, X-Men: Mojo World is a 2D action game featuring the most popular mutants from the comic books. It was one of the last cartridges to be released for the Master System and, as far as I know it, was available exclusively in Brazil.

In this game, the villain Mojo has kidnapped some members of the X-Men team, who are being held in various theme-based areas. Your task is to save all of your mutant fellows and then seek and defeat Mojo himself. In the beginning, you can control only Wolverine and Rogue, but as you rescue your teammates, you have the option to control them as well: Cyclops, Gambit, Havok and Shard are all selectable characters.

You progress through left-to-right scenarios, collecting items, defeating lots of lesser foes, and facing a boss at the end of each level (all of them familiar faces, like Magneto or the Sentinel). You can always choose the character you wish, and each one has a unique special ability: Rogue can fly, Wolverine can auto-heal, Gambit can throw explosive cards and so on. These mutant powers are incredibly useful, but they have limited use, so you’d better save them for the most difficult moments of the game. X-Men: Mojo World has a pretty adequate degree of challenge overall, and once you learn the basics of the game, everything becomes quite entertaining.

The gameplay has a few drawbacks though: there are occasional tricky jumps, the controls are a bit loose and, most importantly, the characters are seriously unbalanced. While you can easily complete any area with Gambit or Rogue, characters like Cyclops and Shard are total weaklings that cannot even defeat regular enemies without a lot of effort. Simply using these heroes to go anywhere is like a harder difficulty setting in itself. Well, at least it is a nice feature for X-Men fans to play as less mainstream mutants like Havok or Shard in a game.

In terms of graphics, X-Men: Mojo World is very nice. The backgrounds are clear and colorful, each stage looks unique and the sprites, too, are both large and detailed. Granted, the animation may be a bit choppy, but you can instantly recognize your favorite heroes and villains from the comic books. The visuals are, indeed, one of the best aspects of the game. As for the audio, it is nothing spectacular. Only average 8-bit quality tunes and sound effects, none of them particularly memorable.

In general, X-Men: Mojo World is a really good game, one of the best action titles available for the Master System. I honestly didn’t expect anything good when I first played it, but I can say I was pleasantly surprised. Give it a try if you have the chance.