Wolverine

The Good
Wolverine comes from the folks at LJN and thus it was surprising to see that the game featured some impressive graphics and sound that reminded me (a bit) of the Silver Surfer NES game. It is much, much, much better than the horrible Uncanny X-men video game LJN released for the NES back in 1988.

It is nice to see some cameos from other X-men, although the help they provide is limited.

The Bad
The storyline is pretty much non-existent. Wolverine has somehow been captured by the Magento and Sabretooth. What do these two evil mutants decide to do with Wolverine? Well, dump him on a mysterious island with even weirder buildings and range of climate.

Comic book fans will find this storyline to be a bit of a stretch, particularly given that the game does little to keep the storyline going, not to mention the fact that whenever you punch with your claws, you lose precious health points.

Side-scrolling veterans will find it odd that this game does little to explain the storyline and features no bosses except at the end of the game. While the game allows you to punch, kick, duck and craw it makes you defenseless in water, offers sudden death for falling in certain water pools and obvious moves (i.e. using your claws to climb or grab onto ledges) are not available.

The game also allows the enemies to quickly deplete your health points, as there is no brief period of invincibility after you are hit. Instead, after you kill a certain number of enemies you go into a brief berserk/crazy mode where you are rapidly punching, kicking and are otherwise incredible difficult to control.

The Bottom Line
Wolverine looks and sounds similar to the Silver Surfer NES game, and is almost as hard. The game would have greatly benefited from some more abilities and moves, better hit detection, a more coherent storyline and maybe the ability to control some other X-men.

The Good
Wolverine has a lot of good things going for it, especially when you consider the fact that this is a video game published by infamous LJN Toys Inc.

LJN Toys Inc. was successful when it came to toys, and they sold some classic action figures in the 1980s. However, when it came to video games, the company became noteworthy for poorly designed games, often based on popular film, and comic book franchises. Wolverine is a surprisingly good game, despite being published by the LJN label.

Wolverine features superior 8-bit graphics, music and sound effects. This is probably one of the best-looking and sounding video games ever to be released under the LJN label.

The game's many different platforming levels are well-designed with a surreal look.

Wolverine is easy to control and -- but for a few problems -- this could be one of the best platforming games designed for the NES home console system.

The Bad
Wolverine's main attack involves punching with trademark claws, which deplete your precious hit points every time that you use them. That is right...ever time that you select the claws (as opposed to a regular punch) your character gets close to death.

Why did the developers of the game do this? It is not how Wolverine's abilities function in the comic books It serves no purpose in the game, other then to try and artificially lengthen the game.

Another major design flaw is the "rage" feature in the game. When you kill enough minor enemies in the game, you gain a temporarily "rage" mode where Wolverine rapidly punches, kicks and is basically impossible to control. Why did the designers put this feature in the game, when it really serves as an annoying, possibly fatal, distraction?

Wolverine takes damage quickly in this game, because their is no brief period of invincibility when you are hit. This was a standard practice among many video games of this era, so it is odd to see this feature absent in this Wolverine NES video game.

The ability to summon certain X-men for temporary assistance is novel, but the X-men are hard to control and vanish fast. It would been better if the game allowed you to play the game as Wolverine and a few other X-men.

Last, but not least, their are no real objectives in the game's levels beyond finding the exit (how all of these levels take place on one island is beyond me).

After you complete all of the levels in the game, you have a final battle with Sabretooth and Magneto, but otherwise their are no bosses in the game.

The Bottom Line
Wolverine is a side-scrolling platformer featuring superior graphics, music and sound effects. The game could have benefited from a bit more story. Some of the game play mechanics could have been fined tuned and I would have liked to see more bosses and more playable characters. Despite these complaints, Wolverine is an impressive platformer that should please comic book fans looking for a challenge.