Marvel Super Heroes in War of the Gems (SNES) Playthrough - NintendoComplete

A playthrough of Capcom's 1996 license-based platformer/beat 'em up for the SNES, Marvel Super Heroes in War of the Gems.

As the Marvel-flavored follow-up to the 1994 title X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse, Marvel Super Heroes in War of the Gems (is that name long enough?) was Capcom's second versus comic-based fighter-turned-beat 'em up to release on the SNES. Appearing at the end of 1996, it was among the last of the official releases for the system in North America.

Borrowing elements liberally from previous Capcom games, Marvel Super Heroes gives you a choice of five different heroes and four different stages to start. After clearing these, another set of stages appear before the final showdown - does this sound like the Mega Man format to anybody else? Defeating a boss with net you an infinity gem that can be equipped to boost your abilities for the duration of a stage, and health items can be used between stages to restore any previous damage done.

Like X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse, Marvel Super Heroes follows the basic beat 'em up gameplay template a la Final Fight or Streets of Rage while throwing in platforming segments. Unfortunately, the stages tend to come across as completely generic. Unlike in Mutant Apocalypse where the stages were built around specific abilities, Marvel Super Heroes' stages have all been designed to accommodate any choice of character. While in theory that might sound ideal, in practice, it means you do a lot of walking left-to-right, occasionally punching inconveniently placed walls. It's rare that you find an out-of-the-way item or a branching path, whereas they were the norm in Mutant Apocalypse.

The graphics look great - the sprites are all shrunken down versions of characters from the arcade Marvel Super Heroes fighting game. They take up a serious amount of screen real-estate (by SNES standards, at least) and retain some of their moves from the coin-op, which was a neat touch. There aren't many characters in the game, though, with many of the enemies being mere palette swaps of the heroes themselves. I know I was excited the third time I fought the purple-tinted "E. Wolverine!"

Betcha can't guess what the "E" stands for! ;)

No matter how good the graphics look, though, the animation is lacking, and the game play is excruciatingly slow. It's a late-release title, and people expected games that looked at least vaguely 32-bit by the beginning of 1997, but come on, Capcom! You never see more than three bad guys on the screen at once (and they two will be of the same enemy!), and even still there's some harsh slowdown that rears its ugly head. It doesn't really ever impede the game play, but the pacing can make the game feel awfully dull at times. And why does the music suck?

The game play is pretty simple - just like in Mutant Apocalypse, you get an attack and a jump button, and the rest of your moves are used via simple fighting game style commands. If you can double-tap forward or do a hadouken, you won't have any difficulty pulling off your super moves.

Marvel Super Heroes in War of the Gems is a game that I *really* wanted to like. I loved X-Men Mutant Apocalypse, I loved the arcade Marvel Super Heroes, and who didn't want just a bit more love from Capcom before they tapped out on the 16-bit hardware? It's just too bad that it felt like a generic, cheaply made cash-in. It's not broken, nor is it necessarily "bad." But the sheer number of recycled assets, the featureless stage designs, and the sluggish gameplay speed leave this to be something to be admired in screenshots rather than played. No matter how much you love Marvel, this is a sure-fire disappointment.

_
No cheats were used during the recording of this video.

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