X-Men

Genre: Platformer/Beat 'em up

Also known as: X-Men: Mind Games

The X-Men series was hugely popular in the '90's, especially after the cartoon series started to air. There were two X-Men games for the Genesis, and there was one in development for the 32X, but the game was cancelled. A early prototype ROM was dumped by SEGASaturno.com. This prototype lets you play through several levels as Bishop. Only a few of the levels have enemies in them. Judging from the title screen you would have been able to play as several different X-Men characters -including Wolverine and Rogue -but in the proto only Bishop is playable. Some magazine previews do show that Wolverine was also playable in a later build of the game.

The prototype boasts some impressive graphics for the 32X -the levels are quite large and have detailed backgrounds. But given its early state, there isn't much to do in most levels and there are also a lot of glitches -Bishop gets stuck in walls fairly easily. From what I've read the game was going to be published by Scavenger. There doesn't seem to be any reason as to why the 32X X-Men game was cancelled, but it was meant to be out in time for Christmas '95. It might have been a case that SEGA had given up on the 32X at that point, and cancelled it themselves.

Bishop can has a couple of different projectiles he can use, and he can also batter enemies with his rifle. The prototype supports the six button controller, and in addition to attacking, there is a button for blocking (blocking doesn't seem to work), jumping and another button which makes Bishop look like he pushing against something. It doesn't seem like you can actually die, but sometimes if an enemy attacks you you can end up being teleported and stuck in a wall, resetting the prototype is the only thing you can do if this happens.

Enemies have very limited A.I. and seem capable of killing each other. A couple of levels are much smaller than the others, I believe they might have been intended for where you'd have to fight a boss. Other than exploring levels and fighting the few enemies you can find, there doesn't seem to be an actual objective to work on in this early prototype.