UPDATE: WINNERS HAVE BEEN ANNOUNCED HERE.
Hey, listeners, we have a treat for you!
As we mentioned a few episodes back, Glitchsoft was kind enough to send us a download code so we could try out their Days of Future Past mobile game, which we’ve been enjoying immensely. It’s not exactly Days of Future Past, but–as far as we’re concerned–it’s something better: X-Men Easter Eggs the Game. It plays fast and loose with continuity, but with an obvious eye to the source material–and the same things that differentiate it from canon make it a really fun platformer in ways that evoke–albeit single-player–the classic-for-a-reason beat ’em up. Rachel, who didn’t grow up playing platformers and so never developed Ninja Gaiden reflexes, was particularly impressed with the learning curve: it’s genuinely challenging, but never frustrating to the point of impossibility.
There’s also a lot of unlockable content–characters, costumes, abilities, and bonus materials–and the first three add a lot of replay value, because you can do different things in different levels with different characters. Note also that we said unlockable, not purchaseable: there are no in-app purchases in Days of Future Past, which, as far as we’re concerned, is a huge point in its favor. It probably won’t win any awards, but it’s an awfully enjoyable way to spend an afternoon.
We’re posting about this here not just to recommend Days of Future Past–which we do–but because, in addition to a copy for us to review, Glitchsoft sent us two additional download codes to give away to listeners.
Here’s the skinny:
If you want to win a copy of Days of Future Past, comment on this post BY 10 PM PST ON FRIDAY, AUGUST 8, with three things:
- An X-Men story you think would make a good video game;
- What genre of game it would be (platformer, RPG, puzzle, &c.); and
- A list of playable characters.
UPDATE: WINNERS HAVE BEEN ANNOUNCED in the Episode 18 “As Mentioned” post.
FINE PRINT:
- Prizes are courtesy of Glitchsoft.
- Rachel and Miles are in no way affiliated with Glitchsoft, Marvel, Disney, the Xavier Institute, the Jean Grey School, the Shi’ar Empire, the Hellfire Club, the Massachusetts Academy, or anyone but our own bad selves (and, limitedly, Comics Alliance, which is in no way involved in this contest).
- This contest is entirely subjective! Feel free to pander to our tastes, but bear in mind that we’ll probably be more favorably inclined to things we haven’t thought of ourselves.
- Decisions cannot be appealed. This is a benevolent dictatorship, not a democracy.
- We’ll be evaluating based solely on the three categories we mentioned above; no bonus points for art or additional materials.
- You can provide context and explanations if you want, but please keep ’em under 50 words; we’re not going to read through ten-page pitch documents. (Also, bear in mind that you’re competing for a $2.99 game–maybe try to keep the amount of work you put in proportional to that.)
- Winners will be announced on August 10. The codes expire on AUGUST 19. Use ’em or lose ’em.
- Sorry, Android users: Days of Future Past is currently iOS only. We obviously have no way of regulating this, but gunning for a game just so someone else can’t play it is a total dick move. Please don’t do that.
- If you want to play along but don’t want a download code, please put **JUST FOR FUN** at the top of your comment.
1. Early issues of Wolverine and the X-Men.
2. Sim game. You’re trying to schedule classes, keep students alive, and prevent the whole Jean Grey School enterprise from imploding.
3. Wolverine, Storm, and Kitty. There are chibi students running around: Quentin Quire, Edie, Broo, Kid Gladiator, etc.
1. Brood War
2. Platformer / shooter.
3. Wolverine, Kitty, Storm, Carol. As Wolverine you’re running around the skeleton slashing stuff, as Storm you’re piloting a space whale!
Fun.
I’d like a side-scrolling beat-’em-up — like Final Fight or the classic six player X-Men arcade game — based on the various story arcs in Jason Aaron’s WOLVERINE AND THE X-MEN. Each stage could correspond to one of the major story arcs: First day at school, alien casino field trip, AvX, Frankenstein’s evil carnival, Savage Land field trip, battle with the Hellfire Academy, and graduation.
Selectable characters would be Quentin Quire, Genesis, Idie, Shark-Girl, Eye Boy, and Broo. With Kid Gladiator and Sprite as unlockables.
**just for fun** **grrr stupid iOS exclusives**
I think that Messiah War/Second Coming could make for a pretty badass game. I see it as like an action adventure game with rpg and open world elements like the unholy offspring of “The Last of Us” and “Fallout.” The first third of the game you would play mostly as Cable. Trying to survive in the Post Apocalypse and stay one step ahead of Bishop. The following two thirds would be played as Hope learning to be the mutant messiah. Act Two would introduce the mechanic of hope reproducing different powers. The third act would be the Second Coming storyline.
Also Marvel should pull whatever strings they have to and get Rocksteady (Arkham Asylum, Arkham City) to develop an X-men game. Just give them free reign to do whatever the hell they want. It would be epic.
I think either of the new schools would make a good setting for an RPG, with characters developing based on decisions they make throughout different storylines rather than just leveling up with experience points. It would probably work best with the younger characters and you’d get a young/old scott vibe with your decisions leading you down different paths.
**Just For Fun!**
Oh, this is tough!
I think there’s something fun that could be done with a point and click adventure game of some variety based in Excalibur’s cross-time caper, though? Sonehow it feels like it would meld appropriately with the team being so whimsical and British.
Plus, given the series’s fetishistic fascination with transformation, the puzzles practically make themselves half the time.
The whole original cast of the team would be playable, but would often be seperated into smaller groups, again, for puzzles?
**JUST FOR FUN***
1. Mystique. The Brian K. Vaughan run (spy/detective working for Xavier with murky allegiance and lots of betrayals all around), and on through mcKeever for story closure.
2. Adventure with multiple different solutions (stealth/combat) for the most part, with light RPG and combat elements. I’m thinking ideally of something like the Sierra Quest for Glory games, but maybe for more modern sensibilities the Mass Effect / KOTOR games.
3. Mystique. With possibly short sections with Shortpack and Forge.
1. The Cross-Time Caper
2. I’m going to go with a loose interpretation. Make it a puzzle platformer with really strong temporal and space shifting elements. The player will need to utilize the powers of all the team members (and occasional guest stars) to continue through the levels.
2. Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, Captain Britain, Phoenix (Rachel Summers), Meggan, Lockheet, Widget… plus interdimensional versions of the same.
** JUST FOR FUN**
Since I’m an android guy and I feel like I’m handicapped by having little working knowledge of what happened from 1990-2004.
1. The “Asgardian Wars” X-Men/New Mutants crossover from way back in the day, because its kinda light and fun and X-Men + Asgard = Awesome!
2.An RPG ala Dragon Age. Travel the Nine Realms rescuing New Mutants and assembling your band of heroes, free Ilyana, face down the Enchantress, and then take down the Big Boss: Loki with a brainwashed Storm, Goddess of Thunder (and her lady Mjolner!)
3. Play as your choice from one of the two teams the X-men split up into when they hit Asgard (gives it some replay value): 1) Shadowcat, Wolverine or Rachel Summers/Grey/whateverthehell or 2) Cyclops, Colossus, Rogue or Nightcrawler. Plus maybe some short bits where you get to play as the New Mutants in their various “trials,” Sunspot’s bar brawl; Mirage with the Valkyrie, etc.
Thanks Guys, that was fun! And its cool to read the other ideas, even if I don’t recognize some of the storylines.
1. Wolverine & the X-Men
2. Sandbox (a la Rockstar’s Bully). Lots of mini-games based around classes & the Danfer Room. Missions based on stories from the comics.
3, You’d play only as Quentin Quire, but there’d be unlockabe outfits (like the stripey sweater vest).
Danger, not “Danfer”.
1. Name: Siege Perilous: The Game
2. Platform: pervasive throughout your life. You download an app on your phone and it replaces your twitter, your facebook, your instagram, your contacts, and everything else with the media and social life of a better version of yourself. The game is to learn to live as that person. There is no going back.
3. Playable character: you, but maybe a ninja version of you.
This comment made me smile so much.
1. Milligan and Allred’s X-Statix (generally, rather than any one storyline.
2. A tactical RPG with permanent character death like X-Com: Enemy Unknown
3. With access to about seven team members at one time, there would be all the big names from the series, but as the player inevitably screws up and gets them killed, they draft in randomly-generated new mutants. Doop and Wolverine would occasionally show up as unkillable super units.
Krakoa: You Are The Platform
SIEGE PERILOUS. AS AN RPG.
The X-Men are split up, half go through the Siege Perilous and have their memories wiped. You play as Jubilee, slowly putting the X-Men back together again and helping them get their memories back.
Characters: Jubilee, Wolverine, Psylocke, Storm and Gambit,
Rogue and Magneto (he’s probably a mini-boss and doesn’t join your party), Colossus (WHO YOU CAN LEAVE TO HAPPILY LIVE OUT HIS LIFE AS AN ARTIST.), Havok, (Probably not Jean and Forge who kind of complicate the plot even though I love them so.)
Final boss: the Shadow King
You have to figure out how to age Storm back up, keep Wolverine from fighting long enough for his healing factor to kick in again, fight off the Genoshans to deprogram Havok, etc. Powers are unlocked by sharing memories. Combos are possible if you have certain characters in your party. Jubilee and Storm share at least one vampire joke.
Sorry. ADHD. Read the rules after posting. Will try to post shorter comment.
Failed to write shorter comment. Many apologies.
It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.
**JUST FOR FUN**
1. The Singularity Investigations/Damian Tryp storyline from X-Factor #1-50
2. Interactive fiction/text adventure
3. Layla Miller
I’ve tried to keep it short and sweet for you two.
1. The story begins with the introduction of the all new all different x-men. You choose who you want on the team and take them from mission to mission. Through the iconic stories.
2. Japanese RPG style (for a console); amazing cut scenes, characters that level up,crazy boss fights, random battles and the free roaming world. You can walk around Xavior’s school, sneak around hell-fire club and fly the x-jet around the world.
3. Cyclops, Jean, Iceman, Beast, Angel, Havoc, Polaris, Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, Wolverine, Sunfire Thunderbird. You pick 6.
I would love this game, but I’m kinda bias as I love final fantasy type games.
1. Riot at Xaviers’
2. Tactical RPG
3. Main team; Omega Gang
Not a specific storyline, but I’d love to see a sports game (probably baseball or basketball based) with our heroes. I hate sports games, and even sports if I’m honest but a game filed with ice walls, tekinetic pitches and phasing runners would be loads of fun!
Telekinetic, that is. Something I’d wrong with my phone if telekinetic isn’t in my dictionary.
1. Asteroid M
2. mobile a la Farmville or Clash of Clans, where you don’t fight or anything, just take care of the Asteroid
3. Magneto and his Acolytes
**Just for Fun** I have an Android…
1. Riot at Xavier’s
2. A TellTale style point and click adventure. You have to collect Kick, the anti-telepathy helmet, other various riot materials. Each section ends with you trying to get something from one of the professors and you have a insult fight style debate with them.
3. Did I mention you play as Quentin Quire?
**Just for Fun**
The Trial of Magneto
A Phoenix Wright style courtroom adventure game where you play Gabrielle Haller as she attempts to defend the master of magnetism in front of the world while OBJECTING! in many large and declamatory ways that Magneto approves of quietly from the defense table. At no point does Fenris attack because they are a stupid villain. Prosecuting attorney Sir James Jaspers is allowed to warp reality, however.
1) X-Treme X-Men
2) Turn-based RPG
3) James Howlett, Kurt Waggoner, Emmeline Frost, Xavier’s Head, Dazzler
Chrono-trigger style game where you travel from timeline to timeline hunting down evil Charles Xaviers, generally in the order you choose. You’d start with a basic team, and collect new members as you go to their individual timelines.
1) The Silver-Age X-Men (taking heavily from Season One and First Class), going right up to the Bronze age with the Phoenix/Dark Phoenix Saga. Why?
2) It’s a Japanese-style “dating sim” game, with a heavy focus on character relations. Any mutant combat will cover RPG elements in an old 8-bit Final Fantasy format, with a 5-man team selectable for the squad.
3) Marvel Girl. However, each of the other original 5 X-Men have their own storyline that unlock after beating Jean’s, with Jean’s storyline being the canon one that follows up through her canonical death as the Dark Phoenix (or does it? Multiple endings with potential happy endings, anyone?). Do you choose to follow the canon and romance Cyclops? What about his brooding brother who just wants a damned normal life? Or the magnificent Angel? The brooding Wolverine? The angry Thunderbird? Do you still love Hank when he’s literally blue? Or are you more into Iceman? The potential is endless! Romance Professor X (ewwwwwww) for the bonus unlockable option to play through a storyline as Professor X, manipulating the hell out of your students to your own ends!
As a bonus, any Mutant met can be drawn into the X-Men through specific dialogue choices, though none of the recruited X-Men can be romanced. However, this may alienate other members of the team, and can even cause them to leave the X-Men!
**JUST FOR FUN**
1) Astonishing X-Men (the Whedon/Cassaday run). It’s short, sweet, and has a defined beginning, middle, and end. May have to cut out some things to make it fit into a game.
2) I’m imagining it as a platform game.
3) Playable characters are easy: Wolverine, Beast, Kitty, Colossus, Cyclops, and Emma. Maybe Armor as unlockable. Each character would be chosen for you to play their particular role in the story. That’s what I’m thinking, anyway.
Not necessarily a “storyline” but I’d go with Uncanny X-men 308. It was a very nice Thanksgiving issue with all the various members of the X-Men and satellite X-team members playing a game of football.
turn this issue into a tecmo superbowl-esque easy to play top down style 6 on 6 football game.
Have various members from each X-team in different positions and use their mutant powers in different ways to affect the game. It would be awesome.
Just for fun!!!
1. Kitty’s fairy tale from uncanny x men 153
2. Old school JRPG (final fantasy 6 style)
3. You would of course have kitty and colossus as pirates, wolverine as the fiend, storm as wind-rider, wizard xiaver, bamfs, and cyclops as the prince. Lockheed would take the place of the airship and the phoenix would be the villain!
Damn that was my exact idea and you beat me to the punch. 🙁
**Just for Fun**
1. Kitty Pryde and Wolverine (the ’84-85 miniseries)
2. Ninja Gaiden-esque sidescrolling platformer with melodramatic cutscenes. Ninjas ninjas ninjas.
3. Alternate levels as Kitty getting into trouble in Japan and Wolverine trying to find her. In the last level you can choose which of them to play as you fight the other one, but then the winner has to take on final boss Ogun.
AND ALSO **still just for fun**
1. The New Mutants 1990 Summer Special
2. Sidescrolling platformer through eight levels of corporate shills, warmongering two headed monsters, and aliens wearing George H.W. Bush masks.
3. Boom Boom, Sunspot, Wolfsbane, and Warlock. Choose one at the start of each level, like Super Mario 2. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses: Boom Boom can throw bombs but she’s materialistic. Cannonball does more damage to enemies but he’s kind of a dbag. Wolfsbane can transform to have higher speed and reflexes, but she gets sad really easily. Warlock can change shape, but he’s weird as fuck.
1. Inferno
2. LEGO Marvel Superheroes type of game. Everything in the city could turn into neat LEGO monsters.
3. Pretty much everyone in the X-Men, X-Factor, and New Mutants at the time. That seems feasible for a lego game.
Crap I’m sorry I forgot to add the *JUST FOR FUN** dangit.
House of M
A detective game
You are a detective (original character, possibly character generated) who wakes up to find House of M has happened and nobody else remembers that the world is different. And you found out that you are also a mutant which explains your memory power. As you get acquainted to the world you discover the murder case you were working on has seemingly happened here as well so you rush down to record what happened and compare to your notes from the House of M world creating two pictures that fit well enough but the different scenarios mix things up. As you try to solve the case, you also explore the world that you’re in – toss in a few cameos of Avengers, X-men, X-factor – go for the ones who didn’t show up in the actual series.
1. The Dark Phoenix Saga
2. JRPG (c’mon, we’re doing a space opera about a god-like hero-turned villain that’s transformed by a cosmic fire bird and was previously a mutant, with flare text provided by Claremont, with an empire of roman-space birds, with all the trope’d characters of a classic FF title, I mean THIS IS SO JAPANESE).
3. Playable Characters (And their character types!)
Wolverine – Berserker
Cyclops – Red Mage
Storm – Black Mage
Colossus – Paladin
Nightcrawler – Thief
Marvel Girl – White Mage
Phoenix – Omni Mage
Unlock-able Characters
Dazzler – White Mage
Kitty Pride- Ninja
The game would begin with the X-Men returning to earth and follow through the battle on the blue side of the moon. Marvel Girl would be a playable character on your team, eventually becoming the main nemesis once transformed into “Dark Phoenix.”
It would be—to put it simply—the most perfect game ever made.
OH, and the POV character would be Cyclops, of course.
Cyclops
Action Adventure
Jean Grey, Beast, The Professor
1. Cable & Deadpool
2. Co-Op Tactical Shooter/Sim
3. Cable, Deadpool, Domino, Weasel, Wolverine, Agent X, Taskmaster, more.
Based loosely on Nicieza’s run of comics, Cable and Deadpool team up and find they are stuck with each other. Game play would alternate between squad-based shooter missions, and customizing Providence. A morality system would change the game based on what missions players take, either ‘Mercenary’ missions for Deadpool or ‘Altruistic’ missions for Cable. Depending on which way the player chooses, the final boss is either Apocalypse or Thanos.
Hmm – as I’m bashing through the entirety of Uncanny X-Men thanks to the Marvel Unlimited special offer I’m going to say…
1. The Outback Period of the X-Men.
2. This is a sweeping epic of tactical RPGery in the vein of Fire Emblem – you start with an opening mission to clear out the Reavers, then using the town (which you can upgrade for Stats and Fun) you can travel the world map via Gateway to save Australia, fight the Brood and Reavers (your random encounters on the map), liberate Genosha, and for the end-game stop Inferno. As an added bonus, the Siege Perilous offers the option for multiplayer, so you can pit your X-Men against your friends teams. There’s even an option for post-game DLC where you form a team led by Banshee and Forge using all of the characters no one ever would otherwise uses as you don’t want the Exp to go to waste while they try to find the X-Men.
3. The cast is the Outback X-Men: Storm, Dazzler, Rogue, Longshot, Psylocke, Wolverine, Colossus, and Havok. Each one is a different class, and as you can only bring five team members into each battle you’ll need to think about who you want with you. For added bonus and Fire Emblem plagiary, there’a a relationship mechanic too to improve your characters (so if you ship Colossus and Wolverine, yes! They will marry!) Jubilee is the hidden character a la Yuffie.
1. Exiles
2. Action RPG of the Ultimate Alliance variety.
3. Blink, DoFP Wolverine, Avengers-era gorilla-style Beast, the current young Jean Gray, Rogue with Ms. Marvel powers, 90s Cable, Ultimate Kitty Pride, Angel with metal wings, Savage Land Cyclops with pirate mustache, Mohawk Storm, Nightcrawler who stayed in Asgard. Gambit. Deadpool.
Blink pulls together teams from different eras and realities to travel through time (with different eras in the appropriate art styles) and dimensions putting together the Mkraan Crystal and defeating the schemes of Proteus and Vulcan.
Also, you can ask Sunfire to join but he just quits right away.
Good old sunfire
Sunfire should be recruitable in all these games.
Only to quit immediately.
Just for Fun
1. Uncanny X-Men 170s and 180s
2. Clue-game of who killed Professor X which takes place in the mansion (spoiler alert, it’s always Mystique impersonating someone)
3. Cyclops, Storm, Colossus, Wolverine, Kitty Pryde, Nightcrawler, and Rogue
1. Excalibur’s Cross-Time Caper!
2. ARPG for sure.
3. Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, Meggan, Phoenix (Rachel Summers), Captain Britain, and occasionally Widget and Lockheed.
Also if there’s some kind of multiplayer mini adventure/not-related-to-the-main-story mode then definitely you should be able to unlock Wisdom, Douglock (who maybe has some kind of classic New Mutants appearance options because why wouldn’t you do that if this is theoretical and nobody actually has to deal with the physics of those spaghetti arms), and Wolfsbane. And Moira. And then because this team is way too white and because she is relevant and beautiful and amazing, we can add Excalibur (Faiza Hussain) and wow was Excalibur a white team let’s add Dani and Shan and Berto and what do you mean I’m just trying to make this about my favorites it’s not like I’m adding totally irrelevant characters who would be children at the time (let’s add Kamala Khan don’t question me on this).
The dev team was going to add Ferron as a playable character but they lost track of the hard drive where those notes were stored when they moved to a different studio so they completely forgot about him.
1. Age of Apocalypse
2. Sandbox game in the vein of Fable, where the choices you make determine whether you’re on the “Horseman” track or the “X-men” track. I’d want to keep the characters from the original AoA the same as they were in the comics so they’d be NPCs and bosses, and the alignment you chose would determine whether you faced off against Magneto, Rogue, Sabretooth, et al or Cyclops, Havok, Dark Beast, et al.
3. Characters introduced after AoA who don’t have counterparts yet: Quentin Quire, Pixie, Prodigy, Rockslide, Armor, Surge.
1. The early Kitty Pryde issues of Uncanny X-Men with all the costume changes
2. Dress up game with tons of costumes and a catwalk face-off like Zoolander. Magneto played by David Bowie would be the judge.
3 . Kitty (obviously), Cyclops & Lee Forrester in torn shipwreck gear, and Nightcrawler in frilly shirts and knee high boots. Colossus could dress up in Jean-Paul Gauntlett sailor outfits. Other X-Men as the mood takes you.
Gaultier not Gauntlett. Stupid auto correct.
1). Wolverine and The X-Men (Jason Aaron run)
2). Puzzle Game – Individuals would have to put together puzzle pieces to make pictures of various faculty and students at the Jean Grey School. There would be an unlockable mini-game that would enable players to use puzzle pieces to create their own mutant. For example, Broo’s head on Kid Gladiator’s body.
3). Wolverine, Storm, Shadowcat, Iceman, Beast, Rachel Grey, Doop, Toad, Husk, Quentin Quire, Oya, Doop, Broo, Kid Gladiator, Genesis, Eye Boy and Shark Girl
X-Club was clearly written to be adapted into a platform shooter a la Contra III. You ride an elevator up to a space station, make it explode, free fall back to Earth, then dive through a singularity to blow up an underwater research station, all the while merrily blasting your way through a corporation’s horde of cross dimensional Nazis. Plus there could be a shark surfing level. The sharks would also explode.
Dr. Nemesis collects Science HOOO! Cubes to level up his hypodermic launcher (Spread Syringe, Fire Syringe, etc.) and uses Science Vision to find secrets. Madison Jeffries creates large weapons out of the environment. Danger can double jump and becomes visibly pregnant when leveled up. Dr. Kavita Rao uses a melee syringe attack instead of projectiles, but can teleport behind enemies via a call to Magik.
A turn-based dungeon crawl rpg set in Age of X.
You start out as Rogue, Magneto, and Kitty Pryde, exploring Fortress X and recruiting new X-men by defeating them in battle. All the Utopia mutants are eventually playable (telepaths can be unlocked in a late game side quest), except Wolverine, who tends the inn. What’s an altX reality without altX hookups, so once your party reaches ten members you can pair them off to make your own alternate reality X-spawn. Will your characters endure like Rachel Grey, or fizzle out like Ruby Summers? Will you coldly breed for strength or make all your dream ‘ships come true?
Mr. Sinister gives it four head gems out of five.
1. X-Statix
2. Exploration game, like Gone Home
3. Doop. Only Doop.
Fly around as everyone’s favorite mutant thingy, Doop, around the X-Statix mansion. With your trusty camera you shoot the unfolding dramas of your teammates and edit it into sweet, cash making reality tv.