Our rating: By: Konami Digital Entertainment Version #: 1.0.1 Date Released: 2011-06-01 Developer: Price: 2.99 User Rating: Loading... Loading... Download App

X-Men is a faithful recreation of the X-Men arcade game from the early 1990’s. This means it has two-dimensional play and inferior graphics. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.

Any retro-enthusiast or fan of the X-Men would probably be thrilled to own this game. I’m old enough to remember playing it in the video arcade. Now the cliche’ dialogue and paper-thin plot (meant to loosely connect action sequences) seem laughable and quaint in today’s more sophisticated video game environment. Or maybe it would fit right in.

Game play is fairly simple with the usual virtual touchscreen joystick and jump, punch and special power buttons. You can play solo or with partners via WiFi. The game even recreates the video game trailers that one would see before popping in their quarters way back when. The game is fully interactive with Game Center and it’s possible to share results on Facebook or OpenFeint. As a warning, the game won’t work on certain earlier iDevices and versions of iOS.

It’s difficult to take the game seriously, rather than as a historical recreation that the creators probably intended. Considering that there’s a game in the App Store that recreates Atari 8-bit games, this one seems advanced by comparison. Plus, given the retro-style X-Men movie that was just released, this game seems to fit with that theme.

Given how much money I spent playing this video game long before iPhones and iPads, $2.99 is a bargain price. However, those without a history with the game may feel differently.