The Avengers Initiative by RashFree on November 20, 2008
Rating: 7/10
In 1991, Data East released this gem of a beat em up. Unfortunately, it slipped way under my radar. I guess I was too busy playing X-Men to notice. If I had, I would have been in for a satisfying, unique, albeit flawed, experience.
Story (4 out of 10):
*Spoiler alert!*
I almost didn't include this section in my review. While it's true that story doesn't amount to much in beat em ups, this one was too cheesy to pass up. The story involves the Red Skull gathering together a bunch of b-list supervillains to sucker punch the world in the face for no real reason. I guess this just proves my theory; the Red Skull is a jerk. Anyway, we eventually find the true meaning of the villains' attacks. The Red Skull needed the time to build a giant laser cannon on the moon. It's your job as the Avengers to stop Red Skull from firing his giant cannon and destroying the Earth.
Graphics: (6 out of 10):
This is probably the most difficult section for me to judge. While the character sprites were much smaller and less detailed than what I would have liked, the graphics exude a certain style that follows throughout. For example, the first boss, Whirlwind, can turn into a human tornado and suck up every loose object on the screen. While he's twister mode, the trees in the background begin to rock and sway as if there's a hurricane a-blowing. Little touches like this (and the constant action bubbles whenever there's a hit or explosion) make up for most of what's lacking. My main complaint is that there's very little variety in the character sprites. Given that they're much less detailed and smaller than most games of its time, they could have used the extra memory to create more enemies.
Sound (9 out of 10):
For me, this is where the game truly excels. The punches sound like punches, the lasers sound like how I would believe a laser would sound like if they actually made a sound, and explosions give off a satisfying boom. The voices are appropriately cheesy, and really make me feel like I'm watching an Avengers cartoon rather than playing a game. Albeit, this is at a time when simply having voices was more than enough to wow me at the arcade. My favorite part is the music, specifically the boss music. When you've beaten down the boss's life bar to about 25%, the music changes to a more dramatic track. It's almost like the game is cheering you on, and something that I haven't seen in any other game from that era. It's awesome.
Gameplay (8 out of 10):
This is where the oil meets the fryer, people. When looking at a game made in 1991, the only real question is "Is it fun?". The answer to that question is absolutely. Once again, this game switches things up a bit, and this is where it becomes a classic. Instead of simply running around beating the snot out of robots (which you will be doing plenty of), the game kicks it into cowabunga and throws a couple shmup stages in there just to keep you on your toes. Given, it's not the best horizontally scrolling shmup in the world, it's something that just wasn't done in those days. It's completely out of left field, but it does do the game right. There are some things that don't make much sense, and fewer that detract from the experience. For instance, at the start of the game, you find a coke can lying on the ground. You would think that something like this would be a health powerup of some kind, but no. Instead, you can throw this coke can of death at the mob of enemies coming for you. I thought this would be a horrible weapon, so upon picking it up, I ended up throwing the can at an empty park bench. That's when it exploded. Maybe someone shook those cans up before I showed up, but for the rest of the game, whenever I saw one, it was thrown in the face of evil. Take that, evil. The only true complaint I have against the gameplay is the lack of health bars for generic enemies. I like to know how many more kicks to the groin this robot needs before it explodes. Now, I know that most beat em ups of this era didn't have that feature, but every boss in this game has a health bar. This makes my point even more frustrating. If the boss can have one, everyone should have one!
Closing comments:
Overall, this game is a classic beat em up with two classic Marvel characters in the mix (who the hell are Vision and Hawkeye?). It's a truly fun, interesting game that will keep you laughing until the final screen. Definitely worth your time.
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