From its humble start as a mid-tier comic book property to its current status as a billion dollar movie franchise, X-Men has become a genuine pop culture institution.  No successful property worth its own spit would be complete without lucrative video game tie-ins, of which X-Men has had many … mostly bad.  While many of you are already getting giddy thinking of afternoons spent in front of the Sega Genesis playing 1993’s admittedly badass X-Men console game, for the rest of us it’s the Engrish lovin’ arcade side-scroller put out by Konami the previous year that will forever warm our hearts.

With colorful graphics that were well ahead of their time, innovative game play that saw the number of simultaneous players vary anywhere between two and six (some machines used a multi-screen set up), and snazzy character designs lifted straight from 1989’s unaired Pryde of the X-Men animated TV pilot, this is still the one to beat.  Konami gave you a six member roster to choose from: Colossus, Cyclops, Dazzler, Nightcrawler, Storm, and Wolverine.  The game’s plot sees our heroes fight through an army of Sentinels and other assorted baddies on a course to Magneto’s Asteroid M, from where the Master of Magnetism plans to wreak havoc upon mankind.  If you’re a gamer or an X-Men fan and never played the X-Men arcade game in an actual arcade, you should be ashamed.  Emulators are out there for download if you’re so inclined, otherwise just hit up eBay and hope for the best.