You can argue with the rest of the internet until your keyboard bangers are worn down into worthless little bone-tipped spurs, but you will be unable to stem the Super Douchebaggery tide which inevitably overwhelms you should you claim Wolverine was anything less than the best at what he did back in the 1990’s. Listen, it’s simple: in the 90’s, there were more X-Men and their various spin-off books published by Marvel each month than there were Brady Bunch children. And while there were dozens of mutants, good and bad, Wolverine won the popularity contest among teenage boys claws-down. Based solely on the ability of game developers to smell millions of dollars in fanboy cash, 1994 saw the release of Wolverine: Adamantium Rage for the Genesis.

Adamantium Rage was developed by Teeny Weeny games, and I’ll just pause for a minute while that joke writes itself. You might remember them as the masterminds of such monster hits as the dozen-selling Predator 2 on the Sega Master System, 1993’s must-have Last Action Hero on the NES, and that perennial classic The Simpsons: Bartman Meets Radioactive Man for Game Gear. I could devote a solid year’s worth of column space about nothing but licensed games made by these guys if only the world hadn’t come to its senses in 1996 and *ahem* cut Teeny Weeny off for their godawful PC port of Primal Rage. Yes friends, these developers managed to ruin a game where you could play as a house-sized gorilla and fart your opponent to death.

Works about as well as the warning on your diary, doesn’t it?

I could end the column right here and you’d know exactly how awful this game is by virtue of having read the last paragraph. But I’m nothing if not a realist, and you join me every week to learn about this stuff and I’d hate to think you wasted your click on two paragraphs, so we must press on. Press forward. Press start!

Or ‘Start Game’. Whatever works.

Wolverine, as everybody knows, is your average rage-infused fratboy arsehole if said fratboy possessed the strength of five Olympic-class weight lifters, recovered from having buildings dropped on him faster than you heal from a paper cut, and slapped you with three indestructible claws instead of one easily-breakable hand. He’s moody in the sense that ‘mad’, ‘upset’, and ‘RAGE!’ are different moods (he’s Canadian to boot so you know there’s some major cognitive dissonance going on there). He’s brooding because his team leader gets to bang Jean Grey and his father keeps trying to murder him. He’s so grunge he keeps that five-0’clock shadow 24/7. The 90’s sprouted a boner for this guy because of course they did. So what’s the problem?

This fight should be so one-sided it shames the first dimension.

Let’s put it this way: given what you now know of Wolverine, how many hits would you say it should take him to beat up the average person, say…a geeky scientist? All of you who said, “Oh, about four or five claw swipes with maybe a kick or two thrown in for good measure,” stop reading now and go grab a copy of this game off eBay because all your dreams just came true. Those of you who answered “one”…let that be a lesson to you about 90’s video games.

Even this should be small potatoes for Wolverine.

That alone should be enough to break this game, but in case you thought you could power through it simply by viewing it as “Wolverine: The Toddler Years”, you’ll still have to reckon with controls that lag like a 14.4 modem, choppy screen effects as the Genesis hardware struggles to keep up with simple stage scrolling, and a mutant healing factor so slow the developers litter most levels with more first aid kits than a Doctors Without Borders clinic. My adamantium would be raging too if you neutered my super powers, bub.

OK, now THIS is more like it.

It’s not all doom-and-gloom when it comes to this title. The SNES version, developed by Bits Studios, is a competent and enjoyable action platformer despite being published by LJN, and well worth owning. If you have a Genesis and feel the overwhelming need to play as Wolverine though, you’re much better off picking up X-Men 2: The Clone Wars which gives you control of the Canucklehead and five other X-Men to use as you see fit. The last time Wolverine suffered this much indignity, Magneto straight up yanked out his skeleton. Let’s spare him further humiliation.

Ponce butt-kicking? CHECK!

Well, after we post the ad naturally:

Michael Crisman

In 1979, Michael Crisman was mauled by a radioactive Gorgar pinball machine. After the wounds healed, doctors discovered his DNA had been re-coded. No longer fully human, Michael requires regular infusions of video games in order to continue living among you. If you see him, he can see you. Make no sudden moves, but instead bribe him with old issues of computer and video game magazines or a mint-in-box copy of Dragon Warrior IV.


If he made you laugh, drop a tip in his jar at http://paypal.me/modernzorker


(If he didn't make you laugh, donate to cure his compulsion to bang keyboards by sending an absurdly huge amount of money to his tip jar instead. That'll show him!)