Real Talk By: Ms. Throwback

Marvel Super Heroes in War of the Gems is a Capcom developed and published game made exclusively for the Super Nintendo and released in 1996 internationally.  As the story goes Thanos has obtained all six gems that hold the power of the universe and must now be stopped.  To stop Thanos the player goes through each level as one of five super heroes each having a unique characteristic. Captain America, Iron Man, Spider Man, Wolverine, and the Hulk join us on this SNES super hero adventure.

War of the Gems is a side-scrolling brawling game with some platforming elements involved at times. The controls are really straight forward for this type of game with only two of the characters being able to crawl on walls, those characters being Wolverine and Spider Man. Along with the slight crawling differences each character has their own unique special move. Captain america of course has a shield throw and charge. Iron man has an artillery of special moves including, Repulser beam, shoulder grenade, flying uppercut and body slam. The Hulk has a charge and body slam move. Spider Man has a web throw and swing. While Wolverine has his classic claw charge and slashes.

Along with simple controls, the character design is actually an extremely important part of the game, as each character has their own “feel”. They range from the Hulk’s large frame which takes up a good-sized portion of the screen to Spiderman’s agile low stance. beside just how large the character is some characters have larger amounts of attack power while still other’s can take a huge amount of hits before going down. For example while Hulk is of course the largest character in the game, he is also the slowest and the strongest, leading each character to have individual pros and cons in battle. Many of the cons of a character can be fixed once you obtain and equip the different soul gems that you collect throughout the game, making the characters faster, stronger or more agile, and essentially negating the cons that they ever had to begin with.

The visuals of this game are incredible although considering the time that it was released I would expect nothing less. shadows and light points bring depths to not only the backdrops, but the characters themselves. The art design seems almost as if you’re playing and actual comic book, and they are slightly dark in nature which is a plus for me. In one level we find ourselves on the inside of a volcano surfing against the Silver Surfer in a frenzy of lights, magma, and speed. It really brings out the true greatness of this game as far as visuals are concerned.

The music in the game is good too, keeping in line with the action and speed of the game, it helps to get the player pumped for whats coming next. It also changes on a pretty regular basis and makes sure not to become too repetitive which is a huge plus. The sound effects aren’t the best I’ve ever heard but they don’t take away from the game. I feel like the effects should have been better simply due to the fact that the rest of this game is so top-notch.

All in all for any super hero, video game fan this is as good as it gets on the SNES. As far as im concerned it’s a must-have title. It’s excellently polished in every way and being that it was one of the last titles to emerge on the Super Nintendo I can imagine that Capcom had a lot to work with and poured their all into it at the time. You really can’t beat a good amount of your favorite characters in a well put together game.

Marvel Super Heroes in War of the Gems gets

Out of five

What’s Legit?

+Visuals

+Music

+Storyline

+Character design

+Controls

What’s Perpetrating?

-Some of the sound effects are questionable but really barely noticeable.

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