The Hall of Shame 01.07.09: Revolution X (SNES)

Posted by Vincent Chiucchi on 01.07.2009

A game where you team up with Aerosmith to take out a world oppressing army where music is the weapon? How can this possibly be bad?

During the 80's and 90's, Generation X changed the way people think in everything, and the Baby Boomers didn't like it one bit. If the Baby Boomers had it their way, there wouldn't be any of the good entertainment that we enjoy today because they would somehow associate it with the Devil or school shootings or whatever crap they decide to make up. In 1994 Midway and Rage Software created a game with the nitemarish scenario of such a group of people taking over our world by claiming everything we like is WRONG! This game was Revolution X, an arcade shooter featuring the popular band Aerosmith.The Arcade version wasn't such a bad game, but when it hit the consoles, criticis panned the game. What made the console versions suck so badly? Read on to find out why Revolution X rocks it's way into the Hall of Shame.

THE REVOLUTION HAS BEGUN! GENERATION X IS IN EFFECT!

Right away the first problem with this game is the absurd story. Okay, a lot of arcade shooters would have stories that are absurd, but this one is quite possibly the most absurd of all. A Neo-Industrial-Governmental-Militaristic oppressive Alliance calling themselves the New Order Nation is taking over the world by outlawing everything that is considered fun, including video games, televisions, magazines, and especially music. They are also seizing all citizens between the ages of 13 to 30, so basically, they're out to destroy Generation X. You are simply a youth going to see an Aerosmith concert at the popular Club X when what do you know, the New Order Nation is after your ass. Now it's up to you to destroy the New Order Nation and rescue Aerosmith with your CD launching machine gun you just happen to be carrying for some reason. Remember, MUSIC IS THE WEAPON!

First of all, if the New Order Nation was really oppressing the world to destroy Generation X, would it really be wise of Aerosmith to be playing a concert while all this is going on? This is like when the Taliban took over Afghanistan from the Russians in the 90's and they banned everything fun like kite flying. What do you think would happen if you went out there and flew a kite while those bastards were patrolling the streets? You'd be dead! Though I do find it odd that while the NON is trying to kill you, they only capture Aerosmith. Also, the most popular nightclub in Los Angeles Club X?

As for the actual game itself, the options menu leaves more to be desired. The difficulty setting decides to work under the Starbucks language of not being what it sounds like by labeling the difficulties as Outrageous, Impossible, and Super Cool. I'll let you figure out which one is which. Then there's the Test Sound FX option. There's only five sound effects to choose from. This seemed like an indication of how poor the audio is going to be, and as it turns out, the audio does indeed suck. The sound effects are the same five repeated over and over again, while the music is crappy midi renditions of Aerosmith songs. How crappy are they? I didn't realize they were supposed to be Aerosmith songs until I saw the credits in the game. The only song I was able to recognize was Eat The Rich because they keep repeating the chorus part during the first stage.

A Revolution in awful graphics.

Once you start actually playing the game, the first you're going to notice is how horrible the graphics are. The number of enemies this game has can be counted on one hand. Although they vary somewhat later on, in the first couple stages you fight the exact same enemy: A guy in a yellow uniform wearing a gas mask. Later on you fight power ranger rejects, guys on roller skates (wait, roller skates are okay? Wouldn't that be something the anti-Generation X would be against?), scientists, and I kid you not, amazon natives. Yes, a governmental oppressive group has native tribes working for them somehow.

The problems with the graphics doesn't end with the look of the enemies, but also how they fight. Even though you have a lifebar, you really have no idea whether or not you're taking damage or not unless you keep looking at it from time to time. In other arcade shooters, the screen would usually get marked up or start flashing when you took damage and you would notice. But here since you barely notice, you don't realize how low your health is until you suddenly see the word "Continue" appear on the top of the screen. Plus sometimes the enemies get really cheap, especially the damn berserkers who throw an endless supply of clubs without stopping until you hit them, so it's basically impossible to hit them without taking damage yourself. Also the enemies seem to be equipped with magic bullets because they can fire through solid objects as seen with these helicopter missiles.

Now how the hell is that possible?!

But the biggest pain in the ass is the bosses, because you will have absolutely no idea where the hell you are supposed to hit them and even when you do, you definitely won't be able to tell if you're actually hitting them. Sometimes you have to hit them in places you wouldn't think of hitting them because the graphics don't highlight these areas good enough.

Finally, when you transition from room to room, instead of naturally moving from room to room, it blacks out for a few seconds. Sometimes I feel like I've warped to an entirely different stage.

The controls aren't so bad, but they need some serious improving. You fire the regular gun using the Y button, and since the regular gun is basically an unlimited automatic, you can basically tape the button down and focus on using your CDs with the L or R buttons. The machine gun is almost useless though because all the enemies require multiple hits from it to go down, so you'll have to keep using up your CDs to kill them quickly. But since you'll wind up with so many CDs since they're just lying around everywhere, you won't really have any ammo problems. They threw in upgrades for both kinds of weapons, but they don't actually make a difference. The machine always remains near-useless and since CDs usually kill in one hit, what's the point of upgrading those? The only upgrade is turning them into LaserDiscs, but you only get 25 and you'll never have them against boss fights.

The shooting wouldn't be so bad if I used a gun rather then a controller, but the problem is that this game has no gun support! I can probably understand the 16-bit versions of the game, but what about when it was ported to the Saturn and PlayStation? Those consoles would've been the perfect platform for an arcade shooter, but with no gun support, the game was bound to suck.

Overall, on the Outrageous setting (whatever difficulty that is), the game takes less then an hour to beat. Despite the cheapness of some enemies and the lousy controls, there are only a whopping five stages to go through and they give you so many continues you don't have to worry too much about dying. The final area of the game takes place in Wembley Stadium where the next Aerosmith concert is being held, even though the last time I checked they were kidnapped by the NON. So what, are they giving an NON approved style of concert? Are they going to start playing music from the Baby Boomer generation? The final boss is a cheap annoying sounding asshole who gives no clear indication as to what you're supposed to hit in order to damage him. Once you destroy him, you've saved the world and get to check out the Aerosmith concert. There's also a hidden ending that you can only get by finding the Aerosmith members hidden within the game, but all it is Steve Tyler saying that you've earned your wings to hang out with them. Yes, despite you single handedly taking down an oppressive world order, if you don't happen to find the Aerosmith guys hidden throughout the game, they won't think you're cool enough to hang out with them. Thanks for nothing Aerosmith! Screw you and your Generation X!

Interestingly, Acclaim was thinking about making a second Revolution X game, this time featuring the hip-hop masterminds Public Enemy. But since this one wasn't as popular as they hoped it would be, the idea was called off. Though really, trying to fight a repressive world order with the guys who made the catchphrase "Fight The Power!" would actually make a lot more sense then a bunch of old rockers telling me to "Eat The Rich!"

It couldn't have been any worse than 50 Cent fighting in the desert.