X-Men 6-Player Arcade: The Best Cabinet EVER
Inpsired by a post on Detructoid today, I wanted to share what I believe is the greatest arcade cabinet of all time:
Back in the mid 1990’s this machine was a hot item and it wasn’t unusual to see all 6 joysticks filled with rabid players. The ultra-wide cabinet allowed just enough elbow room for each player, but it could be a challenge if you wanted to squeeze into a busy game as one of the remaining characters.
X-Men is the only arcade game I know of that actually used 2 full CRTs to provide a nice wide-screen effect. As if the colorful graphic novel graphics and great sound effects weren’t enough, the widescreen allowed 6 heroes battle wave after wave of baddies without the screen being too crowded.
Unfortunately, I’m not aware of a way to emulate the 6-player version of X-Men to accurately re-created the experience (the 2 or 4-player, single screen version isn’t a problem). The only real way to pull this off is to track down the real machine.
Maybe, just maybe, We’ll find a widescreen, 6-player version of X-Men arcade on XBox Live Arcade or something. But even then, I don’t know if it will be able to rival this ultimate arcade cabinet.
If you’d like to find out more about the game itself, I recommend reading this review of the X-Men arcade game.
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I totally agree and thanks for linking to my review!
Paul
It’s weird, I actually saw one of these for the first and last time about a year ago in the game room of some hotel in Florida. They had almost no good games, but I clearly remember seeing that huge X-men with the dual screens and saying “that’s awesome”.
There was one summer when my brother and I would spend afternoons pumping quarters into that machine. Until X-Men Legends, all other X-Men games have kinda sucked in comparison.
Do you remember the equivalent game for the Avengers, featuring Captain America, Vision, Hawkeye and Iron Man?
What an awesome arcade. That and the Captain America was my and my brother’s favorite arcade 🙂
I remember seeing this at Las Vegas, I remember a crowed of people playing at once, it was amazing.
Does any one know where I can download a schematic for this thing? My school has one, but it’s currently not working.
Had one of these @ the Titl in Fresno (Fashion Fair Mall) in the early to mid 90’s. Waas a popular machine, and the cabnet was easily our biggest at the time.
Does anyone know where I can find this arcade? What its cost range from?
I have found instructions on how to build an arcade acbinet!
It says it comes with plans to build this and 45 other cabinets! go to ebay and search “Build Arcade Cabinet Step By Step works with MAME “. (don’t put the parantheses in.)
I’m planning to use it to build my oun!
My friend just got one of these the other night, he had to move it maybe 150mi. and now one of the protruding moniter is only being half projected, anyone know of a fix for this?
I, too, first played and fell in love with this game at Cedar Point. It was 1992, and my friend wanted to play it, and I said “Okay, I’ll play this demon-like guy. He looks pretty cool” and that started me on a 5 year stint of collecting comics. To this day, Nightcrawler is my favorite X-Man.
Wow — small world, huh? 🙂
And yes, Nightcrawler rocks!
Does anyone know if you can get it for a home gaming system like NES or download it to your computer. I loved this video game (and the captain america and the avengers game) and want to play them both, but can’t afford to buy an actual video game cabinet.
Hey, real small world, seeing how I played through the whole game with friends at Cedar Point this past summer. There were only 4 of us, but it was incredible. I really wish I could get one for myself, but I couldn’t fit it anywhere ;_;
This was the first “video game” I ever played and I haven’t stopped since. I enjoyed the post.
WHY HAVNT the brought this old awsome game to the home systems????
what players are on the 4 player and which ones are on the 6 player? Please reply cuz ima bout to buy one on ebay.
I want to say they are all on there, but they don’t have dedicated spots on the cabinet. I think you just insert your coin and then select your character.
I just purchased the PCB for the six player version from eBay very cheaply. It had a few faults that were fairly easy to fix.
I wanted to run it with my supergun test rug, however because it’s a twin screen game I had to guess the pin-out for the extra video connector and when I did get an image it was flipped horizontally. The arcade cab must have used a mirror.
I’ve managed to flip the image on my TV set to get it working and it’s pretty cool. It is possible to get this running at home for 6 players without a cabinet; however you need to be confident with electronics and modifying CRT TV’s to do it. Pics will be available at my website soonish.
Mqark.
I don’t know personally — sounds like a good question for our arcade experts in the forum!
Hi! you guys! im from Argentina im so glad to tell that here in my city by the years ’93 ’94 & ’95 i have played this exactly same arcade! by 1996 the arcade gallerie closed because drug dealers seemed to be the owners… so sad never heard of what else happened. but i can answer a lot of things like for example the 2player and 4 player version have the option of CHOOSE the character not depending of wich stick you chose to play. and other stuff like for example :the european version has the 2dn stage (elevators that go down) cutted out! but there are some white centinels that give you mutant power and full lifebar back when you destroy’em also you can choose what atack move will perform your character by pressing diagonaly UP or DOWN while pressing the ATTACK button. some other changes were made for example the jump and atack pressed at the same time make some x-mens to hit on the air BUT NOT moving forward (like the american version but in the european nightcrawler stays on the same place) well that’s a lot to full a trivia of good info to chel out! SPECTACULAR KONAMI GAME
sorry o forgot to say the arcade had BOTH CRT MONITORS LANDED ON THE BOTTOM of the cabinet and in the back of that “black room” there were 2 mirrors that made the “mixing” of the two screens if you see on the back of the cabinet there is not so many space for crt i remember as a kid i figured it aou and my admiration for konami growed so much! i was a castlevania player by the time!!! and tmnt too! bye bye add me to you msn so we can chat about other relationed stuff
I picked this up about 5 years ago. Now that I have moved, it is just sitting in storage (can’t fit it in my place). It is in great shape and I had it serviced about a year ago. I have pictures and more info available. Located in Minnesota. If anyone is interested, contact me with an offer. Thanks.
Lee,
i’d like to see some pics. email me at jasondotlevaratgmaildotcom