We're all wrong about the first X-Men video game
Madness in Murderworld vs The Uncanny X-Men - who owns the crown of First?
It’s been a busier summer than I thought it would be and it’s taking more time to jump into the next game and get that rolling. While I catch up on FF14 Dawntrail and some personal stuff before starting X-Men II, it has given me a lot of time to think about this topic and I wanted to share what I found. Strap in for a rabbithole, folks, history is here for debate!
If you go on Google right now and type in “What is the first X-Men video game?” you are going to be greeted with a universal response: it’s The Uncanny X-Men on NES. Websites such as Wikipedia, ScreenRant, various Youtube videos and, - hell - even me! Will be listing this game as the first game ever to use the X-Men. Even websites that have information on this game but don’t put it in a timeline ‘list’ don’t dispute this question. But after digging into this game and the X-Men: Madness in Murderworld game that was released in the same year it’s actually a lot muddier than it seems.
Which leads me to this post. From the information I’ve gathered I’m pretty sure we’ve got it backwards about which game came first and it’s actually the MS-DOS game that gets the crown and not the infamous NES game.
Seeing as this upends the common internet preconception - plus this is a rather niche topic and the fact that old pre-internet video game information can be difficult to find - I thought it might be best to put this out into the world and hopefully crowdsource a solution. I’ve gathered all of the information I have so far and put it below. So, here’s my pitch:
The information available to us suggests that X-Men: Madness in Murderworld by Paragon Software is the first X-Men video game and not The Uncanny X-Men on NES. Both games were released in 1989 but it’s becoming clear that Madness in Murderworld likely came out in September/October of 1989 while The Uncanny X-Men on NES came out in late October/November of 1989. Seeing as the X-Men brand is evergreen and new fans arrive into this space often, it’s important to disentangle and save this key piece of history so people can know and celebrate the team(s) behind this pivotal point.
Hopefully somebody out there has some concrete info on an exact date for either game. If you do, please reach out to me and I will update this!
As a bonus to help explain why this is a rather common problem with old video games and how it may be very difficult to find an answer, I highly recommend this incredible article by Historian and Video Game Preservationist Frank Cifaldi wherein he tries (and is unable to) find the original release date for Super Mario Bros. in the United States.
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/sad-but-true-we-can-t-prove-when-super-mario-bros-came-out
The Facts We Have
Given the nature of the Internet it’s very easy to fall into the trap of seeing information stated and restated across websites and assuming that it’s true simply because multiple people are saying it. It’s good practice to find the original source of information to confirm its authenticity, especially when you come across conflicting information.
Let’s start with The Uncanny X-Men on NES. It’s already a rather poorly preserved game as we don’t even know who developed it (See: my review of the game!) and this lack of clarification extends to its release date. However, we have a good handful of sparse articles leading up to its release. Here’s what we can confirm:
The game did NOT come out prior to September of 1989.
The VGCE Magazine covered CES in July of 1989 and wrote about the upcoming games on display at the convention. One of these games was part of LJN’s massive licensing line-up to release later that year? The Uncanny X-Men.
https://www.nintendotimes.com/uncanny-x-men-nes-game-hub/#jp-carousel-47644
Nintendo Power of July-August 1989 has a ‘gossip’ section in their magazine that discusses an upcoming game: Marvel’s X-Men. [Note: The game was officially titled The Uncanny X-Men but it also went by Marvel’s X-Men in some publications.]
https://www.nintendotimes.com/uncanny-x-men-nes-game-hub/#jp-carousel-46474
The Game Player Buyers Guide to Nintendo Games was released in October of 1989 and list’s Uncanny X-Men as a ‘preview’ for their upcoming games section. Though a release date/window is not given, this implies the game was not yet out. https://www.nintendotimes.com/uncanny-x-men-nes-game-hub/#jp-carousel-49475
Nintendo Power Sept/Oct 1989 #8 ‘NES Planner’ has ‘X-men’ in the ‘Future’ release category. https://archive.org/details/nintendopowerissue008septemberoctober1989/page/n89/mode/2up?view=theater
The Change from Preview/Coming Soon to ‘It’s Out’
In GamePro Magazine, November 1989. On page 84. Bottom Left. ‘Marvel’s X-Men’ is listed as being available for purchase. Also note that this Ad has a ‘New’ section for games - which X-Men is NOT on. This would imply X-Men is not new as of that Ads creation. Though not confirmed as I could not find an earlier ad from this same company, but it would imply the game may have come out in October. https://archive.org/details/GamePro_Issue_004_November_1989/page/n83/mode/2up?view=theater
Nintendo Power 9 November/Dec - If you remember above, X-Men was listed in the ‘coming soon’ area of Nintendo Power but with no specific date. Now it is no longer on the ‘NES Planner’ List, implying it has been released. https://archive.org/details/nintendopowerissue009novemberdecember1989/page/n95/mode/2up
GamePro Magazine of December 1989 has an ad for LJN games which includes the X-Men. There is no ‘soon’ or ‘preview’ listed, suggesting you can buy the game now.
https://www.nintendotimes.com/uncanny-x-men-nes-game-hub/#jp-carousel-51416
Current Guess:
With all of these pieces of information my current guess is The Uncanny X-Men on NES came out late October or early November.
With all the previews and ‘upcoming’ articles we can easily erase most of the year as being a possibility. The trouble comes around October/November where the game has publications saying it is both ‘coming soon’ and also out and not a new release. I will explain more below but this is likely a conflict with magazine lead times and the deadline to submit ads to print magazines. However, even with that, it is still possible for early October publications to be true that it is not ‘out’ yet and late October ads saying it's available also be true.
Now let’s check with X-Men: Madness in Murderworld by Paragon Software. We do know who made this game but it was also a MS-DOS/Commodore 64 game at a time when PC gaming was just starting to become feasible for average consumers. While we have no articles, previews, etc on this game and it’s lead-up, here’s what we do have:
The Ads Tell a Story
An ad in the Computer Gaming World magazine published in September 1989 has a section for ‘Metalist’ games and lists 2 of their other titles for sale - but not X-Men. https://archive.org/details/Computer_Gaming_World_Issue_63/page/n45/mode/2up
The same company as the above ad in the following issue of Computer Gaming World magazine from October 1989 now has X-Men: Madness in Murderworld as available for purchase. https://archive.org/details/Computer_Gaming_World_Issue_64/page/n69/mode/2up
Computer Gaming World Magazine 65 came out in November of 1989 and had an ad for Paragon Software games: X-Men and their other Marvel game, Dr. Doom’s Revenge
https://archive.org/details/Computer_Gaming_World_Issue_65/page/n49/mode/2up
While we do have a much better confirmation on date from the previous ads for Cape Cod Connection, notice the bottom portion of this new Ad, “Win Great Prizes with Medalist “Medal Madness” Starting September 1”. Medalist is the advertisement company that worked with Paragon Software to promote their games.
I’ve tried to discover the source of this and more information on the challenge, but none seems to exist online. It’s unclear what exactly this challenge was or what one had to do in order to participate. However, if it did involve X-Men in any capacity then that would suggest the game definitively came out on or before September 1st.
Current guess:
With all of these pieces of information my current guess is X-Men: Madness in Murderworld by Paragon Software came out in either late September or October. This would beat the NES game’s theorized date range.
The clearest cut example is provided by Cape Cod Connection ads from Computer Gaming World magazine from issues 63 into 64 with the game now being available for purchase. This clearly implies that at some point between both issues the game was released. Narrowing down when exactly that is leads to some problems like I said above. Clarification on ‘Medal Madness’ would help out a ton.
The Problems;
Gosh, there are several. The stuff we have is based entirely on advertisements in printed magazines. In this digital age it’s so much easier to get ads into place within a day of their completion - which is the opposite of print. Printed magazines have ‘lead times’ - the time it takes to create and prepare a magazine - that could be weeks to months in advance of their actual listed published date. Publication dates themselves could even be listed a month ahead of when they actually hit shelves. So if a magazine had a date of ‘October’ it could have actually been on sale in stores in September. This was to not make magazines look out of date the second they came out, but it also makes it tougher to look back.
This means that the ads placed into these magazines had to be done in advance. How much in advance we simply don’t know as different magazines had different lead times to them. This means the dates guessed above could be shifted even more, likely at most a month prior.
I still believe this places Murderworld above NES as the latter just has too much shift into being purchasable at a later point in time.
One of the other ‘problems’ is this Medalist International contest that is simply a blank spot. Other than a small wiki about the advertisement company itself there’s really nothing online about them. I haven’t been able to find a thing about what it entails, what you needed to enter, what you could win - nothing. I do think it has the potential to firmly place Murderworld above NES if any of that information could be found but, for now, it’s simply a question mark.
And that’s it! Thank you for reading my strange rabbit hole I fell into and researched too much. A big, big shout out to the Internet Archive and everyone who works on that to get old magazines on there. There’s such a treasure trove of information there and it was honestly really fun to read a bunch of 1989 video game magazines. GamePro, Nintendo Magazine, Computer Gaming World, Computer And Games Magazine - it kinda made me miss video game magazines.
Anyway, again, if you have any information that can clarify the release dates please let me know!