The Revolution Continues...

      So.... Aerosmith has been captured, the club has been blown to pieces, and you are more or less screwed. So you do what any rational person would do in a situation like this: you steal a helicopter and attempt a daring escape with NON forces in full pursuit. This scenario culminates with you finding Aerosmith's car. And what a car it is.

      Once you have the car, three new stages open up and you get to pick what order you do them in. The New Order has outsourced all its best jobs, so to take them down you're gonna have to travel all around the world. The three key locations are: The Pacific Rim, The Amazon, and The Middle East. Strangely enough, none of these locations are accesible by car. If only you hadn't trashed that stolen helicopter, you dumbass.

      The Pacific Rim facility is a warehouse/factory where the New Order does all sorts of evil shit. For example, they have hundreds of crates lying around. EVIL crates. And when these sneaky bastards want to move those crates around, they use evil forklifts. Unfortunately, Mistress Helga has realized that her stormtroopers are mostly useless, so she's recuited some new henchman....

NINJAS???

      Yes, ninjas. And they're dressed like Hulkamaniacs. I have no idea why ninjas would work for Helga. I thought ninjas were all about freedom of expression. My guess is that since the game uses the same motion capture technology as the Mortal Kombat games, Midway felt obligated to throw some ninjas in the game. After all, you can't go wrong with ninjas. But it gets much, much worse.

      The real money isn't in physical production. It's in telemarketing. NON has been selling your name to all sorts of mailing lists from their secret computer room. Those e-mails you get titled "Re: Increase Your Mortgage Size!!!!!!! aszyqxvcs"? That was totally them. You get pissed and ask to talk their supervisor.

      The supervisor invites you into his office. After assuring you multiple times that he is not Darth Vader, he tries to kill you. You make him your bitch. Next up, the Middle East.

      This is the shortest level in the game, but it is also the hardest. The other levels you can buy your way through no matter how bad you suck. This level you can't. The premise is this: You must destroy the NON school bus before it is able to pick up more teens for reprogramming. You have a limited amount of time to do it, and the bus takes massive amounts of damage to kill. Not only that, you have to constantly speed up and slow down to keep up with it. To make things slightly less unfair, the level showers you with free CDs. This level bears a striking resemblace to a Terminator 2 level where you must protect John Connor's car from being shot apart by enemy Terminators. The T2 level is much harder, but this one is still a bitch.

      I've saved the weirdest level for last: The Amazon. If you thought garish ninjas and armored school buses were fucked up, you ain't seen nothing yet.

      In addition to the standard fare of ninjas and soldiers, NON has hired cannibals and floaty green skull things to guard its chemical plant. Foreign nationals are desirable employees for corporations such as the New Order Nation because they don't have to pay them living wages.

      The New Order doesn't like visitors, but they hired a receptionist anyway. Evergreen Chemical would appear to be a converted Mayan temple, making this their most cost efficient venture to date. With all the money they saved by hiring non-union workers and avoiding construction, New Order's top executives were able to give themselves huge Christmas bonuses. As you explore the deadly processing plant, be sure to keep an eye out for Joe Perry and his magic flying guitar.

      Evergreen Chemical holds a dark secret. Those bastards have been putting additives into all our food. Not only do these additives make you more susceptible to brainwashing, they're also filled with empty carbs. Oh yeah, and they're turning hot chicks into radioactive skeleton monsters too. I guess Helga can't get laid or something, so she's trying to improve her odds by eliminating the competition.

      This level's boss is kinda weak. It's just a giant bug. After all the other freaky shit in this level, I was hoping for something more interesting, like maybe a giant radioactive clown that tries to sodomize you. Shoot out the two bridge posts and he'll fall. Level over.

      Well, it looks like you've shut down all of NON's major operations. Now it's off to Wembley Stadium for a totally bitchin' Queen concert. Or the final showdown with Helga. Why Wembley Stadium? How the fuck should I know?

      After everything else you've seen in this game, Mistress Helga is a rather disappointing boss. Oh boy, a chick with a gun. All she does is run around, taunt, and shoot. If I really wanted to shoot angry, man-hating bitches then I'd go to Lilith Fair. Fortunately, Revolution X has one final surprise. After you shoot her enough times, Helga drags her bullet-riddled body into her NON throne....

      ...where she transforms into Mondor! Just what in the hell is Mondor? The short answer is this: I have no fucking clue. He looks like an evil potato demon or something. Despite his goofy appearance, Mondor is a bitch to kill. In order to defeat him, you must destroy every single one of his body parts. Does this make any sense? Of course not. But that's the great thing about video games; they don't need to make sense. An evil hot chick turns into an evil ugly dude. Sure, why not?

      The final battle is super long and super bloody. Once it's over, so is the game. You've successfully defended personal liberty, rescued Aerosmith, and saved the world. But most importantly, you saved Aerosmith's car.

      Revolution X is a fun, challenging game with interesting levels and weird enemies that had good graphics and sound for its time. It is certainly a much better gun game than crappy titles such as Area 51 or Virtua Cop. It certainly stands the test of time better than the House of the Dead, with its blocky characters, bad textures, and embarrassing clipping. Revolution X has gotten a bad reputation because it was poorly ported to both the Super Nintendo and the Sega Genesis. In both cases, the quality of the sound and graphics were severely compromised. For a comparison of the graphics, click here. The game has since been ported to Sega Saturn and PSX, but neither of those versions were able to recapture the original spirit of the arcade game either. For some idiotic reason, Midway hired Acclaim to do the porting. Well Acclaim did what Acclaim does best and fucked it up. In their long, pointless history, Acclaim has done only two useful things: they published the North American versions of Double Dragon II and Double Dragon III for the NES.

      We can only hope that Midway releases this lost gem on one of its Arcade Treasures compilations. It's an underrated game that deserves more respect than it generally gets.

*SydLexia.com does not condone throwing saw blades at people.

Posted by: Syd Lexia
11/03/04

TAKE ME HOME....