Upcoming X-Men ‘97 episode includes an awesome tribute to Konami’s 90’s arcade game

Marvel Studios recently revealed a teaser for the upcoming new Episode of X-Men ‘97, it’s sequel/resurrection of the original 90′s cartoon show, and it’s turned out to be an incredible homage to another classic 90′s X-Men production.

You can find the clip below, in which Jubilee and Roberto da Costa have seemingly been sucked into a Beat-Em Up game to fight against hordes of pixelated sentinels. The entire sequence is stylized as the classic arcade gam that featured a team of mutants going against their biggest enemies at the time, all with the now iconic look of the “X-Men: The Animated Show” series that has been continued with this new production.

It’s quite obvious that the animators had in mind the 1992 X-Men arcade game developed by Konami at the time, which curiously released almost at the same time as the original animated show. As a fun fact, that game was actually based on a previous failed X-Men show, Pryde of the X-Men. That’s why the playable characters were Cyclops, Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler, Colossus, and Dazzler, as that was the main cast of the pilot it was based on.

X-Men ‘97 continues to be a masterclass in retro-goodness

While the details as to why Jubilee and Roberto are trapped inside of this fake game have not been revealed yet, there are some hints hidden in plain sight. The name of the episode is “Motendo/Lifedeath - Part 1″, with “Motendo” possibly being a mix of the words “Nintendo” and “Mojo”.

In the X-Men lore, Mojo is a hideous slaver from another dimension (The Mojoverse) that controls his realm through producing sleazy TV shows and other kinds of media. He’s always been used as a criticism of modern media, and tends to kidnap characters from the Marvel Universe (especially the X-Men) to force them into his often lethal games and shows.

This new episode of X-Men ‘97 premieres today, Wednesday, April 3, 2024.