WARNING: This article gets into mild-spoilers for X-Men ’97 up to its ninth episode.

It goes without saying that X-Men: The Animated Series and its phenomenal revival, X-Men ’97, are among the greatest superhero adaptations into any medium ever. From the moment the earworm of a theme song hit you all the way back in 1992, or whenever you discovered it, you became an instant lover of the program.

Whether it was seeing stories you loved brought to life, or, for many, experiencing them for the first time, X-Men: The Animated Series had a level of maturity that went beyond its contemporaries. Sure, there were aisles upon aisles of X-Men toys and countless other pieces of merchandise featuring Marvel’s beloved mutants on the shelves, but they didn’t stay there for long because of how connected and protective people became of the franchise. Because of its success, you saw Marvel apply a similar formula to Spider-Man years later and Warnes Bros. taking similar chances with characters like Batman and Superman.

For all its success though, X-Men: The Animated Series never received a one-to-one video game adaptation. In fact, the failed precursor that only ever saw a pilot, dubbed Pryde of the X-Men, effectively saw its take on characters like Cyclops, Wolverine, Magneto and others get more attention with 2 interactive spin-offs: an early PC title sub-titled Madness in Murderworld and Konami’s arcade game which needs no introduction that traded on its roster.

That’s not to say that X-Men: The Animated Series hasn’t had an impact on X-Men related video games, far from it. Its ideas, designs, and cast would lend themselves to titles that would release well after the show went off the air. X-Men ’97 would even return the favor, paying homage to classic 16-bit X-Men games from the era.

In 1994, Capcom would release X-Men: Children of the Atom, a one-on-one fighting game that would apply what they had learned from half-a-decade working on Street Fighter II and plant the seeds of what would become the Marvel vs. Capcom series. Loosely based on the Fatal Attractions story line which included Wolverine’s adamantium getting ripped from his bones by Magneto – a development which found its way into X-Men ’97 – X-Men: Children of the Atom would be the first, but far from last, Capcom game to include cast from X-Men: The Animated Series.

As outlined in Matt Leone’s Like a Hurricane: An Unofficial Oral History of Street Fighter II, Children of the Atom was 2 weeks away from shipping but Marvel was not pleased with the voices in the game. Save Silver Samurai, every other character were voiced by English speaking Japanese performers. Alex Jimenez, who offered design support on X-Men: Children of the Atom and its follow-up Marvel Super Heroes, reached out to Joe Calamari, the head of licensing at Marvel at the time, with the dilemma. Jimenez asked who did the voices for X-Men: The Animated Series in Canada, information that Calamari was more than willing to divulge. For the same of $5,000, actors like Cal “Wolverine” Dodd and the late Norman “Cyclops” Spencer would lend their talents to Children of the Atom and its sequels.

The credits of Children of the Atom lists 6 actors: Cal Dodd; George Buza; Catherine Disher; Dan Hennessey; Norman Spencer and Ike-Bomb. It does not say who voices who, but sources like IMDB list performers like Dodd giving life to Wolverine and Catherine Disher, Jean Grey on X-Men: The Animated Series, voicing Psylocke. More performers from the show would come in a year later when Rick Bennett, the voice of Juggernaut, joined his castmates. Juggernaut would be featured in Children of the Atom just brought to life by someone else.

Worlds would collide when Capcom pitted the cast of the Street Fighter world in tag-team bouts in Marvel Comics X-Men vs. Street Fighter and Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter. These classics would see even more of the cast come in to reprise their roles. Lenore “Rogue” Zann, Tony Daniels, who took over for Gambit from Chris Potter in X-Men: The Animated Series, Don “Sabretooth” Francks and Alison “Storm” Sealy-Smith would go toe-to-toe with the likes of Ryu, Ken and M. Bison in X-Men vs. Street Fighter. Len “Omega Red” Concheff would be added to the roster in Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter. The big bad of both crossover games was a screen filling Apocalypse, given life by Lorne Kennedy who held the role on X-Men: The Animated Series.

The entire cast would continue on to the, pun intended, juggernaut duo of Marvel vs. Capcom: Class of Super Heroes and the game everyone’s begging to get revived once again, Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes. Thought not a playable character, Jubilee was inserted as a summonable support character in the first Marvel vs. Capcom, performed by Alyson Court. The fan favorite character Cable would make his debut in Marvel vs. Capcom 2, with sources saying Lawrence Bayne had come back from X-Men: The Animated Series to lend their talents to the time-displaced mutant. A Wolverine variant with bone claws helped round out the 50+ roster, paying off Children of the Atom‘s Fatal Attractions inspirations and technically making this the first time Cal Codd voiced an adamantium-less Wolverine. It should be noted that much of this comes from the simple credit role for these games unless otherwise confirmed by the performers themselves. None of Capcom’s games attaches a specific character to an actor.

The same could be said for the X-Men games that would follow from publisher Activision starting in the year 2000, which happened to be the same year that X-Men become a box-office success that helped reignite Hollywood’s desire in adapting comic book properties for the big-screen. Activision would release a steady flow of Marvel themed video games well into the 2010s starting with X-Men: Mutant Academy, a fighting game, like Children of the Atom, that played on the 2-D plain but traded sprites for full 3-D polygons.

The included manual for Mutant Academy lists such as George “Beast” Buza, Alison Sealy-Smith, Tony Daniels, Don Francks, David “Magneto” Hemblen, Catherine Disher and Jennifer Dale, voicing Mystique who never appeared in Capcom’s games. Places like IMDB list Lawrence Bayne switching from Cable to Professor X, but the game itself doesn’t corroborate this.

A year later, a quickly turned around sequel, aptly dubbed X-Men: Mutant Academy 2, added Nightcrawler, Forge, Psylocke and Havok to its ranks. Adrian Hough, Nightcralwer in both X-Men: The Animated Series and X-Men ’97 is listed in its credits, as is Rod Wilson. Wilson is credited in places as Havok, and himself is an X-Men: The Animated Series alum performing as both Longshot and Gorgeous George. Psylocke is credited to actress Jane Luk who, like Wilson, voiced Mariko and Lady Deathstrike on X-Men: The Animated Series. Finally, Marc Strange is reported to return as Forge.

The iconography of the Mutant Academy games owed a lot to the designs from the 90s run on the X-Men, and its animated adaptation with bonus outfits inspired by or taken from the feature film. For the final dedicated X-Men fighting game published by Activision, which would drop the Mutant Academy moniker and switch to the Next Dimension sub-title, it would lean more into the black-and-yellow uniforms featured in the New X-Men comics written by Grant Morrison with art by Frank Quitely.

Next Dimension places a greater emphasis on story than either of the Mutant Academy games, even going as far as bringing in Patrick Stewart to voice Professor Charles Xavier for added gravitas. The backbone of the campaign is a sequel of sorts to the X-Men story Operation: Zero Tolerance with the catalyst featuring Prime Sentinels liberating Bastion from S.H.I.E.L.D custody. Bastion, of course, is a character that many have now familiarized themselves with as elements of Operation: Zero Tolerance have made their way into X-Men ’97.

Tony Daniels is the only real alum returning from the world of animation, credited as Logan, but, as always, simply grouped in with the rest of the cast in the manual. Jennifer Hale, one of the biggest voice actors on the planet, enters the series for the first time, and Hale would of course go on to take over for Catherine Disher as Jean Grey in X-Men ’97.

For a time, video games would carry on the legacy of X-Men: The Animated Series, and when its revival started streaming in 2024, it paid them back in its own way. In the fourth episode, “Motendo/Lifedeath – Part 1”, Jubilee is tricked by Mojo into entering a digital world via a suspicious console that arrives on her 18th birthday that closely resembles a Sega Genesis. As Chris Baker points out in his YouTube short, the cartridge in the machine is a mash of of Sega’s X-Men and Capcom’s X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse.

Right now, the only X-Men related video game that we know as officially being in development is Insomniac Games’ Marvel’s Wolverine. The only way to experience many of the titles featured in this article, without turning to emulation, is via Arcade1up who produced a special cabinet with X-Men ’97 key art that includes every Capcom Marvel production with the exception of The Punisher.

It’s common knowledge that X-Men ’97 has been nothing but a success for Marvel Studios and Disney. I for one can’t be the only one who feels that a tie-in video game scoped to the size of something like Shredder’s Revenge would be nothing short of a massive success. Could some studio open up a channel with Marvel Games to finally give us the true X-Men: The Animated Series digital adaptation players have been desiring for decades? Only time will tell.

X-Men ’97 is now streaming on Disney+