 The early 90s were a fascinating time for comics, Marvel and DC were ginormous and only getting bigger and better. Marvel in particular was everywhere, for instance the X-Men got so huge that they split them into the gold team and the blue team, with the blue team kicking off a new series with multiple covers that sold millions of copies. I was obsessed with this stuff as a kid, I had all five covers of that first issue. Behind the scenes however, there were problems brewing, in particular with Marvel where artists weren't getting their fair share from stuff like merchandise, since Marvel could claim that anything the artist created was Marvel's intellectual property. So a number of popular artists like Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee and Mark Sylvesterie all left to form Image Comics, which was immediately successful thanks to characters like Spawn and Witchblade. Another early image franchise was Wildcats, or Wild Covert Action Teams, fronted by popular Marvel artist Jim Lee. It's pretty standard stuff as far as 90s comics go, there's a war between alien races that goes back hundreds of years, which spills over to Earth. It received a short-lived animated series in 1994, spanning just 13 episodes. So all this preamble leads me to the Super Nintendo game, it's full title being Jim Lee's Wildcats Covert Action Teams, and I have to point out that this game is based on the animated series and not the comic, so if you're a fan of the comic I should let you know that there's some changes here and there, like Lord EMP being a human for instance. As for the game itself, it's pretty much exactly what you'd expect, it's the comic book beat'em up and it's closest contemporary is probably something like Pirates of Dark Water, another game based on a short-lived animated TV series, but it also has some structure elements borrowed from games like X-Men Mutant Apocalypse. Spartan Warblade and Maul are the only playable characters, Spartan is of Cyborg, with a rechargeable laser attack, Maul is a Hulk-like monster that can suplex bad guys, and Warblade produces a biomolecular metal that allows him to cling to walls and, uh, double jump somehow. Y attacks, B jumps, A picks up enemies, X's each character's special attack, and select is your clear all attack, it's pretty simple stuff. The combat is decent as well, as far as beat'em ups go, Wildcats doesn't have the movesets that games like Streets of Rage might have, but it does force you to take note of timing and certain patterns since the enemy AI here is pretty aggressive and quick to defend as well. It's not on the level of something like Super Double Dragon, but the enemy AI is absolutely a factor here, enemies block often, so you have to be smart about attacking and picking your spot. Unfortunately, the pacing of Wildcats really suffers because these levels can really drag, especially the first two levels which just go on and on, sure you've got your special moves and all that, but at times the game prevents you from doing a whole lot like these barrel sections where you're just sitting here waiting for enemies to come to you. The levels here are long, this is something like a 90 minute playthrough which is an eternity for a beat'em up, they even included a password system which I appreciate but that's a telling sign that this game can be a slog. After you get past the first section, the game finally allows you to fight as the other characters, but the structure gets a little wonky. If you choose to fight as Maul, you can only proceed so far before the game tells you that the reactor in another level needs to be shut off first. If you choose to fight as Warblade, it's the same kind of thing, the game just kinda kicks you back to the character select screen before you can proceed any further. The game continues in a rigid way like that and it's all for the sake of storytelling which is fine, and while the dialogue may be goofy, I appreciate the attempt at a different approach. So let's face it, it's frustrating to have your progress halted like that after given the illusion of choice. Normally I'd say you're better off just continuing to play as Spartan and completing his section and then going back to the other two characters afterward, but again his stage is just incredibly dull. You wander around aimlessly looking for these 5 computers to destroy, zipping around these elevators, and thankfully the enemies stay dead after you defeat them but there's no run function here so you just wander, and wander, and wander, it gets old. I will say though the game does pick up a bit once you're finally able to utilize the other two characters. As you can see the game certainly looks good, it manages to look unique despite the overabundance of comic book games at the time. It doesn't look as good as say Capcom's War the Gems or X-Men Mutant Apocalypse, but it's still nice looking throughout, and the comics universe is represented well. What's surprising here is the soundtrack, which is actually really good. Anyway Wildcats, or I'm sorry, Jim Lee's Wildcats covert action teams is okay at best and dull his dishwater at worst. I certainly wouldn't put it in the top 10 or 12 beat'em ups on the Super Nintendo and it doesn't come close to stuff like Batman Returns, but I wouldn't call it a bad game. Fundamentally it's fine in terms of hit detection and controls and graphics and all that. It's just very long for a beat'em up. Like I said earlier it's in the same boat as Pirates of Dark Water, although I like that game better because it cuts a much quicker pace and it's two-player co-op. I would only recommend Wildcats if you dig image comics or if you really dig 16-bit beat'em ups.