Unfortunately, the best you can say about any comic book property's video game history is that it has been hit-or-miss. Some have definitely been worse than others--poor Superman has not only never had a truly great game, but Superman 64 is considered one of the worst games ever made--and some have game adaptations on the level of Batman: Arkham City.

So we have the highest of the high and the lowest of the low in the world of comic book-to-video game adaptations. And terms of the X-Men, that is very much the c♏ase, with the best being excellent and the worst being absolutely dreadful. The question is, how does the balance tip overall? Well, that's what we aim to find 𝓰out with this here list!

The first X-Men video game was released in 1989 and, since then, 29 separate video games have been released that are headlined or co-headlined by either the team as a whole, or one of its members (read: Wolverine). It's a fairly low number compared to, say, Spider-Man, who has nearly 40 starring video game roles to his name--but it is way more than the currently red-hot Avengers, whose total video game conversations can be just about ꧑counted on one hand.

The X-Men are perfect for a video game--they are a team of characters with awesome super powers, each one has a distinct personality and set of abilities, their overall story is fascinating, and they have a whole bunch of interesting villains to choose from. But how well has this actꦛual✅ly been realized in video game form as a whole?

29 💯 The Uncanny X-Men ღ(NES)

Can you spot which of those jumbled collections of pixels in that screenshot is supposed to be a member of the X-Men? Even on the NES, there was no excuse for an X-Men game to look that bad. But poor graphics could be forgiven the game itself was good--and The Uncanny X-Men was anything but.

The best thing you could say about this abysmal video game debut of the X-Men is that it was a two-pla☂yer co-op game. But making someone play this with you was m𓂃ore of a punishment than anything else.

28 🌜 X-Men: Madness in Murderworld (PC)

Sadly, the X-Men's PC debut was only a tiny bit better than their console debut, but not by much. You could at least identify the characters in Madness, but that's of little consolation🅷 when what you're having them do is so completely boring.

That this game advertised over 500 screens of action should be taken more as a warning than a boast.

We aren't sure what the PC vs. console debate looked like in 1989, but for X-M꧟en fans invol♓ved in that debate, everybody lost.

27 𒁃 Wolverine (NES)

Licensed video games had a very bad rap in the late-80s to early-90s🎐, and much of that had to do with publisher LJN, who seemingly spent so much money buying up every available property that they had none left to ensure that any of the corresponding vi🌱deo games were actually good.

Like many licensed games of the era, Wolverine feels like a generic, forgettable action game that was already basically finished when the developers were told a month before deadline that they had to shoehorn this character into it. Also, it was way too hard, even for an NES game.

26 ♋ X-Men II: The Fall Of The M🎉utants (PC)

Apparently there were enough gamers fooled into thinking that the previous X-Men PC game was worth buying that it sold well enough for a sequel. And those that either actually liked the original or were hoping that second time was a charm quickly found out that follow-up The Fall of the Mutants was essentially just as bad.

Is this a puzzle game? A point-and-click adventure game? A fighting game? It's a bad game, and that's all that matters.

Luckily, X-Men games were about to get much better after this dud...

25 Wolver😼ine: Adamantium Rage (SNES, Genesis) 🉐

It certainly must be tricky to design a game around an entire team of mutants who each have their own very distinct set of superpowers, so it stands to reason that developers would occasionally just try and doꦦ a solo game--and that it would star Wolverine.

The developers of Adamantium Rage definitely gave Wolvie a lot of moves--but the problem is, the conꦦtrols are so bad that it's hard to even effectively utilize most of𓃲 them. This is one of those infamous old-school games where many players never even got past the first level before quitting in frustration.

24 𓃲 Spider-Man And The 💛X-Men In Arcade's Revenge (Multiplatform)

With the whole big mess over which company owns the rights to wha🉐t Marvel properties in terms of movies, resulting in many of them rema𒀰ining completely independent of each other (though that might soon change with the Disney/Fox merger), we don't see these kinds of fun crossovers very often.

Sadly, a cool team-up concept is spoiled by a lackluster game.

Arcade's Revenge's production was reportedly rife with conflicts between the developer𓆉s and publisher Acclaim, and it shows--the game is disjointed, unpolished, and feels like it was made by people whose hearts just weren't in it.

23 X-Men: Wolverine's Rage (Game Bo🃏y Color) ꦉ

Wolverine's Rage is like a lot of Game Boy games in that it was made qui𒅌ckly and cheaply and probably didn't need♚ to sell much to be profitable.

"Mobile gaming" wasn't much different in a pre-smartphone world as it required wading through a LOT of licensed junk to find the good stuff.

To be ꦬfair, there are some solid X-Men games on handheld consoles--this just isn't one of them. And it might seem like we're picking on poor Logan here, but we promise that the next time he appears on this list it'll be a more positive write-up.

22 🤪 X-Men♏: Destiny (Multiplatform)

Of all the games on this list, none took a more interesting concept and completely squandered it on a bad game than X-Men: Destiny.

The idea of creating your own mutant and then having them either fight alongside the existing X-Men or Brotherhood of Mutants is definitely intriguing. But then you actually start playing the game, and find its ambitions rested entirely in its concept and left little for the gameplay itself, which was bland and uninspired. Not surprising, since this was made by Silicon Knights and that was kind of their M.O. (cough Too Human cough).

21 ಞ Uncanny X-Menꦗ: Days Of Future Past (Mobile)

It's hard to know how to feel aꦇbout the current state of movie-licensed games and most of them just being mobile apps rather than AAA console/PC games. On one hand, a lot of AAA movie-based games are terrible and only serve to taint the property. But on the other hand, maybe we just don't need them at all then, mobile game or otherwise.

For a $3 app that doesn't require a million extra purchases, Days of Future Past isn't a terrible investment. But it's also an unnecessary one.

Then again, tha🦄t describes 90% of all mobile games🎶, doesn't it?

20 ꦆ X-Men: Mutant Wars (Game Boy Coloಌr)

Here's another X-Men Game Boy title that feels mostly like it was designed to fool well-meaning uncles and grandmas into buying it for Christmas presents rather than actually being a genuinely good game. Admittedly, the visuals for Mutant Wars are decen🌠t and the X-Men themselves are well-animated, but there isn't much else remarkable about it.

There are worse side-scrollers for Game Boy Color than Mutant Wars--a lot worse--but there are also better ones, too. Like much of this particular segme🌃nt of this list, this one is strictly for superfan completionists and nobody else should bother.