X-Men (NES)

The NES X-Men is an overhead action game based on the popular Marvel series, featuring very questionable game design such as being very cryptic in what to do, having very useless AI-controlled companions, and a final stage whose method of access is also cryptic.

Hidden Message#

The game has a hidden final stage accessed with an input combination on the mission select screen. The clue to this code is hidden in the post-stage text, which would explain the odd wording as well as a glaring typo.

The message is disguised via a secondary lettering set that shares the same white color as the main text. Killing 30 special enemies in a stage causes the hidden text to be displayed in red, as shown below (the counter that keeps track of how many special enemies you've killed is stored at $513 in NES memory). The special enemies may be displayed in a different color throughout the level, but not always.

Combining the red text gives a message of:

THE LAST MISSION. CAN BE
REACHED FROM THE MISSION.
SCREEN BY PUSHING SELECT
AND SEEK THE ADVICE OF THE
LABEL TO MAKE IT TO THE
FINAL MISSION.

(Yes, the hidden message is just as wonky as the regular post-stage text.)

"THE LABEL" refers to the game's cartridge label, where among the copyright and trademark info is "+ B + UP together with START", the rest of the code needed to access the final stage.

References#