Just over a year ago, I covered Guitar Hero Aerosmith for a Co-Op Casual Friday. While writing up my impressions of that rather pedestrian music game, I mentioned that Aerosmith had been in a videogame before, and perhaps I'd write that up for Co-Op Classics someday. Well, it would appear that someday has arrived, because for Co-Op Classics this week, we are taking a look at Aerosmith's lightgun-style shooter, Revolution X.
Aerosmith is one of the most popular bands around, and has enjoyed success for many years. That success was perhaps at its peak back in the early 1990s. The band was a musical guest on Saturday Night Live, and famously took part in a Wayne's World sketch, even appearing in the movie Wayne's World 2 (a film I like to pretend never really happened). Huge world tours and sold out stadiums were the order of the day for Aerosmith circa 1994, when Revolution X was released.
There were two versions of Revolution X; the first was a stand alone cabinet, and it had three gun controllers, while the more common version was a conversion kit for Terminator 2: Judgement Day (which we've previously covered in Co-Op Classics). This latter version had support for only two players. The controllers were heavy and menacing, and attached to the control panel sturdily. The controllers weren't really lightguns, but functioned like joysticks instead, giving them a very unique feel during gameplay.
The story line to the game was that an oppressive militant organization called the New Order Nation (or NON) had outlawed all forms of entertainment, and enslaved everyone from the ages of 13 to 30. As the symbolic ambassadors of all things entertaining, NON decided to go ahead and kidnap the members of Aerosmith, too, though I'm fairly sure they were a tad over the 30-year old limit at that point in their careers. The players were rebels, armed with machine guns, though the game's tagline was "MUSIC IS THE WEAPON". I guess a few rounds of bullets beats the bad guys a bit faster than "Sweet Emotion" in practice.
The stages of Revolution X have a decent amount of variety, ranging from a music club to a warehouse and even a jungle. The NON bad guys appear en masse, often in vehicles like tanks or helicopters, which are, of course, much harder to take down. In keeping with the theme of the game, Revolution X's power ups include health shakes, compact discs, and even laserdiscs among the standard bombs and shields. And, of course, since this is Aerosmith we're talking about, there are plenty of scantily clad babes to rescue along the way, and if you squint your eyes, they look a bit like Alicia Silverstone.