I miss Konami’s X-Men arcade games so much because I have fond (vague) memories of my friends and I teaming up to play on the giant multiplayer cabinet at our local arcade. On the other hand, that was over 30 years ago, so my memory of specific details is pretty low. What I remember most is that as Nightcrawler, I was constantly jumping up and doing diagonal attacks on the screen, and I had to look up the gameplay to remember the Sentinels’ many color combinations and some of their moves. Let’s take a look at the Sentinel two-piece set!
The box is very funky, with some great elf artwork on the front and sides, and some character photography on the back. The dolls come in a plastic tray but thankfully are not zippered and can be easily removed. Since the box has no windows, I prefer the cardboard interior.
The set includes two figures, each with two sets of hands (fists and claws), two sets of explosions and a large section of the street.
Hands exchange easily and stay in good condition. The fists are well proportioned, the clawed hands are splayed out, and the palms have blast holes so the Sentinel can fire rays from his hands like normal.
The explosion effects look familiar, perfect for the laser-blasting hands and jet-boot feet.
This block of street is very large as it looks like a thin layer of concrete with a pile of dirt underneath. The sculpts have a lot of detail and texture and look great and reflect the game design well, although it would have been better with some washes to differentiate the top and bottom and highlight those details.
The street looks great, and he looks great holding it, although it’s a bit of a chore to balance. It seems to me that it is designed to be placed on the head and looks like the elf is balancing in this way.
The sculpt matches the game sprites very well and I’m sure it reused some parts from the recent Iron Man to make those moon boots, but it looks brand new. The scale is pretty good, as they’re only slightly larger than the standard humans in the game.
Articulation is of pretty legendary standard, although the hips feel sticky and there’s very little ankle movement. Surprisingly, up/down movement of the neck is also limited, which I attribute to the barbell joints rather than hinges, and not much clearance inside the head. Sentinels are:
- Rotate/articulate shoulders, wrists, hips and ankles
- Double hinged knees and elbows
- Rotate biceps, thighs, boots and waist
- Ball head and mid-torso.
The paint is probably my biggest concern with this character. Even though my memory is hazy, at first glance, the pink color on the thighs, biceps, and head looked a little too bubblegum or pepto-bisistic for me, and looking at the references, I realized I was right. Pink is the highlight color on the sprites, so I kind of understand why it might have been used, but it does need a little more on the purple side.
The face print is a bit neat, adding a bit of a 2D spirit to the face and highlighting the main features of the Sentinel face design. One weird thing is that the cheekbone shadow is on top of the cheekbone sculpt, when in my opinion it should be below the bone. The effect is a bit anime-like, which makes me think they would look cool paired with the X-Men 97 characters.
Overall, I’m glad I was able to pre-order some of these at SDCC. It was a bit of a problem getting the app to run on SDCC, but I’m glad I did because these are a fun little army built with two packages. Man, do I wish companies would stop piling pre-orders on SDCC weekend? I don’t think I personally need all the other color schemes in the game, but this might be a good version for hardcore fans with better memories than me. If I can find the right wash color, I might try toning down the protein pink. What I really need now is an easy way to play the game again.
