Do you remember the game call P.O.W (1988)? How about Burning Fight (1991) or Sengoku (1991)? What about Robo Army (1991)? Perhaps you heard of Mutation Nation (1992)? These are all beat em up games developed by SNK.

In Mutation Nation, you control either player one, a red hair, blue jean guy with mutant power or player two, a black dude wearing sunglasses with yellow and orange spendax. You get one life bar for each man and one man for each continues. In the original home AES cartridge, you get only three continues to share for both players. While that might sound stingy, the game isn’t impossible to beat with even that minimum allowance. At you disposal is a mutant power that you can charge up to unleash a powerful attacks that will knock down all enemies on screen and inflict some serious damage. There are alphabet icons scatter along your journey that will give you normally three free shots of these inhuman powers. If you’re out of freebies, you can still pull out a lesser super power hit at the exchange of your life bar. You are also given three attack patterns. Hold down and attack to do rapid jab attacks. Hold up and attack will pull off the most hard hitting arsenals. Hold left or right and you will pull off your regular combos. These attack patterns adds a little depth to the game plays.

In terms of graphics and sound, this is pure Neo Geo with large, colorfully animated sprites. The music and sound are adequate. There’s nothing special or memorable about them. The art direction is good. The only issue I have with this game is it gets really repetitive. To be fair, almost every beat em up suffer from this problem by the time the player reach the later levels. Though the gameplay isn’t as developed as Final Fight 3 or Denjin Makai 2. This is one of the better beat em up for the Neo Geo.

Tags: arcade, mutation nation, Neo Geo, SNK