X-Men '97 leak reveals 1980 video game episode, The Rise of Jubilee

More information about the upcoming X-Men animated series, X-Men ’97, has been leaked and we’ve got our eyes, ears, and hands all over it.

As always, make sure to take all of these claims with a grain of salt for now.

According to sources, the animated series X-Men ’97 will feature an episode titled X-Men: The Rise of Jubilee and will take on the form of a video game. The episode will mimic a 1980 video game — even featuring a player select screen that shows Jubilee, Colossus, Cyclops, Storm, Longshot and Nightcrawler as some of the available characters to play.

The X-Men franchise has a long history in video games. The Rise of Jubilee is reminiscent of the 1992 video game — also titled X-Men. X-Men is a side-scrolling beat 'em up game produced and released by Konami for arcades.

In the game, up to six players control the X-Men to defeat their enemy Magneto. The player chooses one of six X-Men: Cyclops, Colossus, Wolverine, Storm, Nightcrawler or Dazzler. The only difference between the player selection here and the said video game episode is that Wolverine and Dazzler have been swapped out for Longshot and Jubilee.

The leak that an 1980 video game episode will be part of X-Men ’97 is surely interesting. This is especially since not much else is known about the upcoming animated series except that it will pick up where the original left off. As a quick refresher, the series ended with Professor X on death’s door with his fate left up in the air.

Whether X-Men: The Rise of Jubilee will actually be playable by viewers a la Black Mirror‘s Bandersnatch episode or have a storyline of its own and is only visually appearing as an '80s video game remains to be seen.

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In Bandersnatch, viewers play a ‘choose your own adventure’ surrounding a young programmer who starts to question reality while he adapts a mad writer’s dark fantasy novel into a video game. It will be cool if viewers will be able to pick a character from the player-select scene and embark on a journey as their chosen X-Men member for the episode.

That said, the idea of X-Men: The Rise of Jubilee in itself is an interesting idea for an X-Men ’97 episode. This animated series is definitely for the fans who grew up with the original series and a 1980 video game episode similar to the 1992 arcade game just brings a major wave of nostalgia.

The first season of X-Men ’97 will have ten episodes and is slated to stream on Disney+ in the Summer of 2023.