This 1993 X-Men game on Sega Genesis became infamous for a bizarre puzzle that could only be solved by physically resetting the console.
Imagine reaching the final stretch of a brutally difficult Sega Genesis game after hours of fighting, only for the solution to the next puzzle to be the one thing every kid knew you were never supposed to do: press Reset.
That was exactly what X-Men asked players to do in 1993. Not an in-game reset button. Not a hidden switch. The physical button on the front of the Genesis. And unless you were willing to gamble your entire run on the possibility that the developers weren't messing with you, you weren't reaching the ending.
The Danger Room Had One Last Trick
Developed by Western Technologies, X-Men put players in control of Cyclops, Wolverine, Gambit and Nightcrawler inside a malfunctioning Danger Room. A virus had infected the system, turning the X-Men's training simulations into very real death traps filled with familiar enemies including Sabretooth, Apocalypse, Juggernaut and Mojo.
It was already an unforgiving game. Mutant abilities consumed their own energy, characters could be lost during a playthrough, and the levels happily punished anyone who hadn't memorized where the next hazard was waiting. So reaching the Mojoverse section represented a fairly serious investment of time.
After defeating Mojo, the player destroys a computer terminal and is told that the Danger Room computer needs to be reset. Naturally, people started searching the stage. Maybe another terminal had appeared. Maybe Nightcrawler needed to teleport somewhere. Maybe there was a secret button hidden in the scenery.
There wasn't.
The computer the game wanted reset was the Sega Genesis itself.
Yes, It Actually Rebooted the Console
Pressing the Genesis' Reset button at the right moment caused the screen to go dark, but instead of dumping players back at the title screen, the game continued. A computer-style sequence announced that the virus had been suspended, Magneto's Asteroid M was revealed as the source of the attack, and the final mission began.
The best part is that X-Men wasn't faking the effect. The console genuinely reset.
The Genesis' working memory could retain data through a reset, so the developers left a specific marker in RAM before asking the player to press the button. When the cartridge booted again, it checked for that marker. If it found it, the game knew the reset had happened at the correct moment and skipped the normal startup process.
Turning the console completely off, however, erased that information. So the game wasn't simply asking players to restart it — it specifically needed a reset.
For anyone accustomed to cartridge games, this bordered on cruelty. The Reset button usually meant lost progress, especially in a game without modern autosaves or convenient checkpoints. X-Men essentially asked players to trust the cartridge while doing something every gaming instinct told them was a terrible idea.
A Puzzle So Weird Sega Later Broke It
The trick became even more absurd after Sega released the Nomad, the portable Genesis that could play standard cartridges. The Nomad lacked the same physical Reset button, meaning X-Men players could reach the puzzle only to discover that the control needed to solve it wasn't actually available.
There's another fun name hiding in the game's credits: Bruce Straley worked on X-Men early in his career, years before becoming a director on Uncharted 2, The Last of Us and Uncharted 4.
Today, the puzzle would survive approximately ten seconds before somebody searched for the answer. In 1993, you either heard the solution from a friend, found it in a magazine, called a gaming hotline, or eventually stared at the word "reset" long enough to have a deeply uncomfortable thought.
X-Men didn't hide its solution somewhere inside the game.
It hid it on the console sitting underneath your television.