Growing up in the ‘90s, I had two religions—Capcom arcade games and X-Men: The Animated Series, which ran on Cheez TV. When these two bits of media met in a copy of X-Men Children of the Atom (1994) for my Sega Saturn, I figured it was a chocolate and peanut butter pairing that couldn’t get any better. How wrong I was…
In no time flat, CotA metamorphosed beyond its roster of Xavier Institute alums and their expected nemesis a-holes to rebrand as Marvel Super Heroes (1995). Being linked to the Infinity Gauntlet storyline infused it with an interesting gameplay mechanic—acquirable Infinity Gems that could beef up your capabilities for a short time.
With arcade denizens falling over themselves to lycra up and lose coins on becoming Stan Lee’s most iconic supes and villains, the time was now ripe for a new mutant to emerge—X-Men vs. Street Fighter (1996), an even more star-studded crossoverpalooza. I can vividly recall it blowing my little mind with its 2v2 tag team mechanics. Not to mention the simple satisfaction of using Gambit to deal Scott ‘Boy Scout’ Summers the worst hand of his life.
Being a company not unfamiliar with pumping out a shitload of sequels in a short amount of time, Capcom unloaded on punters yet again with Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter (1998). As before, it opened up the Marvel side of things to include more iconic and exotic supes. The tag-teaming remained intact, but this time we got Variable Assists (ask your off-screen offsider to nip in for a hit).
the simple satisfaction of using Gambit to deal Scott ‘Boy Scout’ Summers the worst hand of his life.
From here, we land on the two main drawcards of this package, the ones that will be the most recognisable inclusions to modern audiences, Marvel vs. Capcom (1998) and Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (2000). For the former game, Capcom opened up “its” half of the roster to include fighters who tugged very hard on my heartstrings (Strider Hiryu, I’m looking at you). And, if we’re being perfectly honest, they let in a bunch of obscure weirdos that pre-Internet Aussies had very little emotional connection with.
The Variable Assist feature morphed into the Guest Partner System (limited opportunities to incorporate a randomly assigned third character from outside the usual roster). There were also Variable Crosses, a short window in which you could cleverly hammer an opponent with your two main fighters at once.
MvC2 basically upped the ante on the above via (actual) 3v3 bouts and some well considered regression to re-implement Variable Assists. With a gargantuan roster of 56 contenders (of questionable balance), this sequel nonetheless remains the God-tier duck’s guts of this series.
However, I still firmly believe that its character select music (a jazzy 8-second loop entitled ‘Take You For a Ride’) will be played on the PA system in Hell.
Just when you thought our history lesson was done, there’s more. For starters, we still need to address the genre odd-bod black sheep of this package—a side-scrolling beat ‘em up named The Punisher (1993). In terms of respect and importance, I’d place it somewhere near but below Final Fight. Mostly because it incorporates quite a bit of gun violence (which is borderline sacrilege to purists who only wanna punch people and bins hiding chickens).
Lastly, I’ll also mention something you seventh-generation gamers probably already know: this isn’t the first MvC compilation ever. 2012 saw the XBLA and PSN release of a duology called Marvel vs. Capcom Origins, which went full dodo a year later when the Marvel contract dried up.
Origins had all the modern creature comforts I expected at the time. The only strong memory I have of it was a unique “over the shoulder” view. It effectively 3D-ified the experience by mimicking the perspective of standing at the “player one spot” of a virtual arcade cabinet. I’m pretty damn annoyed this didn’t make a return trip to this edition.
I’m pretty damn annoyed this didn’t make a return trip to this edition.
Another problem is the absurd system of one quick-save to be shared across all of the games. There’s absolutely no reason why my gruelling, round by round, 8-star difficulty assault on X-Men vs. Streetfighter should be at risk of deletion if a mate pops over and we want to half-finish some Punisher. Proper, proper ridiculous.
Looking beyond those cons, there are other things to look forward to. I liked the added training modes with generous settings (including 1-button super moves option) and an Online mode with rollback netcode featuring casual matches, lobby matches for friends, ranked matches, and spectator features. My limited time online with a miniscule pool of content creators was enjoyed with few hitches, but you should definitely do some wider recon on the real-world state of this.
I also appreciated a sizeable chunk of archival stuff to poke my nose into as well. Along with a Music Player with original songs from the arcade versions, you get a variety of border artwork to select, plus some often never-before-seen artwork and dev docs / sketches for each game. I spent a good twenty minutes flicking through all of it.
It’s also cool that there are mini Fight Challenges to tick off. Historically speaking, it can be tough to milk gameplay mileage out of coin-op games like these if you’re a solo-centric gamer. Challenges definitely lessen that problem; something to earnestly punch towards that isn’t Cyclops’ face.
At the end of the beatings, I think MvC2 alone is worth the admission price of this package. What was great about it almost a quarter of a century ago largely remains so today—an interchangeable team of three wildly different characters (plus assist techniques) affords you a massive degree of strategic creativity. You have a huge palette to use in terms of shifting combo tactics, defensive counter wrongfoots, and more. The only monkey wrench to hamper this dynamic, realistically, are some legacy character balance issues that will be exploited by cheestastic online trolls.
Better yet, even if you aren’t playing at a savant level, basically all of the “vs” games in this bundle are timelessly absurd, screen-filling spectacles. Even a novice can grab this, drop in a credit or two, and feel like they’ve just gone a few rounds in an epic battle for universe-dominance. You need only look to the sad, 7-year gap of Marvel vs Capcom Infinite to see—they really don’t make ’em like these anymore.
