And so here we are, finishing up the lineup of Marvel’s arcade market dominance across quite a few years. What awaits us in these final three games? Well, you’re already aware of Avengers in Galactic Storm being terrible, but what about the other two? What games could they possibly be?
I recommend putting on some great tunes and settling in for the hype ride I'm taking you on, because it’s time for something special. It's time for Mahvel, baby.
Marvel Vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes
Year: 1998Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Platform: CP System II
Hell ****Ing yeah. It's finally Mahvel time. We’ve come a long way, through some really bad games and Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter to get here, to my personal favourite Capcom Marvel game. XMvsSF is my favourite outside of specifically the MvC games, of course, but this is my favourite in the whole series. Why's it my personal favourite? It's the culmination of everything that led to this, combining all the additions the previous games had made to the developing formula into a full featured game. It takes all of their strengths, and has only one weakness we’ll get to.
Also, it has goddamn Captain ‘Captain Fire!’ Commando in it.
Here we see Captain Commando trying to eliminate the current face of Capcom so that he can take his place.
Also a surprise Mega Man appearance, which is surprising as it was Capcom actually doing something with the character. Crazy.
Robot boy versus demonic creature of the night; who wins?
Like I said, this is the culmination of what came before into one perfectly distilled hype fighter. You have the 2v2 team battles with a tag system, team crossover supers, chain normals, a great, lean roster of both new and old faces, assists (more on that later), and some fantastic music. It all equals one amazing package.
It plays almost identically to MSHvsSF, being a six button fighter and bringing many of the same previous system mechanics into it. You've got your alpha counters (here done by your tag partner, meaning you can't do them if you're down a man) and your team supers. There is one new system ability in MvC, however, and it's silly, absurd and nuts; the ‘Dual Combination Attack’, that sees both you and your tag partner out on the screen at the same time and both being controlled by you. It's such a powerful, if incredibly chaotic to control, gimmick and really sets that wild energy of the MvC series off on the right foot.
Pure chaos. Beautiful chaos.
Balance wise, this is probably the most even of the games…counting the base characters at least. Two of the four secret characters are just pure broken god tiers but given that they are ‘secrets’ after all, it kind of makes sense. There are a few of the usual touch of deaths and infinites, but really only on a few specific characters and they have some very high execution barriers this time around. Overall, the game has a unique feeling ‘neutral’ focused experience, unique in that it's really the only one since Marvel Super Heroes to have that aspect of fighting games in it.
I mentioned one weakness earlier, so let's get to it. This game brings the assists from MSHvsSF into the mix, letting you call in another character in from off-screen to do an attack then jump back out. In that previous game, it was your second character, which added in a team building element that MvC2 would really run with (foreshadowing). In MvC1, the assists are instead from a specific list of 20 odd characters, and their selection is random unless you know the frankly esoteric system for choosing which one you want. While it's nice to see characters that aren't directly playable appear in this game as these assists, and they adorably range from obscure deep cuts such as the guy from Forbidden Zone to X-Men cult favourite/classic Wolverine side-chick Jubilee, the fact that they're random to the uninitiated is a little silly. They're always something overall useful, and I don't think there's any truly useless ones, so it’s not like you’re ever punished by this RNG but it's still bizarre why they didn't just have it be your other character like in MSHvsSF or just selectable from the pool. If they still put in a ‘secret’ system to be able to select which one you get anyways, then what was the point in the first place?
Final Justice! This is totally accurate to canon power levels.
Graphically, this is a master class of course, being a Capcom arcade game. The presentation is hype as hell, the characters all animate and move beautifully. What else could you ask for? Again, ‘nuff said on that front.
Some things never change; no matter your problem, there’s Proton Cannon.
Should you play Marvel Vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes? Hell yeah, I think you should. The game is often overshadowed by its famous sequel but I personally prefer this more tame craziness, if that oxymoron makes any sense. It's still all over the place and chaotically fast paced, but retains some real fundamentals at the same time.
Score
4 ½ Assists out of 5.
I'm sure you all know what's next, given that I've mentioned it enough times by now. Up next is the patron saint of broken-as-**** fighting games, the shining example of ‘throw everything we have at it’ design that makes you ask: where’s your curly mustache at?
Marvel Vs Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes
Year: 2000Publisher: Capcom
Developer: Capcom
Platform: Sega Naomi
This game is infamous, of course, if that's not obvious by now. It's I think the most enduring game community-wise considering it's still being played at EVO (the yearly international fighting game tournament) to this very day.
MvC2 brings quite a few changes to the formula this time around, and is by far the most unique playing of any of the previous. First and foremost; it's now a four button fighter. Chain normals are still in of course, but simplified to being within two less buttons. The medium punch and kick buttons have been removed, demoted to only being done by hitting light punch or kick in a combo twice. This was part of Capcom's overall plan with this game, as they wanted it to appeal more to the wider and casual audience as, by this point, arcade fighters were a dying breed in the few arcades that were left. What did they replace these two buttons with?
The biggest gameplay change is that you now have a team of 3 characters, and assists are now back to being your teammates like in MSHvsSF. This means that you now have two possible assists, and that's what those two buttons are now assigned to. When you select each character on your team, you choose from one of three different potential moves they'll do when called in as an assist, styled as Greek symbols for some reason I've never quite been able to figure out. This adds a huge team building element into the game, and even defines some characters by how good their assists are, as some are easily much better as assists then they are as playable characters because, as we'll get to in time, this game is broken.
Scott Summers, casually assaulting a British woman in front of a small robot boy. What a terrible father figure.
Something else that deserves mentioning since we’re talking about ‘changes’; this game is actually built on a different arcade system instead of one of Capcom’s own proprietary CP Systems. This was created using the Sega NAOMI, something known for being more of a 3D monster than a 2D sprite machine. This creates a look that Capcom had experimented with a few times; 2D sprites on fully 3D backgrounds, creating that 2.5D effect. It also uses several 3D effects provided with the NAOMI hardware. Historically, this was the first fighting game they had developed outside of their own CP System. Why this change? I think it was just part of them wanting to mix things up to appeal to that casual audience more. Perhaps it could also be that they were looking for something that was easier to port for the home console release; the Dreamcast was based largely on NAOMI architecture, making ports of NAOMI arcade games to that unfortunately cursed console a breeze.
Tremble before Doom's finger lasers!
This game is just nuts. It has the speed of all the other previous games only turned up even further, and given the bigger focus on assists this time around makes the screen frequently turn into a very chaotic mosh pit of flying particle effects.
Rogue kissing Venom has apparently made Cap seethe with anger. What won’t she kiss?
There's 56 playable characters in this game, bringing every single previous player character into the mix along with a whole bunch of new ones. Before you get too excited going “my god, there's so many!”, this includes quite a few ‘clone’ characters with minor differences from one another, such as there being both a Wolverine with bone claws and the regular adamantium Wolverine, as well as Iron Man and War Machine who play almost identically. They really were just slapping whatever they could onto this game.
Some of the recycled sprites are now very much showing their age by the year 2000. Morrigan, bless her demon heart, has a 6 year old sprite at this point and you can definitely tell at a glance that she’s ripped entirely from the first Darkstalkers game. Some of the older Marvel characters are also getting a little rickety with age, especially compared to the new sprites the game has.
Another effect of changing systems is that the team needed to remake and adapt a lot of previously established combo systems from their CP System code, which makes for why this game is so famously busted. Outside of the obvious and long-enduring infinite combos, there are so many issues and glitches with the arcade version of this game that it's a wonder it’s able to hold itself together. There’s a few genuine game-breaking ones, as well as numerous quirky interactions between characters in certain circumstances that lead into so many clearly unintended effects.
This leads into the biggest thing about this game: the balance is absolutely broken beyond any salvation. The best characters in this game are so far above any others that’s absurd, and the gap between tiers is just as ludicrous. It’s objectively broken from a competitive standpoint, as well as the previously mentioned glitches making it broken on a technical level. And yet, it’s one of the most famously everlasting competitive fighting games. It begs the question; does that stuff matter?
To the casual audience that Capcom was aiming for with this, it likely doesn’t. They can’t do Iron Man/War Machine Flight Cancel infinites or know how to do the Juggernaut glitch, so it doesn’t affect that level of play. But it’s so strange that a game as borked as this one has lasted so long competitively, and I think it boils down to this; the game is fun as ****.
This was honestly the game I was dreading the most on this list (other than Galactic Storm, obviously) not because it’s bad, but because I wasn’t sure what to give it score-wise. The game is objectively a mess, but it’s also one of the hypest and funnest fighting games of all time. I’m honestly not even a really big fan of it personally, but I can’t deny how great it feels to obliterate Servbots as Cyclops, or bully the hell out of Hayato from Star Gladiator with zombies as Jill Valentine.
That’s what you get for being the star of a really cool but entirely forgotten Capcom fighting game, you little *****.
I decided on this; the game is fun, and while I have to take into account how utterly ****ed this game is balance wise, it’s ultimately a fun, legendary fighting game experience. Does anything else really matter in a fighting game you’re not playing competitively at EVO?
Score
3 ½ Assists out of 5.
Avengers in Galactic Storm
Year: 1995Publisher: Data East
Developer: Data East
Platform: MLC (Mother Less Cassette) System
Just when I thought Data East was redeeming themselves after the terrible Captain America and the Avengers ports, they drop this on us. This is something truly fantastical in its abysmal depth, and it’s not in a ‘it’s so bad it’s good level’ either; it’s just bad. Don’t play Avengers in Galactic Storm. Review over.
Okay, I’ll elaborate if you insist.
As you can see in that year entry right above, this actually came out in 1995. Why am I covering it now when every article has been chronological? Because I couldn’t possibly break up the good Capcom games with this utterly forgettable mess of a game, and I couldn’t bring myself to play this before my beloved X-Men Vs. Street Fighter. So I cheated, and I figured a review like this would be a good way to close out the arcade years section of this retrospective.
Thanks Thor, who’s technically the same person as Thunderstrike after fusing together, but then it was all retconned away. Comic books are a hell of a drug.
Avengers in Galactic Storm is just bad, painful in its mediocrity. The most memorable thing about it is the pre-rendered 3D graphics, and definitely not in a positive way.
I’m not going to spend too long dragging this game down for its graphics as, yeah, it was 1995; they were trying something new, and even successful games with pre-rendered graphics from that era were just as rough. But it’s just the first thing you see when you look at it, you know?
It has a lean roster of 8 playable characters, with four being members of the Avengers and the other four being the ‘villains’ of the Kree alien empire. The Avengers side has the typical pick of Captain America, but also has Black Knight and Crystal who were both rostered members of the Avengers in the 1992 storyline this game very loosely adapts, Operation: Galactic Storm. It’s a very 90’s game, complete with I think one of the only appearances of Thunderstrike outside of his very short tenure as Thor’s replacement in the comic material. Why else is it the 90's? Black Knight is wearing his adorable brown jacket that he was rocking at this point, given that everyone in the mid 90’s had to have a jacket on because they were rad.
The guy is wearing magically enchanted chain mail, so of course he also needs an army jacket. The 90’s were a great time for comic books.
Its gameplay? Rough, and just ‘there’. It’s a four button fighter, with each character having two punches and two kicks. Special moves are performed in standard Street Fighter style with quarter circles and dragon punch motions. It’s also an assist fighter, and sees you select one of four characters based on your side to call in at your command; if you have the meter of course.
Character’s normals are far too heavy feeling, as are the characters themselves. It’s not the worst out there control wise, but it’s definitely not great either. It’s just ‘there’, you know? Like your buttons showed up to work, but they’re just not really into it. There’s definitely some hitbox issues that become apparent, as well.
Balance? Nonexistent. Crystal can land an infinite off of just standing jabs if she does a tiny walk forward in-between (‘microwalks’ for those fighting game nerds out there), there’s numerous stun locks with corner throwing loops, and some characters are just obviously stronger than others.
This isn’t really a negative of course, but something I had to mention: the AI in this is so obnoxiously stacked against you, even for its genre. Just look at this ****ery;
What even is this?
The weirdest thing about looking this game up is seeing fairly detailed posts and discussion scattered around about how it’s some sort of decently underrated gem, or about how deep its mechanics are, and how it would have probably had some recognition at the time if it weren’t for those pesky Capcom games and their quality. Did we play the same game? What am I missing here? Am I already insane and still in an Uncanny X-Men nightmare spiral and hallucinating this? Maybe this whole thing is just all an ‘Octopus’ thing, and the game is actually some masterpiece; if that’s the case, then I’m never playing a fighting game again.
The game I think was trying to sell itself more with its early 3D graphics, as many other games were at the time. The difference is that something like Killer Instinct actually also sets itself apart with unique gameplay systems on top of the novelty of pre-rendered models with its combo breakers and fairly intricate combo system of enders and linkers and manuals. Galactic Storm does no such thing, and even in its best interpretation it is a forgettable 'just fine, I guess'.
All this is to say that this game is just bad, and not bad like Rise of the Robots or Criticom or even a Mutant Wars or Uncanny X-Men. Where those are so bad it’s fascinating and mystifying, Avengers in Galactic Storm is the worst kind of bad game; forgettable, bland, with nothing at all of note other than mediocrity and Black Knight’s hilarious 90’s jacket.
Don’t play this game, unless you’re someone who apparently loves this game as the ‘underrated gem’ it apparently is; in that case, have fun I guess, man.
Score
2 Thunderstrike’s out of 5.
The Arcade Years in Review
And so closes another chapter in the retrospective. The days of arcade games are now over, even if they weren’t when we start the next chapter as those games were actually released concurrently to the arcade games we just covered, an- I’m overthinking it, just read my ramble.The full evolution of the Marvel Vs. Capcom series was a wonder to behold, from the quant days of little Children of the Atom to the insanity of MvC2. It’s no wonder the series and the Capcom Marvel fighting games in general are held in such high regard, the series was the perfect example of Capcom’s hype fighting game design gold. Each game built on the last, took maybe some steps to the side once with MSHvsSF, but then finished strong with MvC1 and the absurdity of 2.
Even their other Marvel arcade game, The Punisher, is the highest rated entry on my list (I will admit some personal bias, as much as I try to keep it objective here) with the ‘5 Uzis out of 5’ stamp of approval. The game just kicks so much ass, or more appropriately, shoots so much ass in the face with a .45. Wait, that doesn’t sound right…
The lowest score this time around was Avengers in Galactic Storm with its ‘2 Thunderstrike’s out of 5’, and I just don’t want to even waste time talking more about that game.
Middle of the pack was some members of the ‘3 or 3 ½’ gang, such as the perfectly fine Spider-Man: the Video Game and even MvC2 in a ranking decision I’m sure is having my ‘Fighting Game Player License’ revoked in the eyes of a few people; it could also be revoked for being too high of a score depending on who it’s coming from, as the game is a little divisive after so many years in FGC spotlight.
This was of course a very stacked lineup of games, and I don’t think we’re going to hit these lofty heights again on the journey. Out of these eleven games, the final tallied score is 41 out of 55. This brings us to an average of score per game of 4 (I rounded up from 3.7), and a percentage score of this chapter being about 80%. Pretty good, honestly; the score got dragged down by Galactic Storm a bit and the few 3’s, but 80% is a pretty damn good grade I think. It’s more about looking at the specific high notes at play here, and the genre defining aspects of them. For comparison’s sake, both the previous 8-bit consoles and the matching 3rd gen handhelds had about 45% as their final quality percentage; so an 80 is pretty damn good. Also, go play The Punisher.
What’s in store for us next time? Why, the 16-bit home consoles of the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, of course, along with two bonus games on the Genesis add-ons; one game on the SegaCD, and one more on the incredibly successful and famous 32X. Will double the processing power make a difference on these, uh, 15 games? Oh god, what have I signed myself up for? I'm not sure how I'm going to break them up yet, if I can fit 5 games each into three articles, or maybe do four parts in a 4-4-4-3 spread. We’ll see, we’ll do it live.
Until next time, when I lose my mind playing another terrible Wolverine game. That’s not spoilers, it’s foreshadowing; I’m going to lose my mind playing another terrible Wolverine game.
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