Lat­est fight­ing col­lec­tion is a mod­ern Marvel

I might have got­ten mad at Cap­com with this release if they had­n’t includ­ed every­thing I need­ed for a mod­ern Ver­sus col­lec­tion. As I am wont to do when there is a new Cap­com cash grab, I take a hard, long look at the offer­ings and judge whether it’s worth my dol­lars or is skip­pable. With Mar­vel vs. Cap­com Fight­ing Col­lec­tion: Arcade Clas­sics, that judg­ing pro­duced a win­ning run on my wal­let quickly.

Let’s get straight to the point. The Mar­vel vs. Cap­com col­lec­tion, while great, is exact­ly like the oth­er col­lec­tions Cap­com has released in the past four years. If you already bought the Cap­com Clas­sics Col­lec­tions with the entire Vam­pire series and then Cap­com vs. SNK 2 and Rival Schools, you already know what to expect with this. The pack­age of games this time, how­ev­er, is strict­ly Ver­sus series titles. Every­thing from the start of the series is includ­ed — start­ing with X‑Men: Chil­dren of the Atom and end­ing with Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2. All ver­sions fea­tured are the arcade ports of the respec­tive games with train­ing modes and secrets unlocked from the begin­ning. So, no, you won’t have to play to unlock all char­ac­ters in MvC2 or go through the round­about unlock­ing process in MvC. That makes it eas­i­ly acces­si­ble, which I need because I’m not about the unlock­ing life at this stage of the game.

The col­lec­tion looks and plays like the oth­er col­lec­tions. There is a sound­track mode and gal­leries with infor­ma­tion and pro­mo­tion­al art­work for each game along with leader­boards and online play for all games. Cap­com did­n’t rock the boat with the pre­sen­ta­tion and I guess fig­ured, it worked for the oth­er pack­ages we’ve released so don’t be dif­fer­ent. I’m not com­plain­ing because that’s exact­ly what I expect. I want famil­iar­i­ty so I can just jump right in when I’m ready. And as with the oth­er pack­ages, I love the but­ton set­up customization. 

There isn’t too much that I don’t love about the col­lec­tion. Going in and out the train­ing mode is slight­ly tedious — as it is with the oth­er col­lec­tions — but it’s not a deal­break­er. The announc­er for the over­all col­lec­tion is also a bit weird, but it, too, is not some­thing hold­ing the game back. These are admit­ted­ly nit­pick­ing things about the game, and it does­n’t sub­tract from the over­all package.

The Mar­vel vs. Cap­com Fight­ing Col­lec­tion is the quin­tes­sen­tial col­lec­tion of Ver­sus games. It super­sedes any oth­er mod­ern Mar­vel col­lec­tion released in the past 15 years and is the best col­lec­tion of the bunch so far that Cap­com has released. The fact that it’s all ear­ly Mar­vel Ver­sus games in a mod­ern set­ting and read­i­ly acces­si­ble makes this worth an imme­di­ate purchase.