The best: Mar­vel vs. Cap­com is a masterpiece

First of its name is crossover com­bi­na­tion every­one needs

Mar­vel vs. Cap­com is where I start­ed. My broad­er Mar­vel edu­ca­tion beyond the X‑Men? Mar­vel vs. Cap­com. My love for the Ver­sus series? Mar­vel vs. Cap­com. I learned these lessons through the epony­mous Ver­sus title, and I’m rich­er for it. MvC is six-but­ton perfection.

Mar­vel vs. Cap­com is tech­ni­cal­ly the third game in the Ver­sus series, not count­ing X‑Men: Chil­dren of the Atom and Mar­vel Super Heroes. This is where the mag­ic has been per­fect­ed. Loose­ly adapt­ing Mar­vel’s Onslaught sto­ry arc, MvC brings togeth­er some of Mar­vel’s biggest names that had yet to appear and the wider Cap­com uni­verse. Some big Mar­vel names like Mag­ne­to and Colos­sus reap­pear in assist roles while new­com­ers like Ven­om and War Machine join the fray, and Cap­com mines the depths of its cat­a­logue to bring in char­ac­ters such as Strid­er, Mega Man, Mor­ri­g­an and Cap­tain Com­man­do. The ros­ter is an inter­est­ing mix and good call because it intro­duces a lot of favorite faces and it tries hard to avoid retreads. 

Also, a good deci­sion is the refine­ment of the two-char­ac­ter team con­cept. MvC plays like a dream and char­ac­ters feel sub­stan­tial. The game­play flows well, and moves and supers feel bom­bas­tic, as they should in a Ver­sus game. Pick­ing up the game is easy thanks to the Auto Mode and moves feel smooth. There are still some moves that are hard to per­form (look­ing at you, Eter­nal Slum­ber), but over­all, the game plays with a bet­ter han­dle on fight­ing than its pre­de­ces­sor, Mar­vel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter.
Anoth­er area where MvC excels over the pre­ced­ing game is the pre­sen­ta­tion. The game looks great, with large col­or­ful sprites and gor­geous back­grounds. Char­ac­ters ani­mate smooth­ly and look great as rep­re­sen­ta­tions of their respec­tive series. Equal­ly as impres­sive as the graph­ics is the sound­track. MvC has one of the best sound­tracks in the series, and it’s not because there are remix­es of exist­ing char­ac­ter themes. The music fits the game mood well and the announc­er — Sal­ly Cahill of Res­i­dent Evil fame — adds to the crossover atmosphere.

While MvC isn’t per­fect, it’s close. I don’t have too many com­plaints beyond dif­fi­cul­ty pac­ing issues in the arcade lad­der. The final two fights before fac­ing boss Onslaught are bru­tal, and the dif­fi­cul­ty could have been tweaked just a tad. But that is not enough for me to ding the game heavily.

What I appre­ci­ate the most is the obvi­ous care and atten­tion to detail with MvC. MvSF is unmit­i­gat­ed lazi­ness while MvC got seri­ous again about the lega­cy of the series. The ros­ter for main char­ac­ters and assists feels thought­ful, the pre­sen­ta­tion is fun and engag­ing and the game­play still holds up well. It might not be played as much as its direct sequel in Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2, but I still find myself return­ing to pull off Duo Team Attacks fre­quent­ly. MvC is the most mar­velous of the series.