Super­heroes have super start in Mar­vel Super Heroes

Edi­tor’s note: This review orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Issue 11 (3Q2010). It has been edit­ed for spelling, gram­mar and clarity.

By Jamie Mosley, for­mer asso­ciate editor
Gam­ing Insurrection

By now, every­one read­ing this should know about Cap­com’s 2D fight­ers. Cap­com likes to keep cer­tain stan­dards for their famous fight­ing titles that car­ry over from one fight­er to the next. There will be col­or­ful supers, tight-yet-famil­iar con­trols and fast paced action. Mar­vel Super Heroes is no excep­tion to this. 

Fol­low­ing the still-pop­u­lar X‑Men: Chil­dren of the Atom in art style and game­play, Cap­com has allowed oppor­tu­ni­ties to pum­mel your oppo­nents to con­tin­ue by launch­ing them in the air for that super­hero-type feel. Some of Mar­vel’s famous heroes and vil­lains appear so you, the true believ­ers, can give swift jus­tice over your foes. Use Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, Spi­der-Man, Iron Man, Jug­ger­naut and Mag­ne­to to fight your way to Thanos. While on your way, be sure to pick up and use the Infin­i­ty Gems you find. You may need them.

The con­trols and game­play are what I con­sid­er clas­sic for any 2D Street Fight­er. The main dif­fer­ence in this game comes from Infin­i­ty Gems. Each gem has the poten­tial to unlock spe­cial abil­i­ties for a hero. For exam­ple, if Mag­ne­to uses the Space Gem, he pro­duces a force field and he will not take dam­age for a lim­it­ed time. In each match, the AI oppo­nent will have a gem with them. You must kick, punch or stare hard at them to take it.

Not all is per­fect in this entry. The music in the game does­n’t stand out but the upbeat tem­po of each stage helps you stay in the action. Also, the game may slow to a crawl depend­ing on the gem effects if both char­ac­ters are using them at the same time. Some­times the game is so slow that a full sec­ond will go by before your char­ac­ter reacts to your but­ton com­mands. But this slow­down is rare.

I still enjoy this game. Despite the game’s occa­sion­al prob­lems, I remem­ber my friend Ted King and I going to the local depart­ment store in my home­town and play­ing it for hours. Once it was released for home con­soles, we played it even more. The zany com­bos that one can do are almost lim­it­less. In some skilled play­er’s hands, they are lim­it­less because of infi­nite com­bos that near­ly every char­ac­ter had. That’s anoth­er stan­dard that Cap­com kept with their fighters. 

Mar­vel Super Heroes paved the way for the famous Ver­sus series of which Cap­com is very proud. And they should be proud. With games like Mar­vel vs. Street Fight­er, the Mar­vel vs. Cap­com series and the Cap­com vs. SNK entries, few oth­er com­pa­nies have been suc­cess­ful in cre­at­ing a more pop­u­lar series that mil­lions enjoy to date. And now with the announce­ment of Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3, I’m going to play them all until it is released.

If you want a fight­er that you can pick up and play with lit­tle knowl­edge about Street Fight­er, Mar­vel Super Heroes is it. If you want to make cre­ative com­bos, look no fur­ther. This is good, clas­sic fun made for com­ic book fans around the world to enjoy.

2UP eval­u­a­tion

By Lyn­d­sey Beatty

The Ver­sus series has come a long way since the heroes and vil­lains of Mar­vel Super Heroes gath­ered in 1996 for this slugfest. The graph­ics may have evolved, and the Mar­vel license revert­ed sev­er­al times, but one thing remains the same: Fight­ing with super­heroes of the Mar­vel ilk is fun. 

Mar­vel Super Heroes neat­ly upgrad­ed the expe­ri­ence of X‑Men: Chil­dren of the Atom. With a more acces­si­ble com­bo sys­tem and bet­ter play feel, Mar­vel Super Heroes is almost a dream to play, even by mod­ern stan­dards. There are still prob­lems, though, such as touch-of-death com­bos for every­one and a lim­it­ed ros­ter imme­di­ate­ly made obso­lete by suc­ces­sive games. But Mar­vel Super Heroes is still playable, and there’s still a scene in 2026, so Cap­com got some­thing right. 

Score: 3.5 out of 5