Tag Archives: 3Q2026

Marvel Origins — Issue 55

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Mar­vel Ori­gins did series proud with two best games

Editor’s note: This review orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Issue 21 (1Q2013). It has been edit­ed for spelling, gram­mar and clarity.

There are those of us who love games and com­ic books, and then there’s those of us who love the Ver­sus fight­ing game series. I’m firm­ly in the camp that loves the Ver­sus series with pas­sion. Some games more than oth­ers attack my heart, but I real­ly appre­ci­ate the depth and intri­ca­cy that can be found in Mar­vel char­ac­ters team­ing up to fight along­side or against each oth­er or Cap­com char­ac­ters. Out of all the series’ offer­ings, I seem to derive the most plea­sure from Mar­vel vs. Capcom.

Of the var­i­ous ver­sions of the game out on the mar­ket, this newest ver­sion belongs in the pre­mier ech­e­lon of treat­ment. It’s pack­aged with Mar­vel Super Heroes ― the sec­ond game in the series ― and gives some of the new­er gamers the back­ground nec­es­sary to ful­ly under­stand what’s being dan­gled in front of them today with Ulti­mate Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3. True, there isn’t an excess of 56 char­ac­ters or the gaudi­ness of X‑Factor as a draw, but the foun­da­tion and the buildup on that foun­da­tion are present through both games and that’s what mat­ters when you want to learn where a fran­chise comes from.

If you’re a purist in terms of the struc­ture of the game, this is a ver­sion that deserves a purist’s crit­i­cal eye. The game­play in both games is per­fect. It’s as smooth an expe­ri­ence as putting in quar­ters at an arcade and play­ing to your heart’s con­tent. Moves work the way they should, and com­bos can be pulled off very well. Game­play quirks ― such as Mar­vel vs. Cap­com’s frus­trat­ing dif­fi­cul­ty in the arcade mode ― are still there, but that should­n’t be a deter­rent to the over­all expe­ri­ence. And for me, it was­n’t. I picked it up and played Mar­vel vs. Cap­com imme­di­ate­ly as if it were the Dream­cast ver­sion, which is also an arcade-per­fect port. Mar­vel Super Heroes is a sub­lime play expe­ri­ence as well for many of the same reasons.


Because these are arcade-per­fect ren­di­tions of the games, the music and graph­ics are pret­ty much the same, too. There are a few options added for the view, and I must applaud the cre­ation of the chal­lenge side­bar that can be turned on or off for both games. It’s a neat way to keep abreast of progress in the games’ accom­plish­ments, and the view doesn’t get in the way of the game­play. Done in an arcade cab­i­net style, it’s eas­i­er to keep up with the action than if the game were in wide-screen format.

If you con­sid­er your­self a fight­ing game effec­tor and you loved the Ver­sus series, you’re prob­a­bly going to love this. It’s espe­cial­ly poignant to be able to play the ear­ly entries in the series now that con­soles and fight­ing games have moved on from this style of play. It’s easy to for­get about the prog­en­i­tors of a series when there’s fresh blood in town. Mar­vel vs. Cap­com Ori­gins some­how man­ages to bring back famil­iar game­play while retelling its ori­gin sto­ry to a new­er generation.

 

X‑Men: Children of the Atom — Issue 55

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X‑Men start the par­ty right with first Ver­sus entry

If you’re an old head video gamer like us here at Gam­ing Insur­rec­tion, you know that Cap­com and Mar­vel was THE pow­er­house cou­ple in video games dur­ing the 1990s. Start­ing in 1993 with The Pun­ish­er arcade game, Mar­vel and Cap­com estab­lished the foun­da­tion of the mod­ern com­ic book and ani­me fight­ing game scene. Dur­ing the ’90s I stum­bled across a game that helped build the path to Cap­com’s and Mar­vel’s glo­ry: X‑Men: Chil­dren of the Atom.

Based on the 1993 X‑Men Fatal Attrac­tions sto­ry­line, Mag­ne­to, with the help of the X‑Men’s most for­mi­da­ble foes, plans to launch an elec­tro­mag­net­ic pulse on the Earth, caus­ing dis­rup­tion to its mag­net­ic fields, leav­ing human­i­ty in a Dark Age. With Earth­’s future in the bal­ance, the X‑Men must bat­tle once more.

COTA’s graph­ics are crisp and clear thanks to Cap­com’s CPS‑2 board, which is revered in devel­op­ing fight­ing games for arcade cab­i­nets. I felt with the CPS‑2 board, it was easy for me to know which char­ac­ter I was using and who was the oppo­nent. The back­grounds had plen­ty of col­or that was bal­anced instead of placed hap­haz­ard­ly, and sprites were nice­ly drawn and beau­ti­ful to look at. The music is excel­lent, fit­ting in with the clas­sic Cap­com aes­thet­ic and cre­at­ing a nice vibe for fighting. 

My dis­likes of COTA are few but can be frus­trat­ing. Cap­com, while known for hav­ing inno­v­a­tive fight­ing game con­trols, need­ed to refine COTA’s con­trol scheme. It’s hard to get invest­ed as a new­com­er. The auto­mat­ic block­ing, while seen as help­ful, can be dan­ger­ous and unhelp­ful to new­com­ers also. And, the biggest mys­tery I had was why Cap­com was aggres­sive­ly push­ing a Street Fight­er char­ac­ter into a X‑Men game, forc­ing me to believe Aku­ma is an offi­cial part of X‑Men lore? Cap­com could have let Aku­ma sit this one out, even if he had just been in Super Street Fight­er II Tur­bo. There were more Street Fight­er games com­ing, obviously.

X‑Men: Chil­dren of the Atom has con­tributed to the estab­lished part­ner­ship between com­pa­nies with leg­endary prop­er­ties beloved the world over. While the future of Mar­vel and Cap­com is uncer­tain, it’s safe to say that from this union, fight­ing game and com­ic book fans ate well in these ’90s fight­ing streets.

Marvel vs. Capcom — Issue 55

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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.

Marvel vs. Capcom 3 — Issue 55

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Wait is over for third Mar­vel vs. Capcom

Fate of Two Worlds shores up Cap­com Ver­sus fight­ing game franchise

Edi­tor’s note: This review orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Issue 16 (4Q2011). It has been edit­ed for spelling, gram­mar and clarity.

By Jamie Mosley, for­mer asso­ciate editor
Gam­ing Insurrection

It may seem odd to most gamers that some­times it takes a long time for a sequel to be released for a suc­cess­ful fran­chise. Gamers that have just start­ed in the sev­enth gen­er­a­tion of con­soles have seen fran­chis­es milked lit­er­al­ly to death like the Gui­tar Hero fran­chise. And we get a new Call of Duty game every sin­gle year. The Mar­vel vs. Cap­com fran­chise, how­ev­er, has­n’t seen a new install­ment for a decade, miss­ing out entire­ly on the sixth gen­er­a­tion. Sure, the most recent install­ment, Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2, has been port­ed about a mil­lion times, but the fact remains that it took Cap­com more than 10 years to make an offi­cial sequel. Was it worth the wait? 

Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3 is a fight­ing game that takes char­ac­ters from the Mar­vel uni­verse and the Cap­com uni­verse and puts them togeth­er. Crossovers like this don’t hap­pen often, and it’s excit­ing to see fan-favorite char­ac­ters duke it out. The ros­ter includes Chris Red­field, Albert Wesker, Ryu, Amat­era­su, Viewti­ful Joe, Spi­der-Man, Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, Wolver­ine, The Incred­i­ble Hulk, Iron Man and many oth­ers. This epic cast of char­ac­ters can sat­is­fy most fans of Cap­com or Mar­vel. Despite this, there are a few char­ac­ters whose lack of appear­ance is dis­ap­point­ing. Mega Man, who was in the wide­ly suc­cess­ful MvC and MvC2, is absent from this game as is Cap­tain Com­man­do. On top of that, some new­er Cap­com char­ac­ters that have recent­ly become quite pop­u­lar in this gen­er­a­tion, Frank West and Phoenix Wright, also don’t make an appear­ance in MvC3 (Edi­tor’s note: This was rec­ti­fied in Ulti­mate Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3).

Frank West is espe­cial­ly dis­ap­point­ing con­sid­er­ing he was in the Wii’s Tat­sunoko vs. Cap­com: Ulti­mate All-Stars. Ven­om, from the Spi­der-Man uni­verse, would have been a fan­tas­tic fit (Edi­tor’s note: Ven­om returned in Mar­vel vs. Cap­com: Infi­nite), and the Mar­vel side is pret­ty light on vil­lains in gen­er­al. A lot of the fran­chis­es are under-rep­re­sent­ed, which was quite dis­ap­point­ing. Despite the lack of obvi­ous char­ac­ters and the small­er ros­ter com­pared to its pre­de­ces­sor, MvC3 still boasts one of the great­est ros­ters in fight­ing game his­to­ry, in my opin­ion. The amount of poten­tial awe­some­ness here is over­whelm­ing. Clas­sic rival­ries can be revis­it­ed and watch­ing Chris Red­field shoot Spi­der-Man in the face with a shot­gun nev­er gets old. Each char­ac­ter has plen­ty of unlock­able col­or schemes for their out­fits plus a robust arse­nal of attacks. Every char­ac­ter feels unique and plays dif­fer­ent­ly than any oth­er of the oth­er char­ac­ters to choose from. This is espe­cial­ly true for Amat­era­su from Oka­mi and Dante from Dev­il May Cry, two of the most pop­u­lar char­ac­ters in the game.

On top of the 30 plus char­ac­ters avail­able, there are also four unlock­able char­ac­ters. While these char­ac­ters aren’t espe­cial­ly excit­ing or any­thing, it’s still fun to unlock them. The bit­ing thing about MvC3 is the fact that it was promised to have char­ac­ters to down­load as DLC and a new game­play mode, all of which were talked about before the game was even released. 

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, releas­ing these char­ac­ters and an entire­ly new game­play mode as DLC so close to the game’s launch looked bad, to say the least. Cap­com, of all com­pa­nies, should be wary of DLC, and releas­ing it on day one or talk­ing about the DLC in detail before the game has even hit shelves will make this con­sumer feel cheat­ed, espe­cial­ly when most of it is on the disc already and it has to be paid for to be unlocked. 


The fight­ing engine in Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3 favors play­ers that prac­tice and learn all the dif­fer­ent com­bos, but it also favors but­ton mash­ers. Essen­tial­ly, you can try to play the game strate­gi­cal­ly and be suc­cess­ful, but there is also a huge pos­si­bil­i­ty that some­one who has bare­ly played the game could eas­i­ly defeat a vet­er­an just by mash­ing on the con­troller and pick­ing the right team. There are char­ac­ters that are clear­ly more pow­er­ful than the rest of the ros­ter, and while I real­ly am not too con­cerned with bal­ance in over-the-top fight­ing games like this, it will undoubt­ed­ly become an issue for seri­ous play­ers. But even so, every char­ac­ter is dan­ger­ous in their own way.

Speak­ing of imbal­ance, there is a mechan­ic that can turn the tides of bat­tle in a quick sec­ond: the X‑Factor. On the oth­er hand, the abil­i­ty becomes a great defense when you are left with only one char­ac­ter on your team because it’s a great morale killer. But like I said, bal­ance isn’t a big deal with this game, at least not for me. Just like the Super Smash Bros. games, the point of MvC3 is over-the-top, insane action fea­tur­ing a ros­ter teem­ing with vari­ety. It’s fun test­ing out all the dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions of char­ac­ters to find which com­bi­na­tion yields the most destruc­tive results. And that is what keeps me com­ing back to MVC3. The dif­fer­ent com­bi­na­tions of teams, attacks and the fun that can be had is endless.

Play­ing online cer­tain­ly boosts the replay fac­tor con­sid­er­ably, and it def­i­nite­ly helps that the online is most­ly lag-free. I expe­ri­enced some while play­ing over Xbox Live, but the over­all expe­ri­ence was fan­tas­tic. The rank­ing sys­tem imple­ment­ed in the game echoes Call of Duty, and even though rank­ing up in the game is mean­ing­less, it’s still strange­ly addict­ing. The online com­po­nent also ensures that you’ll always have some­one to play with, even when your friends aren’t around. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, MvC3’s online mul­ti­play­er isn’t set up well at all. Just find­ing a ranked match can be dif­fi­cult. The sec­ond day of play­ing the game, it became near­ly impos­si­ble for me to get into a match. 

In the end, whether or not you’re a fan of Mar­vel or Cap­com will influ­ence whether or not you will pick the game up, but the more casu­al fight­ing fans should give this lat­est crossover from Cap­com at least a rent.

 

2UP eval­u­a­tion

By Lyn­d­sey Beatty

I nev­er thought we’d be see­ing anoth­er entry in the Mar­vel vs. Cap­com series. After 10 years, and plen­ty of denials on both sides, it’s been made, released and played in quite a few tour­na­ments with­in the past year. Am I pleased with it? Yes, but with a few caveats.

I don’t want any­one to get the wrong idea: Yes, I love the game. It’s got a great look to it, and the visu­als could only go up after 10 years and MvC2. There are a few both­er­some things about the look that I don’t care for, such as the matchup screen and the com­ic book theme, but it’s noth­ing that would keep me from play­ing. I also have a prob­lem with some of the char­ac­ter line­up choic­es. Real­ly, did we need Hulk and She-Hulk? No, prob­a­bly not. Wolver­ine and X‑23? Also prob­a­bly not, but I do rec­og­nize that they have indi­vid­ual traits and aren’t nec­es­sar­i­ly the bane that was the Adaman­tium Wolverine/Bone Claw Wolver­ine of MvC2. 

My only oth­er gripe with the game is the net­code. Some­one at Cap­com should have been pay­ing atten­tion to the Street Fight­er IV team. Get­ting online in that game is a smooth expe­ri­ence. Here? Not so much. It’s ridicu­lous­ly hard to find a match and get start­ed play­ing, and after it’s over? You go back to the match choice screen. It’s com­plete­ly unnec­es­sary and it’s a real hin­drance to the over­all play if you want to enjoy matchups against oth­er peo­ple who aren’t your friends. Hope­ful­ly, this will be fixed in the already-announced Ulti­mate Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3.

Over­all, though, it’s a sol­id entry in the crowd­ed fight­ing game are­na, one that I did­n’t think I’d ever see or be able to sit down and enjoy. The pack­age, for what it’s worth, more than sells itself and with down­load­able con­tent, it’s worth com­ing back to this well. 

Score: 4 out 5

Marvel Super Heroes — Issue 55

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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

X‑Men vs. Street Fighter — Issue 55

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X marks the spot with fan­tas­tic third entry in Ver­sus series

Are you ready, True Believ­ers? In keep­ing pace with this issue’s trib­ute to Mar­vel vs. Cap­com, I’m intro­duc­ing anoth­er game that helped make this series renowned by com­ic book afi­ciona­dos and fight­ing games fans alike. Yep, you bet your excel­sior prayers, this is X‑Men vs. Street Fighter.

X‑Men vs. Street Fight­er take place two years after the release of X‑Men: Chil­dren of the Atom and Mar­vel Super Heroes. The back­sto­ry is a leg­endary X‑Men vil­lain, Apoc­a­lypse, appears stat­ing that Earth­’s sur­vival depends on only the strongest being able to sur­vive. Lit­tle does Apoc­a­lypse know, M. Bison and Shadaloo as well as Mag­ne­to and the Broth­er­hood of Mutants have their own plans for Earth. The X‑Men along with var­i­ous Street Fight­ers hear this and now a bat­tle with high stakes for Earth begins with unlike­ly teams bat­tling against Apocalypse. 

The con­trols are the usu­al set up in any Cap­com fight­ing game, only this time you have con­trol of two char­ac­ters that can con­sist of any X‑Men or Street Fight­er char­ac­ter. I enjoyed the abil­i­ty to mix an X‑Men and a Street Fight­er char­ac­ter togeth­er as a team. X‑Men vs. SF also fea­tures the super jump and aer­i­al rave from COTA but intro­duces three fea­tures: the Hyper Com­bo Gauge, which allows for super moves; the Vari­able Com­bi­na­tion, which allows both char­ac­ters to exe­cute their Hyper Com­bos; and, the Vari­able Counter allows you to pull off an offen­sive attack from a defen­sive block sim­ply by tag­ging your off­screen part­ner. These new moves and fea­tures great­ly increase the playa­bil­i­ty from the pre­vi­ous games and make X‑Men vs. Street Fight­er a bet­ter play­ing game.


The graph­ics and pre­sen­ta­tion are like COTA and MSH, bear­ing strik­ing resem­blance in arcade qual­i­ty. I enjoyed the scenery and bright back­grounds that took out guess­work of my point char­ac­ter and the visu­al theme of each stage. The music is ener­getic and on point thanks to Cap­com’s sound team work­ing their awe­some wizardry. 

While it’s fun to play, I do have some gripes. While I enjoyed the over­all game­play, I did­n’t like the heavy reliance on touch-of-death com­bos and infin­ites. Also, while the music was enjoy­able, the reuse of Street Fight­er’s char­ac­ter themes was kind of bor­ing and lazy. Yes, I real­ize they want­ed to use some­thing that is eas­i­ly rec­og­niz­able but some­times I think they rely on it too much and it’s obvi­ous here. My last gripe is Aku­ma. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not hat­ing on the OG, but come on Cap­com, Aku­ma is pushed on every ear­ly Mar­vel Ver­sus game like he’s a main play­er in the MCU. That’s overkill and too much use of the Red Demon will force pay­ing clien­tele to think about spend­ing mon­ey on future games where he is run­ning amok. Mod­er­a­tion, Cap­com. Mod­er­a­tion, please.

X‑Men vs. Street Fight­er is enjoy­able and helped estab­lish the trend of com­ic books meet­ing fight­ing games. As Mar­vel and Cap­com were the pio­neers, oth­er com­ic book com­pa­nies and game devel­op­ers fol­lowed suit, mak­ing it nor­mal for the gam­ing indus­try. This is a good ori­gin sto­ry for the Ver­sus series.

Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter — Issue 55

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Miss Mar­vel: Apoc­a­lypse retread should be skipped

Extra­ne­ous. Super­flu­ous. Unnec­es­sary. Fight­ing game sequels should be doing some­thing to move the nee­dle, whether it be new sys­tems or char­ac­ters to break up the retread. Retro fight­ing games espe­cial­ly had to bring some­thing new with every entry lest they be left behind in a mar­ket where con­sumer choice is king. Mar­vel vs. Street Fight­er did absolute­ly noth­ing new and it shows in the mod­ern fight­ing game scene.

Mar­vel vs. Street Fight­er is the sib­ling of the Ver­sus series that is the for­got­ten child. Using basi­cal­ly the same sto­ry as direct pre­de­ces­sor X‑Men vs. Street Fight­er, MvSF intro­duces one mechan­ic (Vari­able Assist — call­ing your part­ner to assist) and swaps some char­ac­ters. The boss, Apoc­a­lypse, is a retread from the pre­vi­ous game. That’s about it. It plays the same as X‑Men vs. Street Fight­er and gen­er­al­ly fairs less favor­ably by com­par­i­son because of the char­ac­ter swaps and the unnec­es­sary inclu­sion of come­di­an Nori­take Kinashi’s joke char­ac­ter Nori­maro and Cyber Akuma.


And while it leans heav­i­ly on XvSF, the game does­n’t play near­ly as well. It feels slow­er and more plod­ding, just a chore to do much of any­thing. Assists don’t real­ly add any­thing to the game­play flow and gen­er­al­ly can get tagged as soon as they come out. And you can’t choose what move the assist does, some­thing that did­n’t come into play until Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2. That lack of advance­ment feels lazy. It feels like Cap­com put out a game to check box­es and ful­fill a con­tract. And it shows in the mod­ern fight­ing game tour­na­ment scene where XvSF still enjoys a healthy engage­ment, but no one plays MvSF.

One area where it does do well is the sound depart­ment, though there are a few recy­cled tracks here, too. The sound­track car­ries the game and has some bangers that work for the atmos­phere of MvSF, but you’ve prob­a­bly already heard them (Edi­tor’s note: See this issue’s Beat.Trip.Game for our sound­track choices).

If you’re play­ing Mar­vel vs. Street Fight­er, know that you’re get­ting warmed over Ver­sus series. It’s not ter­ri­ble but it’s not the best that Cap­com is capa­ble of when it comes to the Ver­sus series. Skip this one and jump straight from X‑Men vs. Street Fight­er to Mar­vel vs. Capcom.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 — Issue 55

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Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2 a new age of frustration

I have a polar­iz­ing rela­tion­ship with Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2. While it’s revered as one of the great­est games of all time, and I spent a lot of time play­ing it, I don’t love it as much as I once did. There are rea­sons for my trans­ac­tion­al love for the Cap­com stal­wart, and there are rea­sons why it’s tak­en this long for Gam­ing Insur­rec­tion to engage.

Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2 rounds up every­one who was present in the Ver­sus uni­verse, adds a few new faces and throws them togeth­er to cre­ate a mashup of epic pro­por­tions. Vet­er­ans such as Mag­ne­to, Dr. Doom, M. Bison, Ryu and Chun-Li join new­com­ers such as Ruby Heart, Cable and Amin­go. The rag­tag mot­ley crew join forces to take on new vil­lain Abyss, whose main goal is world dom­i­na­tion through decay. The sto­ry is engag­ing enough to jus­ti­fy the col­lid­ing of the respec­tive uni­vers­es but not too deep to jus­ti­fy any sort of lore research.

The mashup, how­ev­er, is what is most impor­tant. The meld­ing of realms and reunion of the pre­vi­ous games’ ros­ter brings togeth­er 56 char­ac­ters to make three-char­ac­ter teams. The over­pow­ered gods of pre­vi­ous out­ings return to set up shop in the upper ech­e­lon of the game’s tiers, and the joke char­ac­ters and non-essen­tials also return for the ride. 

All of this is wrapped up in a futur­is­tic seri­ous-look­ing bow, com­plete with a seri­ous announc­er that lacks com­ic book trap­pings. The back­grounds are mod­eled well and are an impres­sive leap from the pre­vi­ous hand-drawn entries. The sound­track is also OK. I’m not one of the legions that appar­ent­ly hat­ed the sound­track back in the day, and it’s fine now. The smooth jazz has always fit the action, and I nev­er saw what the prob­lem was with it. Jazz has always been a part of the Ver­sus series expe­ri­ence, and it did­n’t seem dif­fer­ent this time around than any of the oth­er games in the series. I’ve always felt the response to the sound­track was overblown and sil­ly. Focus on the more impor­tant things that are wrong with the game.


And here’s where I want to put that focus and explore why it’s the source of my ire and apa­thy with MvC2. For a game that touts 56 char­ac­ters, in hind­sight, only 10 are viable tour­na­ment options. Yes, tour­na­ments have been played with the low tier char­ac­ters, but his­tor­i­cal­ly, the major tour­na­ments of the day have always fea­tured teams that have the Mar­vel 2 gods involved. You’re going to see a Cable, Storm, Sen­tinel, Mag­ne­to or Iron Man in the top 3. You’re going to see the same assists anchor­ing those teams as well. That’s a prob­lem. With that many char­ac­ters avail­able, the same hand­ful of names should not be dom­i­nat­ing. There should be vari­ety. This has been a prob­lem in the Mar­vel 2 tour­na­ment scene since the first six months post release when every­one fig­ured out the ini­tial tech and real­ized Tiger Knee Hyper Viper Beam and Fly­/Un-fly com­bos were the way to vic­to­ry. And, yes, I real­ize it’s been 25 years since the game was released, new tech still pops up that makes char­ac­ters look bet­ter than they ever did, and ambas­sadors such as Justin Wong use dif­fer­ent teams to high­light this dis­par­i­ty. But it was a mas­sive prob­lem back in the day and ruined the expe­ri­ence for me going forward.

Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2 gets near­ly every­thing right: Evolved game­play with assists, clean­er visu­als and a gigan­tic ros­ter with famil­iar faces and cool addi­tions. How­ev­er, that near­ly is what breaks the game for me. I can’t rec­on­cile my nos­tal­gia for the game and the time spent trav­el­ing, meet­ing new peo­ple, the gift of Ruby Heart and lov­ing the Ver­sus series with the absolute fool­ish­ness that is the game­play. This is the point of the Ver­sus ride where I get off.

Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 — Issue 55

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Ulti­mate MvC3 almost slips back into bad habits

Final ver­sion of MvC3 is a true upgrade

Editor’s note: This review orig­i­nal­ly appeared in Issue 24 (4Q2013). It has been edit­ed for spelling, gram­mar and clarity.

I usu­al­ly have a gen­uine prob­lem with Cap­com’s release pol­i­cy for its fight­ing games. Gen­er­al­ly, I know to expect a revi­sion edi­tion lat­er down the line that adds maybe a few char­ac­ters and few new back­grounds. Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3 was no dif­fer­ent. I knew what was com­ing and, sure enough, Cap­com played its hand with Ulti­mate. Curi­ous­ly, this is a decent play, though like all Cap­com releas­es, it should have come right at the beginning.

Ulti­mate picks up the slack where vanil­la left off. You’re still sav­ing the Earth from Galac­tus and the basic look of the game is still the same. Except, there’s a few new bells and whis­tles thrown in for good mea­sure. The new intro throws a fresh coat of paint on the pro­ceed­ings. The intro is gor­geous, with a freeze-frame look at var­i­ous bat­tles between Mar­vel and Cap­com char­ac­ters around the city. There are also a few new back­grounds, though I wish there were more. I par­tic­u­lar­ly loved the new Days of Future Past back­ground with the want­ed poster of the X‑Men arc cov­er re-done with char­ac­ters’ sta­tus from both sides. And, no, Mega Man’s ques­tion­able sta­tus did not escape my notice.


The new char­ac­ters added to both sides are eas­i­ly the best rea­son to pick up the new ver­sion. There are 12 new (Phoenix Wright, Fire­brand, Frank West, Neme­sis T‑Type, Strid­er Hiryu and Vergil for Cap­com; Doc­tor Strange, Rock­et Rac­coon, Nova, Iron Fist, Hawk­eye and Ghost Rid­er for Mar­vel) with the DLC add-ons of Jill Valen­tine and Shu­ma-Gorath still avail­able and Galac­tus made playable through an offline mode. Play­ing through once more is inter­est­ing, just to see how the new char­ac­ters work with­in the bal­ance of the game at large. Speak­ing of bal­ance, new moves have been giv­en to the old­er char­ac­ters as well as some tweaks to their movesets and the over­all game engine.

Prob­a­bly the biggest addi­tion aside from the char­ac­ters is Heroes and Her­alds mode. Basi­cal­ly, you choose a fac­tion — Heroes, who will oppose Galac­tus; or Her­alds a la Sil­ver Surfer, who work to soft­en up the earth for the plan­et-devour­ing god — and fight through stages of vary­ing dif­fi­cul­ty. As you fight, you acquire abil­i­ty cards that are used to form a deck. The cards apply spe­cial attrib­ut­es to your team mem­bers or to the game itself. It’s a nov­el and well-exe­cut­ed idea and one that makes sense in the larg­er scheme of Mar­vel vs. Cap­com. I’m sur­prised it was­n’t thought of until now, and I’m even more sur­prised that it’s not in more Cap­com games.

Ulti­mate Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3 isn’t the fresh­est idea out of Cap­com’s camp, but it has quite a bit going for it to war­rant a pur­chase. While it’s too much con­tent to be DLC only, it’s a shame that full price was charged for it when it was released. Cap­com man­aged to dodge the usu­al shenani­gans it’s known for with Street Fight­er, but it cut it close. Thank­ful­ly, Ulti­mate MvC3’s ride is an enter­tain­ing one to take.

Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite — Issue 38

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Mar­vel vs. Cap­com now infi­nite­ly frus­trat­ing series

The Mar­vel fight­ing game scene is well known by now and well worn. Pret­ty much, any­one who’s any­one in the Mar­vel com­ic uni­verse and movies has been in a Mar­vel Ver­sus game. This is noth­ing new by now. You’ve seen these peo­ple before and, if you’re a Cap­com fan, you have seen their side of the ros­ter in oth­er games before you got here. So, what exact­ly are you get­ting out of play­ing the lat­est iter­a­tion in the long-run­ning Mar­vel Ver­sus Cap­com series? Not much, but Cap­com already knew that. They just hoped you wouldn’t notice.

If you’re invest­ed in the Mar­vel Cin­e­mat­ic Uni­verse but don’t know any­thing about the comics, MvC: Infi­nite serves as a start­ing point for under­stand­ing the comics side of things in prepa­ra­tion for Avengers Endgame. Oh, yeah, there’s some Cap­com sto­ry set up, too, as an after­thought. Real­ly, this is sev­er­al sto­ries mashed togeth­er: From Mar­vel, you get the Infin­i­ty Saga and Age of Ultron sto­ry; from Cap­com comes Sig­ma and Mega Man X’s sto­ry and some of Vam­pire Savior/Darkstalker’s 3 arc deal­ing with Jedah Dohma. The sto­ry kind of makes sense in a mashed-up way. It’s not half bad, giv­en that the pre­vi­ous efforts of Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 3 to give a cin­e­mat­ic team up was decent and miles ahead of any oth­er title in the series to date. Most­ly, the Mar­vel Ver­sus series has fol­lowed an estab­lished com­ic book arc — Mar­vel vs. Street Fight­er was most­ly Apoc­a­lypse and the first Mar­vel vs. Cap­com focused on Onslaught — and this is no dif­fer­ent. Where it fal­ters is oversimplification.

The Infin­i­ty Saga is nev­er tru­ly fin­ished in the comics because Mar­vel con­stant­ly returns to it over the years to explain a lot of things. Also, think­ing crit­i­cal­ly about what this is real­ly based on, the sto­ry of the Infin­i­ty Saga real­ly took about 18 of the 22 MCU movies to tell its sto­ry. You can­not tell this sto­ry in two games — Mar­vel Super Heroes being the first to tell this arc. Infi­nite tries to and winds up half accom­plish­ing it with some weird, forced Cap­com sto­ry side fool­ish­ness thrown in for good mea­sure, because hey, Cap­com is also in the name.

You get the sense that if Capcom’s angle of things was removed, this would be just fine, and Infi­nite would be OK with­out it. That does not help Cap­com at all here. Imme­di­ate­ly, it destroys the need for a new team-up game and ren­ders Capcom’s side of the ros­ter unnec­es­sary. I do not feel Ryu or Chun Li are use­ful in any of the sit­u­a­tions pre­sent­ed in the sto­ry mode.

The ros­ter is actu­al­ly not bad, but with the few new addi­tions locked behind a DLC pay­wall, you’re kind of left to won­der would Infi­nite be just a tad bit bet­ter if the more note­wor­thy char­ac­ters were avail­able from the start. The base group is basi­cal­ly a retread ros­ter from MvC3, and the new addi­tions should have been in the series; the fact that we’re just now get­ting Black Wid­ow, Black Pan­ther, Jedah and the Win­ter Sol­dier is a crime that only Cap­com seems to like committing.

In addi­tion to the gener­ic over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion of the sto­ry, the pre­sen­ta­tion is just as gener­ic and bland. The Mar­vel Ver­sus series has always had strong pre­sen­ta­tion, and to be frank, this ain’t it, as the kids say these days. The back­grounds are good, but some of the char­ac­ter designs have an oof lev­el the size of Ultron Sigma’s final form. They are, quite frankly, ter­ri­ble a lot of the time. There seems to be an attempt at real­ism but not, at the same time, because some of the Mar­vel char­ac­ters look like their MCU coun­ter­parts, but then when you look clos­er, there’s a detail that keeps them from look­ing exact­ly like the actor or actress that plays the character.

For exam­ple, look at Cap­tain Amer­i­ca and Cap­tain Mar­vel. Cap­tain Amer­i­ca, from far away, looks exact­ly like MCU Win­ter Sol­dier-era Cap­tain Amer­i­ca as por­trayed by real-world Cap­tain Amer­i­ca stal­wart Chris Evans. Up close, how­ev­er, Cap looks just enough dif­fer­ent for you to real­ize that Evans prob­a­bly didn’t con­sent to his like­ness for the game. Same for Cap­tain Mar­vel and actress Brie Lar­son. It’s a small but notice­able quib­ble I have here. And, some of these Cap­com char­ac­ters look atro­cious. Ryu’s face on the title screen is hor­rif­ic. The sprites look ter­ri­ble here but in game, he looks fine. It’s a shame because every oth­er game in the series has been OK in terms of the graph­ics. Sure, they weren’t award-win­ning, but they reflect­ed the series’ growth. Infi­nite looks like it took about 10 steps back in a lot of respects.

The music is just as bland. Each iter­a­tion of the Ver­sus series has had some bangers on the sound­track — even the much-maligned Mar­vel vs. Cap­com 2’s sound­track was mem­o­rable if not catchy. Here, there is absolute­ly noth­ing note­wor­thy. It’s the first Ver­sus game where I don’t have some­thing from the sound­track saved, which is not good at all. As I played through the sto­ry mode, I kept wait­ing for some­thing to jump out at me, and I got noth­ing. I was not impressed.

The con­trols didn’t impress, either. There has been a not­ed trend, since MvC3 was released, to sim­pli­fy the game sys­tem for the Ver­sus games to make them more accessible.

While I’m always a fan of draw­ing in the casu­al fan for these types of games, I’m not a fan of ruin­ing a good thing. MvC2 was still acces­si­ble to even the most casu­al fight­ing game play­er, and this is even worse than the ton­ing down of the con­trols between MvC2 and MvC3. There is no depth to the com­bo sys­tem now, and that doesn’t help Infi­nite in any way.

I’m under­whelmed when it comes to Mar­vel vs. Cap­com Infi­nite. Noth­ing plays in its favor, noth­ing makes any sense, and the team-up crossover event is show­ing its age in every facet of the game. There’s noth­ing new here to make me say wow or push me to play as I did the oth­er games in the series. If Cap­com were to lose the Mar­vel license again, it wouldn’t be a shock­er or unwarranted.

 It’s time to admit that the series is not an infi­nite source of amuse­ment. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, at this point, it’s mere­ly a finite source of fight­ing game goodness.