Tag Archives: Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes

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 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.