Games: Marvel Vs Capcom

In the 90s, Capcom became the king of fighting games with their genre-defining Street Fighter series. Marvel was expanding their franchise into the video game market, so who else would their contact to develop a fighting game for them? This was the start of an iconic partnership between East and West. 

Gameplay

The Marvel Vs Capcom series is my favorite fighting game franchise. The main feature is the all-star cast of characters brawling in chaotic tag-team fights. Many characters became fan-favorites because of their inclusion in the series, since their originating games were otherwise obscure. And although it's a fighting game, the series features many design choices that I want to work into my RPG game.

Team Building

As evident from other posts, I enjoy the team-building aspect of games. It's rewarding to find the cool interactions and synergies between your party, through both gameplay and lore reasons. I've actually found other fighting games to be somewhat dull since it's only 1 vs 1. It's enjoyable watching competitive tournaments and seeing the variety of team compositions players would have. Eventually, a "meta" composition develops once a game reaches maturity, which elevates the competitive level but stifles the diversity. This makes watching character specialists refreshing; the character loyalists or low-tier heroes. These players dedicate extra time to their favorite character, so it's fun watching the unseen tech with underutilized characters. 

Art of the Combo

The game has lengthy, flashy combos that often result in one-touch kills. It doesn't seem fun to helplessly watch your characters getting pummeled for 30 seconds, but it is worth it for the opportunity to do the same. Many fighting games have "bread and butter" combos, but the variety of character combinations and assists allow for creativity. Even if players weren't highly competitive, they could still have a lot of fun in training mode experimenting with different teams and finding new "tech". The MvC community attracts many casual through flashy creative combo videos. With the thousands of possible team combinations, there are nearly endless possibilities.

History

The first exposure I had to the series was the in my small-town mall arcade: the Dream Machine. I fondly remember the afternoons my parents had off, and they took my siblings to the mall. The arcade had the ticket-based gambling games, but also actual video games. I remember older kids playing Mortal Kombat 4, and telling me (as a young boy) to look away from the gruesome "Game Over" screen. I remember feeling cheated from the Spider-Man: The Video Game, since the game drained player life constantly over time to steal more quarters.

1. Marvel Vs Capcom 1 

The main attraction was the Marvel Vs Capcom setup. It wasn't a typical arcade cabinet, instead separate screen and controls called a "showcase". Although, the image from my childhood memory was a massive big screen. It may have been, but I couldn't find anything else similar in my searching.

I remember distinctly watching my brothers play Marvel Vs Capcom as an actual tag-team; one brother played as Spider-Man and the other as Captain Commando. They would physically take turns playing once they tagged characters. They got close, but were never able to defeat Onslaught's 2nd phase. 

Like all Capcom games, there were beautiful, hand-drawn artwork digitized into sprites. This allowed for animation techniques like smearing and exaggeration, which made the characters feel fluid. The game's graphics, music, and effects all combine to provide the 90's Saturday cartoon aesthetic. 

2. Marvel Vs Capcom 2 

During a family trip to New Jersey, I recall seeing a Marvel Vs Capcom 2 arcade cabinet in a mall. Again in my memory, it was a special arcade cabinet with an overhead monitor for spectators to watch. MvC2 was massive in the competitive scene, with the popularity that lead to the sequel to be made over 10 years later. We had the PS2 copy of the game, and I remember beating the arcade mode dozens of times or leaving it on overnight in training mode to rack up points. These points were used to unlock characters and skins. Once every single skin was unlocked, the same character could be selected multiple times on a team. I would just have fun doing cross-over combinations (team hypers) with three of the same characters.

MvC2 released in 2000 and had over 50 characters, but only about 8 considered competitively viable. Majority of the characters reused sprites from the previous games, all the way back to the first X-Men fighting game in 1994. Since the art style was consistently high-quality, the combination of all these sprites felt natural. 

The efficient recycling of assets was spiritually carried into fan games using the MUGEN engine. This was a free fighting game engine that allowed fans to add any characters they want to make for wild crossovers. I spent many hours tweaking my own MUGEN project to replicate MvC2. Setting up these projects let me understand how games could be deconstructed and rebuilt. 

I remember liking Silver Samurai a lot. I liked his hypers that charged his sword with Elemental effects. The Fire enchant resulted really high damage, even as chip. 

3. Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3

Thanksgiving 2011, my brother came home with his PlayStation 3 and Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3. After 10 years from the past release, the 2D sprites were translated faithfully into 3D. The game had a stylized comic book aesthetic, with the harsh black shading, animation smears, and hit effects. 

A subtle detail were how transitions for hyper combo screens were tears through comic book pages.

My brother and I got into the game whole-hog. We watched a lot of tournaments. We bought arcade fight sticks to replicate the competitive players. We played hundreds of match through FT10. I ended up buying a PlayStation Vita for the sole purpose of practicing combos and experimenting with teams.

I watched the competitive scene enthusiastically. It was featured as a main game in EVO from 2012 to 2016, with a community drive earning the game another feature in 2017. It's by far my favorite fighting game to watch, but it's unfortunate that additional DLCs or support was cut short due to licensing deals with Marvel. 

1. Kung Fu Team

My main team was Iron Fist/Taskmaster/Akuma. Iron Fist is considered a bottom-tier character because he lacked aerial mobility, projectiles, and mix-up options. I had no previous knowledge of this character, but I just liked how his combos looked. During the first weeks, some footage of Justin Wong playing Iron Fist got popular, which further raised my interest in the character. Taskmaster is a solid mid character with a versatile toolkit, but lacked damage. Lastly, Akuma is a strong anchor with strong Tatsu assist and comeback potential with level 3 X-Factor.

2. Long Coat Team

Cross-over combinations (aka Team Hyper Combos (THC)) were the flashiest ways to end a combo to me. Having the whole team jump out and unleash their hyper combo in unison is just cool. And it's even better when the character's hyper moves synergize for great damage or functional use. I would've built a team around Super Skrull & Nova combo, Nova isn't able to use his "Super Nova" hyper along with Skrull's "Inferno" during THCs. Otherwise I would've had fun with galactic balls of fire!

My secondary team was Wesker/Vergil/Iron Man. This team was based on having a cool THC that could be used practically. Most of Wesker's combos could end with a THC, so I chose to build around him. He's a solid top tier character with complete toolkit (projectiles, mobility, counters, command grab). 

I thought the pairing of Wesker and Vergil was cool; despite the fact that I've never played their originating games. They're both portrayed as villainous characters with slicked back hair, long coats, and condescending voices. Importantly, both of their THCs were rapid dashes around the screen (derivatives of Maximum Spider) which looked really cool and did great damage. 

Iron Man was considered fairly low-tier due to his slow dashes, but his Unibeam assist was pretty good. It was perfect for keeping the enemy blocking to setup mix-ups or grabs. Lastly, Vergil was considered the best character in the game due to his ridiculous options and combo potential. 

4. Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite

The hype was real when the announcement trailer dropped in 2016. UMvC3 was being phased out for new fighting games and the casual fanbase had moved on. Since 2011, Marvel had become a juggernaut in the entertainment industry with their unprecedented cinematic universe. As such, they demanded full control over their IPs when they contracted them to 3rd parties.

As a result, MVCI became a soulless corporate product used to market Marvel's movies. Even with many assets reused from MVC3, the game's aesthetics was immediately criticized. The art style was neither stylized nor realistic, which made the game look strange and plastic. The Marvel roster was limited to characters from the cinematic universe, which prevented X-Men characters from returning. This felt wrong since these characters were included since the original X-Men vs. Street Fighters crossover. 

The poor response put an end to the companies' business plan for extended DLC support. Supposedly there would've been more seasons of characters and developer support. It would've been awesome to have this plan for UMVC3. Sadly, the game never even made it to an EVO before it fell-off the radar.

I've never actually played the game, and I don't really have interest to. Getting good at another fighting is a long commitment, and it seems futile for another "dead" game. I'm clearly biased for UMVC3, since I prefer the 3v3 gameplay and overall presentation. This game was a clear example of how greedy executives meddle with product development and ruin everything. They had restricted creative freedom, ignored the fans, and had overworked their developers on a tight budget and deadline.