Marvel vs. Capcom - Fighting Collection (PC) - Quick Look: We Are So Back!
Marvel vs. Capcom - Fighting Collection (PC)
Quick Look: We Are So Back!
Warning: Some videos and GIFs have flashing lights and graphics.
Viewer digression is advised.
Intro
It's been a while since I posted on this blog, and with Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection coming out, I figured this could be an excellent time to come back and talk about this collection, as this has been one of the main things have been playing as of late this month. About a week at the time of me writing this (9/19/24). As a fan of MvC and fighting games, I find it incredible that this collection has managed to come out. What I mean by that is, for the longest time, I figured that JUST getting Marvel vs. Capcom 2 would be a hard task. And that was because of the licenses belonging to Marvel/Disney. Sure, we've gotten older ports during the PS3 and 360 era, but that was a while ago, digital-only, and was taken down by those storefronts later on.
So consider me surprised when I was watching a Nintendo Direct, laying in my bed, when all of a sudden I saw a screen from one of the MVC games and advertising that not only was Marvel vs. Capcom 2 coming back, but so was every other Marvel game that Capcom made back in the day. It was an incredible reveal and definitely wasn't on my 2024 bingo card. Or the fact that Capcom had another fighting game collection slotted for next year, Fighting Collection 2, with pretty much every other game that people wanted. But that's a story for another time.
Today, I wanted to talk about my initial one-week thoughts on this collection; because of this, I'm not classifying this as a full review, instead calling it a quick look. So because of that, I'm not going to go too heavily into the history of these games. I also haven't beaten all the arcade modes in this collection; I've beaten most of them, but not all of them. I'll also talk a bit about multiplayer and how it plays, as I have heard some network issues with the collection. Lastly, I want to say that I'm not a seasoned fighting game player. I classify myself as a; CERTIFIED SHITTER when it comes to these games. I made a fight stick from a NEOGEO Arcade Stick Pro, and I can do quarter circles, but that's about it. I usually get my ass handed to me in these types of games. Consider this more of a fun post/first play-through of some of these fighting games.
Whats Inside
The Games
So, what does this collection include for your hard earned $49.99? Well, the main thing is of course, the games! The games included in this collection are:
X-Men: Children of the Atom
Marvel Super Heroes
X-Men vs. Street Fighter
Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter
Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of the Super Heroes
Marvel vs Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes
and The Punisher
This includes (as far as I can tell) every single Marvel game that Capcom made from 1993 to 2000—the only games missing are Marvel vs Capcom 3 and Marvel vs Capcom Infinite. But if you get the collection on PC, like I did, you could get MvC3 and MvCI on Steam, giving you access to every MvC game and all of the games that lead up to that series, all conveniently on Steam.
You could ask why this matters so much. Couldn't people get these games via emulation? And couldn't people already fight people online through services like FightCade? And you're right. That is something people can do, but as someone interested in retro video games for a while, I can easily say that it is something not everyone will do. The main reason is that most people don't want to find ROMs, fiddle with emulators, or with solutions that allow you to play online with someone worldwide. Many people want to sit down, grab their controller, go to the console's online store, and buy the game outright.
Sure, you could argue that the other methods are technically superior or have a better user experience curated by the fans, but it's not as convenient as just buying this collection. It's a good thing that this game collection is really good. I'll talk more about that in the gameplay section, but it's great to see high-quality emulations of these games playing incredibly well with little to no input lag.
Another cool thing is that all of the games have their own proper training modes, showing you your last inputs and controlling the dummies and hit boxes. You also get access to secret characters, different display filters or sizes, and even the Japanese ROMs to switch to at any time.
Extras
Another thing this collection includes is high-quality and high-resolution scans of all of the game's artwork, promotional material, concept art, and even some magazine clippings if I'm not mistaken. This was a true treat, just like the previous Fighting Collection; if you're interested in seeing bits and pieces of the development side of things or want to see some of the great art that these games have, then I truly recommend giving these a look when you get the chance. I spent a solid twenty-five minutes just looking through the art, being wowed by how nice a lot of them looked, and getting to see things like concept art and even storyboards of things like the attract screens that would play before you put quarters in. Super cool! Some drawings were goofy though, especially with Juggernaut; I'll throw up some of them here.
The game also has a music player that can play music from all of the games, including some of the music for the collection's menus. There's nothing much to say here; it's a simple music player. It's perfect for everyone trying to get clean rips of these soundtracks if they want to do that.
Gameplay
Next, I will discuss my experiences playing the arcade modes in these games. As I said before, I have not beaten all of them. The ones I've beaten are Marvel Super Heroes, X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, and Marvel vs. Capcom. I will still discuss the ones I haven't beaten, but not as in-depth as the ones I have.
X-Men: Children of the Atom
This was one of Capcom's first games for Marvel back in the day. It is a fighting game with some of the X-men heroes and villains. The characters include Colossus, Cyclops, Iceman, Psylocke, Storm, Wolverine, Omega Red, Sentinel, Silver Samurai, Spiral, Juggernaut, Magneto, and the secret character Akuma.
There are a good number of characters here, but I didn't really find one I gravitated to when playing. Wolverine was one, but I also liked playing with Storm and Spiral. Spiral was especially interesting to play with, as she used her body to do different attacks, like forming her body into a fist, and was stretchy as well.
I didn't get too much experience with this game as I wasn't as interested in it, but mainly because it was crazy hard. Maybe it was because I wasn't used to the older MvC games, and this is something that changed as I played the others, but I truly felt like this was one of the harder games in this collection. I felt like the CPUs were hunting for my quarters when I got to the second fight in the arcade mode. I didn't want to spend too much time in either game, so I decided to call it on this one, but I'll most likely come back to beat it later.
Marvel Super Heroes
Next is Marvel Super Heroes, another fighting game from Capcom. This game focused more generally on Marvel instead of focusing on one of Marvel's premier teams or groups. So we have characters like Blackheart, Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man, Juggernaut, Magneto, Psylock, Shuma-Gorath, Wolverine, and Spider-Man. We also have three secret characters: Doctor Doom, Thanos, the final boss, and Anita from the Darkstalkers series. This game's arcade mode seems loosely inspired by The Infinity Gauntlet storyline from the comics. This is seen in the main antagonist, Thanos; your goal is to collect all the Infinity Gems from the different characters you fight and have some of the characters in that story, along with some other ones from COTA, for good measure.
This was the game where I started to get used to how these games played, slowly getting better as I made my way through the arcade mode. It also helped that I felt this Arcade mode was a little easier than COTA. I played using Spider-Man and was able to fight to the end. What's cool about this game is how you use the Infinity Gems in combat for support or to get an advantage in the fight. But you can't just use this whenever, as your opponent can knock the Infinity Gems away from you and pick them up. Now, they can use them, but you can also hit them and get the gems back. This makes it feel like I'm playing Smash and fighting for different items.
Another thing these games do is that both characters fighting a match can jump high into the air by pressing down on the stick and then up to do a super jump. Leading to some fights in the air and making things more interesting. After fighting through arcade mode, I eventually made it to the end and fought Thanos. It's definitely the hardest fight in this Arcade mode, but it wasn't so hard that I couldn't beat it. And then I liked the art that was there for the ending screen. It was nice to see an ending where Peter can be happy for once in his life.
X-Men vs. Street Fighter
Next is X-Men vs. Street Fighter, which became one of my favorites in the collection. A good part of it was because it had two of my favorite characters in the game, that being Cammy and Rogue. But another reason this wound up being my favorite was the art style, backgrounds, breaking down into lower parts of the level as the fight continues, and it is the first instance of having two characters in a team and switching between them during the battle. It led to some pretty fun matches in the arcade mode where one character would get lower in their health than needing to change my character at the right time so my other character could heal.
This game was the most fair out of them, not too hard where I couldn't get past level 2, but also not too easy that I could mash my way out of battles. To be fair, none of the other games let you do that in the arcade mode, but I felt this game got the balance just right. I also felt I used more of my character's special and supers during a fight when needed. It helped that Cammy is here as she is my main in SF6, but I was able to see more moments where it felt appropriate to get a super or special off for more damage, and then when I whiffed, I immediately went, "Damn, not the best place for that." While the CPU got a couple of hits in. It was fair and fun.
When making it to the end of the arcade mode, you fight against Apocalypse as the first final boss of the arcade mode, and he was easy to take down. But when he was down, the battle suddenly switched to me fighting my partner, Rogue. I was surprised by this twist! I'm not sure why your partner suddenly turns on you in the story, but hey, this is a fighting game arcade mode, its not like I knew much to begin with. Anyway, after defeating your partner as the final boss, that will give you the win and show the cutscene for the character you won with. This is decided by who you beat Apocalypse with, so if I beat him with Rogue, I would have had to fight Cammy and then get the Rogue scene.
But overall, this turned out to be one of my favorites in the collection, and it was the first time I played it, too. I'd say it goes toe to toe with MvC1 and MvC2 in terms of how fun this one is to play.
Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter
Up next is Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, the next verses game. And where XMvSF was one of my favorites in this collection, this was OK in comparison. From what I've heard from watching different videos on the collection, I've heard this was the one where Capcom had a low budget for this game, and while I'm not entirely sure about this game, I could sort of tell from how the game felt to play. It didn't feel as good as something like XMvSF, and I know that's not the best way to lay out my point, but it's the best way I can describe it. However, I think a big reason for it was that it was pretty easy. Maybe it was the characters I picked (that being Sakura and Wolverine), but I was able to clear the entire arcade mode in one sitting on one life, which is something I've never done in an arcade mode. I honestly didn't think it was over when I beat the final boss until I saw the end screen. It wasn't button mash easy, but it felt the easiest compared to the other games so far.
As for the characters, while it was nice playing with Sakura, I couldn't get too deep into the mechanics because it finished so fast. There's not much else to discuss; this arcade mode is pretty simple, and by the numbers, the final boss is Apocalypse again. It's the same, very easy, fight from before. But something I liked was the final fight in arcade mode, which featured a character called Cyber Akuma, which is just Akuma with a bunch of cybernetic shit and dragon wings on him. It's so ridiculous it kind of rules. I managed to beat him, leading to this kind of funny scene of Wolverine and Sakura talking to each other; it's awkward to the point that it's pretty fun. We then get the ending, which was for Wolverine. Again, it was nothing special; this ending was also boring. It was just Wolverine talking to the real Akuma in the background after beating Cyber Akuma. This one ended up being my least favorite in the collection.
Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of the Super Heroes
But thankfully, the next one is a true highlight. The very first Marvel vs Capcom game, and just like its sequel, this is a really fun one. They brought the quality back up and gave us a fun arcade mode to play through. For one, the game has a pretty good lineup of characters, getting some newer ones, like Mega Man, Captain Commando, Strider, Jin Saotome (I've got no clue who that is. 0_0), and, of course, Morrigan from Darkstalkers. I always appreciate some Darkstalkers rep (Even if that's mainly Morrigan).
I went with a Spider-Man and Morrigan team, and the controls felt better from the last game. I'd say they were as tight as XMvSF. It was also a little more challenging to fight the CPUs, though I feel the main thing was using the assist at the right time. That's right, assists; not only is this the first vs. game called MVC, but it's also the first one that allows you to call in assists during a battle, along with switching characters. Though the assists were a little weird, after selecting your two characters, you have one big selector of many different characters. If you were confused about the other characters in this game's box art, it's because some of them were assist characters. However, instead of selecting what assist you want, the game rolls what character you get, giving you a random character or, if you time it well, the one you want.
While I like that this game has assists to use in battle, it's a little convoluted to have it this way. Maybe they were trying to bring down the selections you had to make, but considering the next game, I don't know why we can't just select whichever assist we want. Especially since there are some cool characters in the assists. Like Jubilee, Rogue, Storm, and Anita. There's a good selection of characters, though it's not ideal to be given a dice roll for the assists that you want. Other than that, though, the assist as a mechanic is cool, and it can give you an additional offensive or defensive move while in a battle. This gives you essentially a third honorary character, but you can't spam it. It's a limited resource, so you must figure out the best way to use the assist at any time. I love this system, and it makes sense that they expanded with it in the later games.
As for the final boss, it's pretty fun! You have to fight Onslaught (Sick name!) in a pretty challenging fight. I had to continue multiple times to finally win. Only for him to return in a second phase that I wasn't expecting, which is even more challenging. It's a good thing I chose Morrigan for this playthrough because while Spider-Man was dead, I was able to save up meter and use all it into Morrigan's laser super to get tons of damage off. I genuinely think I probably wouldn't have won if I didn't have her. Also, apparently, Onslaught is Xavier? I was confused about why this was the case, but this is based on a comic storyline similar to Marvel Super Heroes.
Then, after beating him, you get your character's ending. While I haven't gotten anyone else's, I truly believe that Morrigan has the best ending in the game. Because she's just standing there, alone in a Darkstalker's looking ass bar, while she says that there's no one good enough. Only for Ryu to come out of nowhere and say he wishes to challenge her. At this point, I thought it would lead to a secret fight or something. But instead, it just leads to a little scene of Morrigan and Ryu playing Puzzle Fighters. Goddamn it, I love video games! And I love the idea of Morrigan being a god at Puzzle Fighters.
Marvel vs Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes
Finally, this is it. THE BIG ONE! The one that is seen by many as one of the best fighting games of all time. Marvel vs Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes. This was one of the first fighting games I played back in the day. I believe I played the PS2 version with my aunt. But I also remember going to Chinatown once with my aunt, going to an arcade and playing there. It was the only time I went to an arcade with a fighting game like this to play with other people. I even got to play it with someone else while playing. It was tons of fun, and because of that, MvC2 is pretty special to me. A big reason this game is so cool is because of how many characters there are in this one game. It includes every character from the previous games, including brand-new ones like Ruby Heart, Amingo, and Sonson III.
While many of the characters in MvC2 are from previous games, they change it enough to make this game enjoyable while also simplifying it a little. This game takes out an attack button. The way a lot of Street Fighter games work with Capcom is they have a Light, Medium, and Heavy attack for both punch and kick. This gives you six buttons for attacks and to combine different motion inputs for other specials. But in MvC2, they take out the Medium attack, leaving you with four buttons. This was clearly an effort to allow fighting games to play better on consoles, as they were becoming more powerful and popular than arcades at the time.
But this isn't a case of simplification but adding nothing, as while we have fewer attacks, we can now select up to three characters in a team. There are no exclusive assists characters. You have access to three full characters. Not only that, but the buttons that would be used for Heavy attacks on a fight stick are now your assist buttons, allowing you to tag in a character for an assist attack from one of your other two characters. In fact, after selecting your three characters, you have to pick what assist type a character has for the round, giving you access to many options for your teams.
After selecting all your things, you are taken into the fun and hectic combat that is MvC2. The best way I'd describe the controls is that it is fine. And I don't mean that it's standard; I mean it's an incredibly precise game. You put in the correct input, and you will get that input. Chances are, if you don't get it, it's more you not putting it in right instead of the game messing up. But this doesn't mean it is strict on what to do; it is a game that is free and is the perfect jump-in-and-play type of game if you're hanging out with friends. And because the game basically says, "Just do cool shit!" You're able to do a ton in a fight. Like getting a combo and then switching to another character to continue that combo, then launch your opponent in the air for an air combo. Or maybe you liked doing supers in the previous games, this game doesn't disappoint. In fact, not only does this game have character-specific supers and one giant super that uses all three characters, but you can also chain supers together. It's pretty hard to do, and I was only able to get it a couple of times, but man, it's so cool to see and does tons of damage.
This isn't even talking about how when a player calls in an assist, the other player has a chance to get some damage in on them or how, with a quarter circle + assist, you can force an opponent's character out and force another character to come in. There's so much to this game that I am still learning about, and I can't put it all here without making this post as long as my Final Fantasy IV Review Post. So, in summary of the combat, it's nothing but excellent, both for being a fun game to play with some friends and something that can be seen with a little more depth for expansive competitive play.
What about the arcade mode? How is that compared to the other games? While I did have my fun with MvC2's arcade mode, I wasn't able to finish it, mainly because it was really hard! Like no joke, by the time you make it to level 6, you are dealing with some of the best characters in the game, and a CPU that is so hungry for blood and quarters that he would have killed you before he even took off his gloves. And the thing with this collection is that there is no input delay or lag to speak of. The games play beautifully here, leading to the game being so fast that if you aren't used to the speed of Marvel, you're cooked before you could even fire off an assist, let alone a super.
The only way I was able to finish this arcade mode was earlier before the collection came out on the PS3 version of the game. This version has a difficulty selection, but that's not the case with the arcade version. You either fight the game on its level, or you get stomped in. So, while I couldn't finish this one, I still had a blast playing MvC2, as I always do. And I'm probably crazy enough to say that I recommend this collection just for MvC2; the rest are fantastic, don't get me wrong, but there is something about MvC2 that just flicks every right switch when I play, and I have a feeling that's the case with a lot of other people. Even if you don't get the collection, I'd still highly recommend playing MvC2 if you can, ideally the Dreamcast version (even though you have to unlock characters in that one), but if you have a modded PS3, 360, or even if your machine could run RPCS3, that old port is still an excellent casual way of just trying the game.
The Punisher
Lastly, we have the Punisher, and there's not going to be much to this one. A, because I didn't get a chance to record any footage of me playing, and B because I mainly played it between matches online. And while I only have a little experience with beat-em-ups other than Double Dragon and the D&D beat-em-up by Capcom, from what I've played, it's pretty fun! You can beat up bad guys, eat chicken to regain health, and shoot people with guns; what's not to love? The fact that you can drop a grenade from a jump? Because that's another reason to love it. It was the perfect game to play while waiting for matches online; it's something light to do while you wait while keeping your fingers ready for a match. Plus, it was the first game Capcom made for Marvel, so we owe a little respect to this game, which got Marvel's contact with Capcom. The Punisher walked so that the X-Men could run (I was not expecting to say something like that for those two franchises).
Online
Finally, I want to talk about the online experience for this game. This is one of this collection's main selling points: seamless online play across all games with rollback netcode. If you don't know what rollback is, it's basically a better net code that's used for fighting games to allow for smooth matches with other people. It's meant to cut down on lag, as seen in delay-based net code. For an even better explanation, check out the Core-A Gaming video. In short, it's supposed to be good online, so how is it compared to what I've played? Well, so far, it's a blast, at least for me, as I've heard people having trouble finding matches.
Like with Punisher, I don't have footage for this, but while having XMvSF, MvC, and MvC2 selected for what games I wanted to play on casual matches, I surprisingly got more matches in MvC than MvC2. And then I got little to no matches with XMvSF. But I don't think that's the problem people were having; I think it's a problem of literally not finding matches. It's like the game just glitches and doesn't find matches for you to play against people. Although in the time it took me to write this post, I saw that the game was updated on Steam, it might not be a problem anymore. I've seen that it's different between platforms, and it is more luck if this happens or not. But I'm sure the Devs will fix that at some point.
But besides that, how do the games play? It feels incredibly smooth; I encountered no lag when playing against people in any of the three games I played; the only time I did was when I realized that my LAN cable wasn't in, and then, like an idiot, I tried to fix it mid-match. But even then, it corrected itself quickly. The online features are barebones, though; there are no additional modes other than scores, ranked, and casual. It's pretty by the numbers, but as someone who rarely plays online anyway, I don't see a problem. Plus, I don't know how much of the ROM of these games they can change to do that kind of stuff. Personally, I don't mind, and again, while I don't have footage for it, I won a couple of matches. I lost most of them, but I still had a great time playing these games with really good online.
Conclusion
This is a collection I was not expecting that we would get, and if we did get something from this series, it was probably just going to be MvC2. Because I figured the licensing would be a bit much to get it off the ground. But I'm glad it was able to be made because it has been a really fun time going through these games conveniently and legally. It could be argued whether something like this is worth $49.99, but if you're a fan of fighting games, or this series and considering the games on this collection and how well they play, it's an easy recommendation to go and get this game. It's on PC, Switch, and PlayStation, but not Xbox. That release will be coming next year.It's been a while since I posted on this blog, but I do want to start posting more, talking about my thoughts on certain gaming topics that I find interesting, from games to certain gaming events. Hopefully, I should have a more proper and in-depth review coming soon. Thanks for reading, and have a fantastic day!
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