Now Playing: Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection

Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection is fantastic. It includes every title you’d want as part of what you might call the ‘golden age’ of Marvel / Capcom crossover fighting games. It also includes The Punisher (?) . . . which I’ll talk about later.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was one of my favourite games on the Dreamcast, so when I saw it included as part of this collection, I was happy to pick it up for MvC2 alone. But the collection also includes X-Men: Children of the Atom and Marvel Super Heroes – two games I loved playing on the Sega Saturn back in the day.

And then we have X-Men vs. Street Fighter which I’d always wanted to play, but it never received an EU release on the Saturn. And to round things off we have Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter & Marvel vs. Capcom 1, neither of which I’d played.

Knowing that if I started with MvC2 I might never get around to playing the others, I sensibly decided to leave that one until last to give every other game a fair shake in release order. And whilst MvC2 with its ridiculously comprehensive roster (56 characters!) does make the other games feel a tad redundant, I’m pleased to say that each and every one still holds up well on their own and are all worth playing.

I recall X-Men: Children of the Atom being tough back in the day and I still find it tough now. Maybe it’s just me, but COTA feels a lot tougher to get through than any of the other games in this collection – and the final Magneto fight still gives me no end of trouble. It’s got the most limited roster and mechanics, but there’s a pure simplicity about it that still makes it enjoyable to play.

Marvel Super Heroes also suffers a little with its limited roster, but it makes up for it with its unique ‘Infinity Stone’ system that lets you collect and utilise the various infinity stones throughout your fights – each stone can trigger a different boost, and you can even steal stones from your opponent. The final fight against Thanos is also very fun.

X-Men vs. Street Fighter is just as good as I’d always hoped. It has a great roster and introduces the ‘team’ system for the first time. It feels great to play, looks gorgeous and features some of the best stages and pre/post battle scenes in the collection – although the final fight against Apocalypse can be a tad annoying.

As someone who was always more of an X-Men fan than a fan of Marvel in general, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter doesn’t excite me as much as its predecessor. It’s still fun to play because mechanically speaking, it’s basically the same game, I just think it has the weakest available roster – or rather, the least interesting roster to me.

So what about Marvel vs. Capcom 1? Is there any reason at all to play this over its sequel? Well, certainly not in terms of roster but then no game here can compete with MvC2 with regard to that. But it does do a couple of unique things that I think makes it still worth playing today.

The first is the ‘support partner’ system. You only pick two fighters for your team, and the third is randomly selected every round so you never know who you’re going to get. You can’t control them directly – they only serve in a support role. It’s a neat little twist that’s unique to MvC1. I also really like the final fight against Onslaught.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is a fantastic game with a fantastic roster of just about everyone you could possibly want, and you can now pick three characters per team that allows you to put together a crazy number of combinations. I do have some gripes, however. The first is that the 3D effect stages don’t hold up as well now as they did back in the day.

It also feels that in order to accommodate three characters per team, they streamlined certain actions (there’s no light attacks, for example) and cut back on the animations / effects. I also think the final boss fight is a little weak. Abyss isn’t very interesting in terms of visual design, or fun to actually fight.

And finally we have The Punisher . . . I don’t really know why this is here as it’s not a fighting game but a kind of bad Streets of Rage style side scrolling beat ‘em up. It’s not terrible, it’s just rather mediocre. I blasted through it for the achievements and I know I’ll never bother with it again.

Overall this Fighting Collection is pretty great. The Punisher inclusion is weird – but whatever. Everything is worth playing, even if MvC2 somewhat overshadows everything else thanks to its massive roster. I like the visual options to tweak each game, but I do wish there was a little more bonus material for the collection. You get the music and some artwork but it’s pretty basic stuff. The training mode is a very nice (and surprising) addition though.

There’s also only one save slot for the entire collection. One! It’s not a major issue, just kind of stupid. It does feel like this collection was knocked out a little on the cheap, but I guess that’s to be expected. What really matters though are the games and that’s exactly what this collection delivers. If you’re an old fan like me or even if you’ve never tried these games before then be sure to check it out.

8/10