"The third & BEST of the vastely popular VS series."

Capcom has sure come a long way with its team-ups with Marvel. Who'd thunk it, that Capcom would receive so much response from the first two games. People seem to just flock to these machines if they're anywhere they were. Capcom then decided to come out with the 3rd & what I think is the best of the VS series; Marvel vs Capcom. The people as expected flocked to the machines quickly, & has continued to draw in crowds despite being more than 18 months old. But enough introduction, on to the review.

GAMEPLAY-9
If you've played any of the VS games, then you know the deal by now; air combos, super jumps, crazy supers, & wild tag-team action. Two new features were added into this game. One called the Variable Cross, where you & your partner are on the screen at the same time performing unlimited supers for a short amount of time. The control was hard because you had to direct both fighters on your own, but a cool improvment none the less. The other is a Helper Character system that exactly like the Team Attack of MSHvSF. It was cool at first, but after months of playing this game, I realized how this could be used for cheap & dirty tactics. For instance, just setting up a beam super after sending out Colussus, Psylocke, or Juggernaut was way to easy, Devilot helped Strider setup the Ourborus & Legion Supers, & slow attackers like Arthur & Lou setup the Final Atomic Buster WAY too easily. If you asked me, I liked MSHvSF system much better. Overall, it was great.

GRAPHICS-9
The backgrounds are much better than they were in MSHvSF. All of them new, & visually impressive, & pretty close to Alpha quality. The character animations are superb & the lighting the projectiles & attacks give off look brighter than ever. Plus there's no slowdown at all in this game. Both players could have Variable Cross on, & you'd be amazed by how fast the game still runs.

SOUND-10
The remixes sound better than ever & you gotta hand it to Q-Sound. Don't believe me, then compare Gambit's song on this game to that of X-Men vs Street Fighter & you'll know what I mean. Plus the FX for the Hadoken, Strider's sword & the clanking of War Machine's armor, & every character's voice is crisp & clear.

CHARACTERS-10
If you've read my review on MSHvSF, then you know that one of the things I didn't like about the game is that the game felt too much like a mixture of SFA2 & MSH; no sense of newness. Well Capcom changed it all around by adding 5 new characters to the game & none of them are from the world of Street Fighter.

On the Capcom side, there's 4. The first is Captian Commando from the old platform game. The next is Jin from Cyberbots, who has decided to come out of his Mech, Blodia, & fight face-to-face. The next is Strider, also from a past platform game & has quickly become one of the most popular fighters in the series. The last is the blue-bomber himself, Mega Man. If you don't know who he is by now, then I welcome you back to the land of the living. Also, being new to the VS series, Capcom decided to bring in the bread-winner of the Darkstalkers series, which was once the #1 fighting game in Japan. Thus everyone's favorite succubus, Morrigan was added to the mix, & has slowly become my favorite character.(However, I've yet to play a DS game.)

As for the Marvel side there's only one, Venom. Unfortunetly the idiots at Marvel wouldn't let Capcom use some more new characters like Silver Surfer, so they were forced to rehash the other Marvel characters.

As for the returning characters, Capcom finally solved the Shotokhan complex by molding Ken & Akuma into Ryu. Nice Move! Chun-Li, Zangief, Spiderman, Wolverine, Hulk, Captian America, Gambit, & War Machine (a palette swaped Iron Man). Now that's what I call a lineup. It's a SF game without the feeling that your limited to SF characters. Even though there's only 15 fighters, all of them fight differently so there's no feeling of deva ju.

REPLAY VALUE-10
Do you still see people coming to this machine. If NO, THEN ARE THE PEOPLE IN YOUR TOWN STILL ALIVE.

OVERALL-10
In my opinion this is the best of the 3 games. However, Marvel has sold thier license to Activision, so another VS game will be the most unlikelist of realities. But I'm hoping & praying that they could get together one more time to make a VS game that will include all 32 of the selectable fighters in the past 3 games, but enough wishing for now.

If you haven't played time game yet, then I don't know what's wrong with you. This is definately a game for the non-serious fighter. I can't wait till this game hits the Dreamcast.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 03/20/03