Marvel vs. Capcom

"One of the best fighting games on the Dreamcast!"

Capcom's arcade hit Marvel vs. Capcom finally arrives on a home system after over a year in the arcades. This is one of the best DC fighters but it loses a little of the luster it had thanks to it's amazing sequel. I wish Capcom would have taken the time to give the game extras like Streetfighter Alpha 3 because just throwing in an Onslaught mode isn't enough.

Graphics: 9/10
For those of you used to the arcade you might notice the graphics in this game have some color bleed in them and that the characters are a bit pixelated. In the middle of a battle you won't notice any of this so its not a big deal. As always Capcom gives us excellent graphics and thanks to the power of the DC every frame of animation has been restored for the DC and plays very well, that is if you have at the least the standard DC pad or Arcade Stick.

Music and Sound: 9/10
A bit of the sound quality has dropped from Marvel vs. Streetfighter but the sound is still excellent. Most of the music is good, Mega Man and Strider have great music. The only sucky one is the Hulk's, it's just annoying.

Gameplay: 9/10
The controversy about this game revolves around the DC pad. Many say it doesn't work well with the game and they are wrong...to a certain extent. Once you do some adjusting and get used to the pad you can pull off combos with ease. The problem comes when playing against a human, this game requires split second reaction, especially during super moves, to connect. In a one player you can get away with it because the cpu is pretty dumb and won't block your supers much. A human however will block, and block a lot. The thing is the buttons on the pad are laid at an angle and spread far apart as opposed to the buttons being close together like on the Saturn pad. Plus the DC pad lacks a L2 and R2 trigger so you can't assign a button to 3punch or 3Kick. This basically means you forget about parrying, which is almost impossible to do with the DC pad.
Well I have to admit, when Capcom tries to show innovation, they rule. First of all the cast of Capcom characters is excellent: Mega Man, Strider, Captain Commando, Jin (who?) and Roll all have new frames of animation created JUST FOR THEM! NO MORE RECYCLED FRAMES! Plus you can tell Capcom at least tried to work on their moves. Strider has pretty much everything: teleporting, sword slash, fireball, you name it he probably has it. Then you have Captain Commando who uses his teammates from his game to help him, and Mega Man can use three different weapons form his past games. The Marvel side is surprisingly weak this time around. Venom is the only new character and War Machine is just a re-colored Iron Man. In Marvel vs. Streetfighter Capcom used a variable attack which allowed your partner to come in and do a quick attack. In MvC Capcom changed it so you can use guest characters which come in and attack. You have the likes of Psylocke, Arthur from Ghouls n Ghost, Jubilee, Shadow, and others. This was a great way to sneak in cameos although it would have better if the characters were playable. I mean in Mvc2 there were 56 character plus 3D backgrounds, surely Capcom could have added some of this to this game. I for one would have loved to play as Thor or Arthur.

Control: DC pad: 7/10
Arcade Stick: 10
If you have the standard Sega DC controller the game plays well but has the flaw of not being able to push the buttons fast enough and the parry is next to impossible. An arcade stick is a great choice and its almost perfect except that that you need to hold jab and press start to do a taunt instead of just pressing start. Yes I know very minor.

Story:
The evil Onslaught is trying to conquer the world and stuff and you have to stop him. It's really not much of a story but hey there are endings, something the sequel lacks. 6/10

Challenge:
Hope you don't buy this game for a challenge because it doesn't have much of it. The main game is painfully easy and after awhile Onslaught becomes easy himself (there are lots of cheap ways to beat him). The only real challenge in the game is the Survival Mode, which pits you against an endless wave of opponents. 6/10

Replay Value:
After playing Streetfighter Alpha 3 I expected Capcom to give all their arcade ports the red carpet treatment. Unfortunately this game didn't, there is a survival mode and while its good it can't touch the one on Alpha 3. The Cross Fever Mode is great though. Four players battle and each one picks one fighter and you fight on two teams. This mode is cool because all four players can fight at the same time and the game gets crazy when all four are doing supers and there is little to no slowdown! There is also an Onslaught mode where you play as Onslaught. This mode is pretty boring in the 1p game but it's actually very fun when playing against a human. Nothing better than abusing the cheapness of a VS game boss. That's about it for extras, there is no World Tour Mode or a even a gallery mode that was in the PSX Marvel vs. Capcom. 8/10

Overall: 9 Final Score is not an average-
This is a great game but it was released well over a year after the arcade version and there are very few surprises added to the home version. Don't get me wrong this a great fighter but I think Capcom could have done more in the way of extras because the GD-ROM could have handled it. Perfect for old-school 2D veterans but newbies might want to check out Power Stone or Soul Calibur.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/18/00, Updated 04/26/01