Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter

"Wanna see a little schoolgirl beat the Hulk up? Then this one's for you. Well, not exactly this one..."

Still trying to maintain the reign on fighting games, Capcom launched in the arcade the widely known vs. series, which brought so many good ideas along that guaranteed the success of the new line of games. As we have seen before with the earlier Capcom fighters, console conversions were made for these games. Unfortunately, the Playstation conversions couldn’t stand up to the arcade originals.

Playing Marvel vs. Street Fighter, the second game in this series, in the arcades was great fun: the addition of a second character and over-the-top moves, as well as a serious power upgrade for the Street Fighter characters, combined with the traditional Capcom gameplay, made it an instant hit that offered so many possibilities and diversity (as well as forcing you to master at least two characters, unless you played with a friend).

However, one of the main features of the vs. games, that is, the two-character engine, was removed from the Playstation version almost entirely, because of hardware limitations. In this version, you can only call on the second character to perform a special move and then leave the screen, or unleash two specials at the same time. The thing is, it heavily affects the gameplay. The game is reduced to a fighting game that brings Marvel and powered-up Street Fighter characters beating each other up, without anything new to offer.

Apart from that, however, the game is still quite good. As far as I know, the moves for each character remains untouched and the gameplay is basically the same as the previous Capcom fighting games (Marvel Super Heroes, X-Men, etc.) with great controls, super-jumps, super-powerful moves and combos, lots of combos. The truth is Capcom remains the ruler of fighting games when it comes to gameplay, and this game shows it.

You can pick among Street Fighter favourites Ryu, Ken, Akuma, Chun-li, Dhalsim, Zangief, Dan, Bison and Sakura and Marvel heroes and villains Spider-Man, Hulk, Captain America, Cyclops, Wolverine, Shuma-Gorath, Blackheart and Omega Red. The last bosses are X-Men nemesis Apocalypse and the terrifying Cyber Akuma, who will give you a hard time to defeat. There are also secret characters to play.

The only different playing mode in the game that adds anything to gameplay is the hero battle, in which you choose one side (that is, Marvel or Street Fighter) and battle the other one until all of their characters are down. There is actually a mode in which you can control the two characters, but you must fight the same characters that you control. Apart from that, your partner is selected by the computer. Dumb.

As far as graphics go, the game is great. The only really new thing is the updated specials for the Street Fighter characters, since the Marvel characters and their moves are directly taken from the Marvel Super Heroes game. But the characters and their animations are beautiful, flawless and the backgrounds are also great, with some funny details for the Marvel/Street Fighter fan, like the presence of Beast, Gambit, Rogue and Blanka, among others, in the backgrounds.

The music is pretty much standard fighting game background songs. Pure Capcom stuff. There is one tune for each character and none of it is really memorable and doesn’t attract any special attention during the battles. It's not bad actually, just something I wouldn't want to listen when I'm not playing. The sound effects are really well done, as are the voices, including the announcer and each of the characters.

In a general way, this game is good enough to satisfy the need of Playstation owners that want to play as their favourite comic/gaming characters in a new setting, but fails when compared to the arcade original. The Saturn version is said to be better (including two-character control), but I never actually played it. You can still have some fun with it, specially playing against a friend. Anyway, as with almost every fighting game, the arcade version is the best.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 05/26/02, Updated 05/26/02