Marvel Super Heroes

"Capcom present another mind-blowing beat'em up!"

I was lucky enough to pick this game up in a small, independent video game store in the closing months of the last millennium, over a year since the Saturn officially died in Europe. I took it home, put it in my trusty Sega machine and switched on. I played it for a few days then, despite being impressed by the graphics and sound, I went back to Streetfighter Alpha 2.

There was a reason for this. I had bought X-Men:COTA two years previously and, despite playing it a lot, I had never fully understood the depth of the X-Men series combo system.
Until...

January, 2000. I finally get onto the net and, about a week later, I come across the GameFAQs site. There I found the motherlode. John Culbert's titanic MSH FAQ. I finally understood, and this is why I consider MSH worthy of a perfect 10.

Story: Pretty irrelevant, it is a 2D beat 'em up after all. Very bad dude has evil power yadda yadda good guys want to stop him blah blah bad guys want to take evil power for themselves. The evil power in this case is the Infinity Gauntlet as worn by a demi-god named Thanos. He is searching for the Infinity Gems he needs to take control of all life in the universe. (Adopt TV announcer voice) Who can stop this evil fiend? Why the Marvel Super Heroes can!
Score: 3

Presentation: MSH, for whatever reason, contains less play modes than almost any Capcom Saturn conversion. It lacks not only the survival mode of its predecessor, but also the Training or Dramatic battle modes seen in SFA 1 and 2. Even the Turbo 3 mode of X-Men (which made that game almost impossible to play) is replaced by a turbo setting that is difficult to tell apart from normal speed.
However, MSH makes up for this lack of options in its character roster. Even to people who've never picked up a Marvel comic, the Hulk, Spiderman, Wolverine are instantly recognisable. The chance to rip someone to shreds as Wolveine or, better yet, drop an asteroid on someone's head as Hulk is hard to resist. Even the less well known characters have styles of play that distinguish them from the rest. Plus Doctor Doom is in it. Do we need anyone else?
Score: 7

Graphics: It's a 2D beat 'em up by Capcom on the Saturn. You know what to expect. Thousands of frames of superlative animation that breathes life into the characters, stunning fully animated backdrops ranging from Doc Doom's ship, through the roof of a train travelling through a city, to a bridge across a river in the Rockies. The Saturn's 2D processors are thrown on the treadmill and come out smiling yet again. It is just possible to get this game to slow down (with the number of sprites being chucked around I'm not surprised) but it never affects gameplay.
Score: 10

Sound: If you have a big sound system, you will feel every hit that lands in MSH. The sound effects are solid, chunky and crystal clear in clarity. Wolverine's ''Rookie'', and Spiderman's ''Spider sense tingles'', perfectly clear,are classic parting shots. Music, unfortunately, is not up to the same standard. Capcom's arcade music seems rather bland next to the rocking console remix soundtracks for SFA 1 & 2. Still it never seems to matter as they are pretty much eclipsed by the thundering sound effects.
Score:8

Gameplay: It cannot be described in as short a space as this. It can be enjoyed as a pick up and play 2D fighter (in that, unlike Streetfighter, all moves are very easy to pull off) or the deep way. Air launchers, ground launchers, cancelling. Just trying to get your head round a combo system that allows you to combine normal moves, special moves AND super moves into one combo! Plus you're using the 2nd best joypad ever created (the 1st being, of course, the MegaDrive 6-button) which is perfect in every way for this game. I pity the poor PSX owners trying to play this on their pads.
Lastly, I can only say that there is nothing like being on your last sliver of health and vapourising your opponent with a screen destroying combo finishing with a Hyper X move in the dying seconds of the final round. For the long version of events consult John Culbert's mammoth FAQ (In there you will snippets of the genius of James Chen and his MARVELous combos, just try and pull those off in combat) It will tell you all you need to know.
Score:10

Replayability: As with most beat'em ups MSH suffers in one player mode. Capcom have taken on board the criticism levelled at X-Men:COTA (i.e. that it was harder than steel reinforced granite, buried under a glacier, on Pluto) a little too much. Even on the infamous difficulty level 7 there are some opponents who offer little challenge. But, of course, single player is only the warmup for the big event. Flattening your friends, relatives, pets, anything that can press buttons, in the most spectacular fashion possible. Take my word for it. 2 player MSH is infinite.
Score:9

Buy or Rent: buy, Buy, BUy, BUY, BUY IT NOW!!!!!!!
If you are lucky enough to find a copy, grab it and play it on the best 2D beat 'em up machine ever created. You will not regret it.

merkss
08/08/00

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 08/07/00, Updated 08/07/00