Fighting Games Friday: 20 Years of Marvel vs. Capcom 2

This week marked 20 years since Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes released, which first hit Japanese arcades before arriving worldwide and being ported to Sega Dreamcast. It’s one of the most well remembered fighting games among casual players and in the tournament scenes in certain countries around the world, especially in North America — and especially on the East Coast of the country. It also had no business being as good of a game as it did.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was a slapdash effort that cobbled characters and gameplay mechanics from previous Capcom Marvel games from the mid-to-late 1990s, which spanned from X-Men: Children of the Atom to Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes. The characters and their sprites were combined with new Marvel characters not included in previous titles like Marrow and Cable, and brand-new Capcom faces like Ruby Heart and Amingo. This made for a massive 56-character cast, easily enough to create imbalance issues. Presentation-wise, this was combined with CG backgrounds that stuck out compared to the hand-drawn character sprites, and an atypical soundtrack for a fighting game. It was all a recipe for a mess of a game, yet it was a lot of fun to play, and remains fun to this day.

MvC2 shines when played among friends, including those who aren’t anywhere near as experienced with fighting games as tournament players are. This makes it easy to pick from a variety of characters instead of sticking to the top-tier faces. How else could you get away with having a good time playing Roll, a character so bad she has her own place on tier lists, and other lower-tier characters like Captain America, Ryu, and Sabretooth. But it’s also a fun game to watch and play at a high level, even when players stick to top-tier characters like Magneto, Sentinel, Cable, Storm, and Psylocke to a lesser extent (all Marvel characters, notably).

The soundtrack is also a catchy and funky fusion of jazz and New Age that’s good to listen to while playing and outside of the game during leisure time. I made a Recommended Soundtracks post highlighting how good it is for good reason. That this fusion remains atypical for a fighting game soundtrack is why it remains in the minds of fans after so much time. There was serious, though not universal, disappointment when its progeny didn’t inherit the style; though in fairness, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 had a considerably higher number of tracks with each character having their own themes again.

Capcom has ported MvC2 to several platforms over the years, at a time when they were capable of doing so, even though not every version was great. Leaving it on Dreamcast limited its reach, a platform that was only mildly successful in America and a failure elsewhere. It was subsequently ported to PlayStation 2 and Xbox, playable ports despite their quality being subpar compared to the Dreamcast version. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 ports are two of the most preferred around, but they aren’t perfect either. The game can no longer be legally purchased thanks to the licensing issues surrounding it between Capcom and the now Disney-owned Marvel, but there remain other ways to play it.

MvC2 is still played in streams and tournaments to this day. Most importantly, it will make a return to the grandest fighting game tournament stage of them all: Evo 2020. It was confirmed when the lineup was announced that a Marvel vs. Cacpom 2 8-man Invitational will be among the nine titles featured, a standout alongside considerably more recent titles like Street Fighter V and Dragon Ball FighterZ. It won’t be a typical tournament with only eight players participating, but that it will be present at all speaks to its continued popular status among the world of fighting games.

Given that status, there’s still a lot of desire for a new game despite the questionable handling of the brand since. Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and its Ultimate version were perfectly good games (despite Ultimate coming too soon after MvC3), but didn’t achieve as vaunted a status among the FGC as MvC2 due to the character choices and gameplay changes. This generation’s Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, however, was a poorly-handled and rushed product. What I would give for an “Everyone is Here” Super Smash Bros. Ultimate-like equivalent for a new MvC game, a chance to throw everyone from each game in, balancing be damned. But this is very wishful thinking considering how many 3D models Capcom would have to create for all the characters.

It’s a shame MvC3 director Ryota Niitsuma wouldn’t be there to spearhead possible a new game, too, who recently departed the company after being confined to the financial department for decades. There’s a chance some as experienced as him could handle direct another title, but he’ll be dearly missed — at Capcom, anyway.

Hopefully the series isn’t over. But even if it is, it would be nice if Capcom worked something out with Marvel and Disney to rerelease MvC2 again — perhaps with even better emulation. It’s a pity they couldn’t do that for this 20th anniversary week, but at least it’s been well remembered.