Apart from the Metroid Prime 4 trailer (first announced in 2014 - 7 years later!), the thing I was most excited about from the Nintendo Direct this week was Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics. It was a dark time for fighting game fans when it comes to this game and below I will summarise why this is blowing up on the internet.
History
In the 90's there were two things you'd love as a geek: comics and video games. Suffice to say cross-overs were few and far between so when Capcom announced a fighting game series that pitted the X Men against the World Warriors i.e. Street Fighter, it was like the dawn of mint chocolate chip. Two flavours very distinct from each other but when combined was something out of this world.
It was incredibly successful with the last release Marvel vs Capcom 2 (2000) boasting 56 characters. If you're annoyed at the concept of new video games having re-used assets don't look at Capcom's track record of reusing their sprites throughout this time period
However fighting games went dormant just beyond the millennium with seldom any releases. Thus MvC 2 was stuck on old hardware i.e. Dreamcast, PS2 and Xbox - the latter two were poor quality ports with missing animation and input lag.
This is the core reason why Marvel being 'freed' is a thing. These games are stuck on old hardware especially for the hardcore who want perfect ports of these games.
There was a silver lining when they brought MvC 2 and some older games to XBL and PSN in 2009 with online play. BUT again this was short lived as in 2013, following Disney's purchase of Marvel, MvC 2 was removed from digital store fronts.
Again the curse of being able to play MvC2 legitimately were few and far between with physical copies selling in the triple digits (yes even the poorly optimised ports on PS2 and Xbox).
This is when the #freemarvel started to trend with FGC content creators, fans, and even Michael B. Jordan tweeting this hashtag as a movement to bring this game back out.
The big problem with MvC is that there is a lot of different characters and therefore a LOT of different licenes that need to be navigated (there's 56+ characters from all the 90's to sort out). Arcade1Up were able to release an arcade machine of these games since it was a 'toy' rather than a video game but up until last week that was the only way to still purchase these games up til now..
Good
Marvel is back baby! Now a whole new generation of gamers can experience that chaotic action of MvC.
It has characters known to the MCU like: Iron Man, Captain America, War Machine, and even freakin' Thanos!
Rollback Netcode - This is required for fighting games to play smoothly online. It is soo much better than the alternative delay-based netcode. For more info please see this video.
Signs for a Marvel vs Capcom 4? Speculation has been that Marvel and Capcom were not on good terms. Their last venture MvC: Infinite performed and was received extremely poorly. The game had a small selection of X Men characters and you can't have a MvC game without staples such as: Magneto, Storm, and Sentinel i.e. the three characters you'll see in any high performance play
There is a physical release! (this is NOT financial advice) - but if you want to capitalise on the game collecting market I'd buy two or three copies. If you read the above history lesson with how often this game gets cancelled and pulled from digital market places it might be worth the investment
Bad
No Xbox? - Sadly Microsoft players may have to wait before it reaches their consoles. Speculation is that as Spiderman is owned by Sony they want to control is appearances (despite appearing in other games with more modern releases)
No cross-play with other consoles. With Fighting Games a player base is very important otherwise get ready to either not connect with anyone or just get stomped by the players that have been playing this game for 10+ years
No PS5 release - I have no idea why this is the case
Is this the best version - until it release we are unsure how it will play or how it is optimised. Again probably for the hardcore that care about frame data and performance.
Conclusion
If you made it this far - thank you for reading. As you can tell this is like the biggest news all year for me in gaming. Evo the world fighting game championship is just around the corner in Las Vegas so a lot of us were curious as to why this wasn't announced at that event. Marvel vs Capcom 4 announcement? - we can only dream and start the hastag #freem4rvel
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