Review #783: X-men VS Street Fighter

 Capcom are gonna get their time and money's worth out of that Wolverine sprite.

 "How lazy can we get?" was the question Capcom was trying to answer with X-Men VS Street Fighter, a game they made by grabbing those beautiful Street Fighter Alpha sprites and pitting them against their beautiful X-Men: Children of the Atom sprites. Out of the 17 total characters, only 3 are complete new sprite sets: Sabertooth, Rogue and Gambit. Apocalypse too if you wanna count Arcade Mode's final boss. To be honest, I never spent much time with this game. I played it once or twice in the Arcades, but by the time I got a PS2 I was too busy with Marvel VS Capcom and Marvel VS Capcom 2 to care about this one, as once I got my hands on a copy of the game I just gave it a few cursory plays. And.... that might've been a mistake, as having delved deeper into this game... I quite liked it.

 First things first, when talking about the PS1 port of X-Men VS Street Fighter one has to acknowledge that this is a very different game from the Arcade original, as the PS1 just couldn't handle the game as a whole, so the whole tag mechanic got completely axed. Think of this as a simple 1 on 1 fighter, because that's what it's turned into for this PS1 port. If you can live with that, as well as the cut animation frames from every character, then you just might find a fun little fighting game on PS1. Plus, from the get go we get Arcade, VS(player), Training and Survival, as well as the aforementioned 17 character roster, so we're already getting a much meatier game than Marvel Super Heroes before it. I also quite like the roster selection and the fact that it's limited to just X-Men and Street Fighter. Once again, and like most games of its era, there's no in-game moveset.

 While the tagging system is gone, making this a 1 on 1 fighting game, you still get to pick a partner, and they can be used with the games two main new mechanics: Variable Hyper and Variable Counter. By pressing reverse quarter-circle-forward + Punch+ Kick when you bock an attack, your ally will jump in, consume an energy gauge, and hit the enemy with a special move. Variable Hyper is simply pressing quarter-circle-forward+Punch+Kick which will make both you and your ally use your Super moves, at the cost of two energy bars. If there's anything to complain about is that some characters' supers don't synergize well with each other, like Akuma and Sabertooth, and since the tag mechanic is gone... it kinda makes some teams downright useless.

 The rest of the game is pretty much what you'd expect, 6 attack buttons(3 kicks, 3 punches), special moves, super moves, aerial combos, dashing, the whole gamut. Loading times are pretty tolerable, and there's not as much slowdown as there was in Marvel Super Heroes. A few super and special moves will tank the framerate, like Magneto's special Beam, but as a whole it's quite playable, as long as you don't expect a perfect arcade conversion. Which you shouldn't.

 Just like Marvel Super Heroes before it, and any Street Fighter Alpha game, this is an incredibly gorgeous game, sprites are big and beefy, and very colorful to boot. The music is sublime, and the stages are very eye-catching, I's say it has some of the most memorable fighting game stages of its era, like the Police raid that breaks into the sewers. And looks aside, despite having some framerate issues every now and then, the controls are responsive, and the game is quite fast and snappy, making for some great looking fights that are fun to be a part of.

 Fact: The Arcade version is infinitely better. No framerate issues, better animation with no cut frames and the game-changing tag mechanic. It's a better game, period, end of. However, taking the limitations of the Playstation in mind, I think that what we have here is very fun, and I find it so interesting to have a one-on-one version of this game. If you can accept that this game will never be as good as the Arcade version and that its framerate issues keep it from being competitive... I think you'll find a rather fun  fighting game in here.
 8.0 out of 10