Review #786: Marvel Super Heroes VS Street Fighter

 Capcom does it again! This is how to make a game on the cheap!

 You thought the previous game was lazy? How naive could you get? Marvel Super Heroes VS Street Fighter is here to show you how to make a 2-D fighting game on a 10 buck budget. Amount of new sprites? A big fat 0. Unless you're in Japan, in which case you get the joke character Norimaru, who is neither Marvel or Street Fighter. There is, however, Cyber Akuma, but he is a just an Akuma edit. Well, how large did the roster get with the new Marvel characters? None. It's 17 characters again, for all intent and purposes, this is just a remixed character roster. At least we get new stages, right? Right? Nope, it has the same backgrounds from X-Men VS Street Fighter, although edited to look slightly different: More character cameos, different time of the day, etc. Even Apocalypse returns as the final boss, even if Cyber Akuma is the final battle in the Arcade Ladder. This game is whole new level of lazy.

 Although, to be fair, they did take a few short steps forward. Let's start with the roster, Charlie and Cammy got replaced by Dan and Sakura, which means that half of Capcom's 8-character roster is made up of Shotos, more if you count Sakura. Her fireballs go diagonally upwards at least. The only returning characters from X-Men are Cyclops and Wolvie, the rest got replaced by Omega Red(From X-Men COTA) and the rest are various picks from Marvel Super Heroes(Captain America, Hulk, Spider-man, Blackheart and Shuma-Gorath). I don't like this roster as much as the previous one, to be honest. That said, this game was the first to introduce hidden bonus characters. Charlie returns as 'Shadow', a secret character, so there's at least 8 different movesets, but he is also joined by Cyber Akuma(He is very hard to unlock though), Armored Spider-man(Spidey with Super Armor), Mecha Zangief(Zangief with super armor and can't block), Evil Sakura(Sakura with a few of Akuma's moves), Mephisto(Red Blackheart, his attacks have a cosmetic fire effect) and US Agent who is just a black recoloring of Captain America. Everyone but Cyber Akuma and Charlie are almost identical to their counterparts, Mephisto and US Agente being the worst offenders, but it's a neat, cheap addition to the roster

 Once again, this is not a straight port from the Arcade: There's no Tag system and missing frames, because the PS1 couldn't handle a straight port. Gameplay remains pretty much the same, 6 attack buttons, 3 punches and 3 kicks of varying strengths, special and super moves, aerial combos, and the Variable Counter and joined Super with your buddy returns. There's a new element to how you fight, pressing medium punch and medium kick will summon your selected buddy to perform a quick attack before going away. Somehow, Capcom managed to polish the game's performance once again, slowdown is pretty much gone save for some Super Moves. This means that you can finally play as Blackheart without killing the framerate! It's pretty smooth, which is pretty nice. Another neat touch, is that finishing a fight with a Super will plaster the name of said Super Move on the screen, while the background starts flashing and the announcer screams "HYPER COMBO FINISH!", but it gets better, if you finish the fight with the combined super you'll get a combined Super name! "MESSATSU OPTIC BLAST!", "ARMAGGEDON HADOKEN" and the such! It's pretty amazing. The announcer feels more hype than in the previous game, which, once again, is a very small but welcome new addition.

 Arcade, Versus and Training modes return, Survival is gone, but in its stead we get two new modes: Hero Battle, which is a team battle in which one player can only use either Marvel Super Heroes or Street Fighters, while the other player/CPU is stuck with characters from the other universe. And Crossover mode, which is pretty much a demo of the Arcade game, for you see, it plays just like the Arcade original with the tag-system kept intact.... at the cost of only being able to play mirror matches. It's just a novelty, but I guess it's a decent taste of the real thing. I preferred Survival over Hero battle, but what can ya do?

 Honestly? I prefer X-Men VS Street Fighter, if only because both games play pretty similarly to each other, but the former had a much better roster. That said, I won't deny this game its praises: The hidden characters, while cheap, are a nice bonus, the announcer makes things feel more exciting, the framerate has been ironed out and the Crossover mirror match mode is not a bad addition.
 8.0 out of 10