Marvel Super Heroes Vs Street Fighter (Arcade, 1997)

 

It kinda feels like they were holding out on us with the previous game. This one goes beyond the confines of X-Men and delivers a more stacked roster. I kinda think of it like the X-Men couldn't take on the World Warriors in the previous game, so they brought in other Marvel reinforcements to regain the upper hand here.

This would then prompt the 'Warriors to go and get more forces from the Capcom contingent for the next game to even things out again. They see Marvel's Hulk and raise him...Servbots or some shit! In the meantime, here's the sequel to Marvel Super Heroes. It's the 4th game in the series and it's the sequel to the second, but also the third.

Psylocke Check: Still no Psylocke. Why does this series hate Psylocke?

Rogue Check: No Rogue either. I know this isn't X-Men, but we didn't have any Psylocke in the previous game either!

Really not impressed right now. They dropped Iron Man from the Marvel Super Heroes roster? Really? Iron Man? Well at least we added Dan. What were they thinking?

Marvel Super Heroes is my favorite of the series thus far and this game isn't really doing anything to challenge it. Well, it's got Akuma. All in all though, this kinda feels like it's just the "other half" of the previous game so they could double-dip.

Also Sakura, who has a Sailor Scout outfit. Not sure why she's bringing dating up in a damn fighting game. Was anybody asking her to date them? Get outta here, Sakura! Go back to high school!

Visually, this game is the finest one yet, with some really nice light effects on the attacks. Everything just has punch, oomph, and flash. There's also some panache, and some je ne sais quoi.

The colors and contrast are better too. It jumps off the screen.

Sakura CLOTHESLINES ZANGIEF OUT OF HIS BOOTS.

Would have been better if he did the Rikishi Bump and flipped over inside out.

Zangief fires back with his super, a rapid-fire series of German Suplexes. Even the supers look better. It's a tour de force on the visual front.

Dhalsim has the best-looking fireball in the game, Yoga Fire.

I need to note that Dhalsim's battle theme is REALLY good in this game. Sounds like a late 90's Mega Man theme mixed with something out of Suikoden.

He also has the flamethrower-like Yoga Flame, which isn't a projectile so much as a big defensive wave. As a kid, Dhalsim was always my favorite of the original eight World Warriors because of these two moves and his additional attack range with basic attacks.

You don't even WANT to know what happens when Dhalsim farts.

Jesus Christ!

The tag team mechanic returns from the previous game. There's no rhyme or reason to it and it seems to just team up Capcom and Marvel characters willy-nilly. Good guys and bad guys, doesn't matter.

"Behold! We are evenly matched!"

I'm running out of things to say, so...why is Sakura weeping in her portrait on the lower left?

When descending from a high jump, Sakura sorta does a skirt-parachute. Like how cats use their underarm-skin to parachute when falling from high places.

Fun Fact: Sakura's favorite flavor of Fancy Feast is the Savory Beef Feast.

Here's Hulk, who I'm going to play as in a bit. Sakura has an awesome uppercut that seems to also fire an energy wave.

Hulk goes for the throw attack! I think she can probably slip her way out of-

-THUD.

She puts Hulk in a headlock, which is comedy GOLD. These characters are lucky Hulk has to sell for them.

Ohhhhh shit. Shuma-Gorath is back. We're just gonna hope that tagging with Dan is enough suck for Shuma-Gorath's insurmountable power to be brought down to a reasonable level.

...nope. Sakura didn't have a chance. The tree in the background was splashed with her blood as the scene faded to black.

Can NO ONE stop the path of horror that is Shuma-Gorath??

Time for both sides to bring out the big guns. That's right, I'm running Cap and Hulk. Time to squash the World Warriors once and for all!

...dammit!

GET HIM OFF ME

Hulk strikes back against the Street Fighters with his big move, the SPARTA KICK.

Dan is launched into orbit!

This wasn't from the Sparta Kick, he just bounced off of Hulk's blocking.

Wolverine with the slicing and dicing! ...if they were gonna sneak X-Men in here, where is Psylocke??

While Dhalsim has the best-looking fireball, Chun-Li might have the worst. It just looks...empty and light. Like it should barely even scratch anyone.

Fun Fact: Chun-Li is the only World Warrior to score "Super-Genius" level IQ on her cognitive tests.

Ohhhhhh shit.

Game over, man! Game over!

The Lovecraftian horror wails on Hulk! He's just absolutely slapping the shit out of the big man!

Hulk retaliates with the SPARTA KICK and it's enough to turn Shuma-Gorath into space goo.

Hulk: "Welcome to Earth, bitch!"

The Avengers are living large. So who will be the big final boss of this game? Thanos and Doom again?

Fun Fact: Dr. Doom's favorite food is tofu.

.......no, it's just Apocalypse again. Well that's kinda lame. They really aren't doing much to disprove my "this is just the other half of the previous game" ideas. Looking forward to the next one doing some new stuff.

This time I get to fight Apocalypse with somebody (almost) his own size.

This is pretty much the same fight as the previous game; he summons adds, and can only be damaged with attacks to the face.

While it's the same fight in every other regard, he has way less HP this time around (playing as Hulk helps too) and doesn't seem much like a final boss in comparison...because he isn't.

No, the final boss is... Cyber-Akuma? What the hell?

Cyber-Akuma runs solo, because he doesn't need a tag partner. He's like Ryback.

He fires HUGE fireballs, and is a pretty tough opponent. If they really wanted to be hardcore with the final boss, they would have had him and Apocalypse as a team. Given how nerfed Apocalypse is in this one, it would have worked out.

Not sure what the story is behind Cyber-Akuma, or if he's even canon. Either way, Hulk launches him into orbit with the SPARTA KICK.

Looks like Marvel wins this round, so Capcom will need to bring in something besides the World Warriors if they want to win the next round.

Wonder if a Marvel bad guy would be the final boss if I were running a Capcom main. Maybe it would just switch the two final bosses around if you reached the penultimate fight with the opposing side. All I know is that Cyber-Akuma felt pretty tacked-on just so they could end with something besides Apocalypse.

Hulk's ending has him chatting with fellow green gentleman Blanka, who isn't one of the playable characters in this game.

Actual Fun Fact: "Blanca" is the Spanish word for "white"...if the subject is a feminine subject. Does this mean Blanka is a secret lady? Probably not. If the subject is male, it's Blanco. A green folk like Blanka would be the color Verde. If you're ordering white wine on/for a date, it's "dos vinos blancas, por favor" so go ahead and impress a lady with that.

Fun Fact 2: Blanka is from Brazil, where they speak Portuguese, not Spanish, so nothing I just said matters in his case because Portuguese is the bastardized gobbledegook version of Espanol.

Hulk empathizes with Blanka being green, even though it's for an entirely different reason. Blanka was struck by lightning during a plane crash and it caused a mutation.

...that makes zero sense but neither did the "the lab leak is nothing more than a crazy idea spread by racist conspiracy theorists" line of thought that everyone had to pretend they believed for like 3 years to fit in socially until it quietly disappeared when proof to the contrary emerged.

I'm saying that Blanka being struck by lightning and turning green is bullshit! What are you not telling us, Capcom??

Blanka with a shoutout to the mid 90's other biggest green character!

"Ranking green videogame characters from the 1990s" list next! ...no probably not.

Next up...

...I've cleared half of the series, so next up is Marvel Vs Capcom 5: Marvel Vs Capcom 1: Clash of Super Heroes. This time Capcom is bringing out more of their roster, and it's the point where the series really leaped into the mainstream.

Like a girl who regularly exercises sliding into some yoga pants, they knew all eyeballs would be on them for the next one. Will they deliver? I mean, I'm the only person on the planet that any of this is new to, so...let's go.

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