X-Men Vs Street Fighter (Arcade, 1996)

 

The third game in the eight-game (eventually) MVC series, we finally get some company crossover starting now. It's the X-Men battling the World Warriors, though people would have to wait a bit longer to get the rest of Marvel onboard. Dammit, we had Hulk for ONE GAME and they've taken him away again!

The big innovation for this game is that it gives us tag team battles; you control a team of two characters and can switch between them. First player to lose both their characters loses the fight (one round). I really like the tag mechanic in fighting games; it varies things up when you can tag another character in and out.

Looking forward to seeing who's in this game. I imagine this was amazing in 1996 for kids that were big fans of both IPs. So will this be one side vs the other side, or will they all be mixed together in one big tournament fighter roster?

Well, it isn't one side vs the other side, because here we see Cammy teaming up with noted X-Men member Rogue. I love Rogue's outfit. Painted-on clothes with a jacket on top is a winner.

The demo basically shows the exact scene we just saw. Rogue is gorgeous. Psylocke finally has some competition!

Ryu...is shaking hands with Cyclops? So they're not foes? They just set so much money on fire. This is like when Eric Bischoff came out on RAW and hugged Vince McMahon, instead of leading some sort of insurgent faction. I guess the two sides are competing, but also unified against some new threat.

The character select...is still growing, still getting those incremental gains from game to game. This is a weird roster though. On the X-Men side, we've got the more popular characters from Children of the Atom, except they dropped Psylocke, possibly the most popular (it's either her or Wolverine). Replacing her is Rogue. Well, I can live with that.

On the World Warrior side, we've got five of the OG Eight. They inexplicably left out Guile in favor of Noted Guile Clone, Charlie. Also, E. Honda and Blanka are missing in favor of adding Cammy and Bison. It just me or is E. Honda always the character that gets dropped when there isn't enough game space for all the characters?

For a character I know nothing about, Rogue has tons and tons of visual charisma. Cammy is...well, Cammy's Cammy. Looks like we're mixing and matching rosters here. I'm going with Dos Chicas and the CPU is just going with whoever.

Right off the bat, this game looks very different from the first two that I just played. The sprites are smaller, more normal-proportioned, less huge and animated. In short, it looks like Street Fighter Alpha now.

Ryu has a HUGE Hadoken in this one.

Rogue fires back with elegant, statuesque jumps!

She has a driving elbow that looks pretty nice too. We already had Psylocke: The Post, maybe this'll be Rogue: The Post.

Rogue's super has her planting a kiss on her opponent, somehow doing major damage. How this damages your opponent is beyond me. Shouldn't this sort of thing heal? Or at least do zero damage if their opponent ain't into it?

Not only does he have a giant Hadoken, now Ryu can also fire a Kamehameha. Rogue evades it easily with her graceful, ballerina-like leaps.

I think Rogue is from New Orleans, like Gambit. ...I think Gambit's from there. I don't know all these superheroes and their origins.

A quick shot of Cammy battling Bison, seen here in the Wide Bison form that he'd take on in some of the late-90's Capcom games. It's sorta like how Hulk Hogan went from Wide Hogan to Slim Hogan during the 1992 steroid trials, except Bison went in the opposite direction.

As Ryu dishes out a Shoryuken, it's a good time to mention that I'm not going to be focusing on the Street Fighter half of the equation much in these playthroughs. Already planning to do something big with the Street Fighter series later this year, if the energy level holds up. So I'm looking a lot more at the Marvel side of the coin here.

For the rest of this playthrough I'm going with the really odd duo of Ryu and Magneto. Why would they ever team up? Why would Akuma and Wolverine ever team up? It doesn't make any sense, but then again, the beauty of it is that it doesn't have to make any sense.

Akuma has a nice purple fireball in this one. Purple fireballs are underrated and usually look more powerful than the normal orange or blue fireball colors. Here's more purple fireball content:

Oh yeahhh. And he can do an air-fireball:

Akuma is awesome. He and Ryu are easily my two favorite Street Fighters, depending on whether the situation calls for being good or bad.

Reach the end of Arcade Mode and the final fight is against Apocalypse. This guy was the villain of, you guessed it, X-Men: Apocalypse. Not sure what threat level he is in the grand scheme of superheroes. Probably not on a Darkseid/Thanos/Doom/Knull level but he's probably on the second tier with foes like Galactus or Brainiac. Still a huge cosmic threat but not one you'd base a phase of movies around.

He immediately grows to Mega Evolution proportions. This is a tough final battle because you can only damage him with attacks to the head, and he has a boatload of HP. Like an actual absurd amount of HP.

Special moves can be launched in midair in this game, which is awesome. Not sure if it's like that in the entire series, but it makes me wish ALL fighting games let you do this. Fighting games where you can only launch special attacks on the ground are suddenly obsolete. Mortal Kombat 2? Get outta here! (Except that Mileena can launch her specials in midair...she is a delightful, underrated MK2 character)

Apocalypse counterattacks with this mega-drill that does about 30 hits and can one-shot your entire life meter if the entire thing goes un-blocked. However, get a block going early enough and just ride it out and it's survivable.

Magneto has to step in and finish the fight after Ryu gets taken out. Which means that Magneto is then registered as my "main character" for the real final battle:

Fighting against your own tag partner! ...why? Apocalypse was a great final boss, and easily the most challenging final boss in this series (at least the first half, that I've played)

Well, whatever. I crush Ryu, completely stealing the thunder of the guy I actually defeated Apocalypse with, and...

...all of M. Bison's goons now follow Magneto. It's pretending that Bison was the final boss. Magneto's ending is just him absorbing the Shadaloo Crime Syndicate.

It just me or does Shadaloo just make one thing of a dimly-lit porta-potty on the edges of an amusement park? The area you dare not go to.

Kano's Black Dragon Syndicate was way cooler.

With that...Magneto is now the NEW M. Bison! He is...Magneto Bison!

They really murdered Balrog with this portrait. Yikes.

Doing a second run to get some more shots, because the first run left me with a pretty short post. This time it's all Rogue and Storm, sticking with the X-Men.

Storm has the power of thunderstorms and fantastic hips.

Rogue takes a shin to Gambit's face! I've never wanted to be concussed before so badly.

Rogue's devastating super returns! She kisses her foes and gives them, presumably, cooties.

She even kisses herself! That's right, to Rogue, meeting her mirror universe evil twin is nothing more than an opportunity for a make-out sesh.

Chun-Li's super is another big Dragonball Z inspired energy attack, like Ryu's Kamehameha. Dragonball Z was pretty big by 1996 (in Japan, that is...it was just beginning to get started here in the U.S.)

Rogue has a fireball attack. It isn't particularly impressive, and I barely ever use it because her other moves tend to all be so cool and effective.

Bringing in Storm, her super is a Ramuh-like lightning torrent. This is basically a screen-AOE and very difficult to avoid.

In what might be the most logical team-up ever, one of my final battles is against the brute-force team of Zangief and Juggernaut.

Juggernaut with a devastating frog splash!

Rogue was 25.

Rogue has an awesome air-dash that's reminiscent of the Mega Man X2 air dash.

Just another example of all of the great moves in this game, and how compulsively screenshot-able the entire series is.

Storm (w/ hips) takes on Apocalypse! Considering this is also a Capcom game, it's a nice coincidence that this final boss has such a resemblance to the final boss of Mega Man X. He's got big invincible hands and a weak point in the head, with highly-damaging attacks that'll ruin your day if you get trapped in the corners.

I do the cursory "you vs your tag partner" match at the end that I could really do without, and this time I go into the fight with my actual main character. Let's see what Rogue's ending is like.

Rogue's fetching civilian outfit. There should be a way to unlock this outfit for the entire game because it's the nicest outfit this side of Marian in that one spinoff arcade fighting game. ...I should really do that one soon too, think I will.

Rogue's ending has her wishing she was normal.

Chun-Li points out that none of these people are normal.

Like I mentioned before, impairments and differences are what you make of them, and some learning disabilities can be twisted around into a superpower with the right cultivation and not letting people tear you down too much in the meantime.

Another one in the can. I liked Marvel Super Heroes more than this one, and losing the Avengers characters felt like a step back. They return in the next game, as Capcom continues to dole out this universe increment by increment. If today's game is the first game in the series plus SF, the next one is the second game plus SF.

Next up...

...Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter.

Looking forward to getting to the meat that is Marvel Vs. Capcom, the fifth one in this eight-game series.

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