Pong and Beyond

722nd played so far

Genre: Fighting
Platform: Arcade/Dreamcast
Year of Release: 2000
Developer: Capcom
Publisher: Capcom

I’ve had a chance to play the Marvel vs Capcom series before, although that was the third part of the series rather than the second. Tying into Capcom’s Street Fighter franchise at first, setting up its characters against Marvel superheroes, the sequels have started to involved more other Capcom characters.

The memorable part of my experiences so far is that it isn’t just one character against another. Instead, you assemble a team of three and use them all against your opponent. It’s a style that other games probably had, but this is the only one I know of that does it and feels more like the only one that uses it to this extent.

Our Thoughts

Man, if you’re going to limit your soundtrack (I can see why you would, considering cost and such), please make sure it’s not as loud and in your face at this. The soundtrack was incredibly limited, but so present that it got annoying and distracting. Maybe that shouldn’t matter, but you shouldn’t really need to mute a game to play it, especially when the sound so useful everywhere else. It’s not a major complaint, but when I am making notes and setting up things, I tend to get stuck on the results screen and it gets to you.

The game itself for the most time feels like a fighter, not one that I can really distinguish from the others – by now it’s clear this isn’t my genre and I don’t think I’m giving myself quite enough time to get used to them, the perils of this list. The fighters are pretty distinct from each other, and with each having three different movesets, you get quite a bit of variation even in there. Of course, most still need to be unlocked, which means favourites I’m looking for like Mega Man take a while before you get to them. There are a lot of things like that to unlock, but happily most modes get you there. It takes a few fights, but there are quite a few good options for them.

The big feature, though comes in from the teams. This goes beyond tag teams, where you switch between fighters, although that, of course, helps. More important, as long as you have multiple heroes left alive, you can make group attacks that are quite a bit more useful, as you’d expect. There’s the usual stuff about charging up a meter, but it does feel great when you can pull it off.

Final Thoughts

Prefixing all of this with “for a fighting game”, this game has given me quite a bit. Although the roster of character is good, if limited, I didn’t feel like it necessarily always brought that much more. I gravitated towards the Marvel side because I knew it better, and wish I could have played with some more favourites, but it was good. It’s the team battling that really made it interesting for me, setting the game apart and giving it its own direction. Still a fun thing to play.