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| PSN: Ishmael26b
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|  "Mugen vs Capcom" , posted Sun 1 Dec 04:49  
I'm messing about with the Marvel/Capcom collection, so I thought I would share my thoughts on the games.
First up: The Punisher
First off, there's a lot to love in the game. The Punisher himself has an absurd number of moves. From dash attacks, to izuna drops to a desperation move where you spin the opponent you are grappling as if you are giving them an airplane ride, there is no shortage of melee attacks. There's also shooting sections, but those are quite bad. The game seems to think the shooting is bad as well, since the gun sections seem perfunctory. Instead, the game wants you to hit people with bags of cement or lances (a strangely common weapon for organized crime goons.)
However, there are things that don't make the game click quite the way it should. You can only play as the Punisher or another character with identical moves. Instead of following the Final Fight template of multiple characters with differing playstyles, this feels like a throwback to Double Dragon. I hope you like the way the Punisher plays, because that's all you're getting. The color scheme in the game is also oddly muted. American comics of the time were garish affairs, and a far cry from the overexposed look of this title. Oddly, the NES Punisher game by LJN does a much better job of capturing the four-color look of Punisher comics at the time. I guess someone at Capcom got the memo, because subsequent Marvel games are much poppier.
Random stuff:  You occasionally have to fight a robot named "Pretty Boy." When you destroy his upper torso, he still lumbers around the screen under the name "Pretty Legs."
The voice clips of the Punisher sound like modulated audio files of someone's pet dog. They are amazing and should be the only method by which the character is allowed to speak. The Punisher shows up in a Marvel movie? I want him to introduce himself by saying "Awwwooowaaaw!"
Will I run out of interest in posting about the rest of the games before I run out of titles in the collection? Who knows, but we will find out.
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| PSN: Ishmael26b
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| "Re(3):Mugen vs Capcom" , posted Mon 9 Dec 22:32
Marvel Super Heroes
What a difference a game makes. In the very short time between CotA and MSH, Capcom figured out how these sort of games should handle. CotA was a game where you could shoot fireballs point-blank into the ground. In contrast, the moves in MSH seem well thought out, fit the characters, and actually work within the context of the game engine. Not everything works perfectly (instead of strategic use of the infinity gems, you tend to gobble them like candy to keep the opponent from having access) but the game is still a hoot. I love playing it to this day.
The presentation and animation is wonderful. It's big and colorful in the best manner of a 1990's comic book/arcade game. The character animation is also sublime. Shuma-Gorath must have been a nightmare to animate, never mind making it so that the creature could be playable.
For some reason, you can shred Captain America's outfit. What a curious easter egg.
Speaking of fan service, Thanos ends up having panty shots in his victory pose. I guess Thanos was popular enough to be the final boss in the game, but it's also obvious he wasn't the face of a giant film franchise. Him tossing bubbles at you during the climatic showdown doesn't fill one with awe.
Hitting someone with Juggernaut's punch is immensely satisfying. You can feel the dopamine flood your system every time his fist meets face.
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| PSN: Ishmael26b
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| "Recycled Sprites vs Capcom" , posted Fri 13 Dec 01:19
quote:
I’ve also long wondered if Marvel actually pushed them to include any characters in particular or if they made some decisions based on who they were seeing a lot in the comics they were looking at at the time.
The roster selection ranged from obvious to obscure, so I too am curious as to which characters made the cut. The difficulty of making a fighting game character also meant that some of the early picks lucked out and got far more representation than they warranted. That chronic loser Omega Red somehow made it into three games!
X-Men vs Street Fighter
I'm not certain I would classify this as a "good" game but I love it anyway. When this chimera of a game came out it felt so strange and slapdash. A bunch of old SF characters were tossed in with bits of CotA into one of those faddishly popular tag team games which were a plague on the industry at the time. When looked at that way, XMvsSF sounds more like a mixed together stew of refrigerated leftovers than a proper game. However, the thing is so goofball it wins me over.
It helps that the presentation is top notch. When Tekken Tag came out a few years later it couldn't be bothered making new character portraits. XMvSF, however, is bustling with new art. The pre and post fight art, the individual endings for each character... it all looks great. It also sells the game as being a cohesive whole. The Marvel sprites were already stylized, but this is the first game where Capcom was able to draw their character art as well. It helps to integrate these two very different types of characters into a tonally consistent game.
The game is also full of new backgrounds. Things like having the oil refinery explode halfway through the fight really sells how much power your characters are tossing about. Sure, some of them don't feel like the appropriate setting for a superhero or street fight, but the fact that XMvSF features the only shopping mall battleground I can think of is surprising.
Compared to what comes later, the gameplay is rudimentary. Much like CotA, you can tell the creators are making this up as they go and hoping for the best. Thankfully, the choices are quaintly charming instead of frustrating.
I had forgotten that after the big showpiece battle against Apocalypse you had to turn on your buddy and beat each other until only one was able to walk out. Thankfully this ruthless twist didn't make it into and further games.
I've said it many times, but my favorite thing about Capcom is their love of sticking people into tubes. XMvSF features tubes as far as the eye can see. It even has people tumble out of them mid-match! Truly a highwater mark for Capcom's tube games.
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| | "Re(1):Recycled Sprites vs Capcom" , posted Fri 13 Dec 04:34
quote:
I'm not certain I would classify this as a "good" game but I love it anyway. When this chimera of a game came out it felt so strange and slapdash. A bunch of old SF characters were tossed in with bits of CotA into one of those faddishly popular tag team games which were a plague on the industry at the time. When looked at that way, XMvsSF sounds more like a mixed together stew of refrigerated leftovers than a proper game. However, the thing is so goofball it wins me over.
To be fair, XMvsSF and Kizuna Encounter were exactly the games that started the tag team trend, weren't they? Sure, there have been tag team fighting games before, but none was particularly popular (in fact, nor was Kizuna Encounter, even though I like how it follows a very different direction than XMvsSF, with the restricted tag zones and the pro-wrestling rule of only one team member having to be defeated for the match to be over - it definitely needed a bigger roster, though).
Despite this game having a considerable amount of recycled sprites, I do like that Capcom cared to at least introduce Gambit, Rogue, Sabretooth and the SFA3 version of Cammy (the latter before they even considered to make a SFA3). This game definitely had an all-star roster (...well, except for Nash, but I guess maybe the developers felt they wouldn't be able to make a SFA3 version of Guile in time).
Maybe I'm this person right in front of you... nah probably not though.
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| PSN: Ishmael26b
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| "Re(2):Recycled Sprites vs Capcom" , posted Sat 14 Dec 01:43
quote:
To be fair, XMvsSF and Kizuna Encounter were exactly the games that started the tag team trend, weren't they? Sure, there have been tag team fighting games before, but none was particularly popular (in fact, nor was Kizuna Encounter, even though I like how it follows a very different direction than XMvsSF, with the restricted tag zones and the pro-wrestling rule of only one team member having to be defeated for the match to be over - it definitely needed a bigger roster, though).
Thanks for the correction, I had completely forgotten that this was the title that helped jump-start the tag craze. Now I retroactively hate the game.
quote:
SFA3 version of Cammy
I like the game again!
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| | "Re(1):Recycled Ideas vs Capcom" , posted Wed 18 Dec 00:22:
Yes, I remember seeing MSHvsSF for the first time and thinking it was basically XMvsSF with a different roster. The fact that it had less female characters than its predecessor also bothered me.
That said, I did like that Sakura and Dan were included, and was intrigued to realize that Sakura's special moves got different properties than they had in SFA2 (like the diagonal Hadouken, or Shououken becoming a rushing attack rather than an anti-air move). Dan's autograph move was probably a sign of the developers experimenting the idea of contrasting Marvel's "seriousness" with Capcom's animesque goofiness (something that would be emphasized in MvC1 and MvC2, and that was sadly lost in MvCI). And then I remember being confused by a picture of Norimaro in a videogame magazine preview (since he was neither a Marvel character nor a Street Fighter one), then being confused when he wasn't in the game.
On Marvel's side, Shuma-Gorath having a different standard color than he had in MSH was odd at first (I didn't know that the green color was the correct one, and still don't know why Capcom colored him purple in MSH), and Omega Red being chosen as the X-Men villain for the game was a weird choice (then again, he was a breakout character in Jim Lee's era, so it makes some sense).
EDIT: Oh, and one thing I disliked in this game is that it took away the special “flashing screens” that you’d get in XMvsSF by finishing the match with a Hyper Combo and that would change depending on the side your character represented (the SF characters had that yellow/orange flash from SFA2, while the XM characters had a blue/purple flash with a big “X” in the center). That differentiation between the two sides of the roster was a nice touch, but it never returned…
(unless we count the MUGEN game adaptation of Avengers vs X-Men, but it wasn’t made by Capcom)
Maybe I'm this person right in front of you... nah probably not though.
[this message was edited by Just a Person on Thu 19 Dec 22:05] |
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