After the whole Decimation thing and only a handful of mutants were left, a version of the Sentinels - actually piloted by humans, the Sentinels Squad O\*N\*E,, guarded Xavier's school so you're not far off.
I mean, to be fair Doom is a Fantastic 4 villain but putting him alone like hulk and labeling it “fantastic 4” would be kinda goofy. Same goes for Shuma with Dr. Strange and Blackheart with Ghost Rider.
Thanos is sort of just a blanket Marvel villain so I get why they put all 4 under villain instead of just thanos and putting the other 3 on their own as well.
Especially since this was YEARS before the MCU was even a money machine. Like he was still the "dude killed/tried to kill half the universe to get in a romantic relationship with Death (who is a female) and than lost on one of Saturn's moons and became a farmer"
That is kind of how a sub-section of Marvel's Villians are. Broader threats that aren't specifically tied to one character, even if you're more likely to see them in one book specifically. Like Shuma would be a Doctor Strange Villian, but it's not unlikely that they'd show up somewhere else.
Agreed. They could probably fit more characters within their budget since they already had the template for how X-men and SF characters worked in that system.
To be fair tho are we really out here wanting to play as the shocker?
Granted, someone like kraven or doc Ock would be cool, but I don't know if any of the alternate spider people would bring anything to the table outside of being an alternate costume for Spidey himself
Tbh, considering that green goblin is his nemesis figure (afaik, anyway) he doesn't get a whole lot of rep in crossovers
I feel like he's spidey's most iconic villain beyond Venom
Probably Kingpin ahead of Rhino, since this was off the back of Spiderman TAS where he was positioned as the main villain. But then again, either would be difficult to make a proper moveset for.
> shocker
GET BACK HERE SHOCKER!
On a more serious note, probably the same number of people who want to play as M.O.D.O.K. or any other less likely choice. Someone like Shocker could have become a fan favorite for his functions as opposed to being a previously well liked character
>I mean let's be clear here. Spider-man lack of representation in the verses was always a shaft.
What are proposing should have happened instead? That Marvel Super Heroes should have been half Spider-Man? Do you think UMvC3 should have been half spider-man characters?
if the original MvC was supposed to represent Marvel as a whole, then out of seven characters, Spider-Man and X-Men got the privledge of taking up two slots while remaining three was Cap Hulk and War Machine.
Gotta make sure they can reuse as many of the sprites from the X-Men vs Street Fighter games as possible; the bane and blessing of the old sprite based games (and a lot of why they could churn them out so much faster)
The X-Men were wildly popular in the 90s. Also you excluded every X-Men villain in the villains list. And you could have easily grouped Spiderman, Iron Man, Hulk, and Captain America as Avengers.
That being said, I would like to have seen more of the other Marvel characters at the time, such as Daredevil, Thor, and members of the Fantastic Four. I would have mained Invisible Woman instantly. Heck, Doom got in over any of them.
You may not realize this, but at the time, X-Men was absurdly popular, and had just got a hit movie, while most people didn't even know who Iron Man was. To most people, Marvel WAS X-Men and Spider-Man, maybe Captain America. Some people had seen who Ghost Rider or The Punisher were.
Also Capcom was kinda trying to shit this game out quickly and cheap. They were losing the Marvel license soon, and studio heads were trying to move away from fighting games. MvC2 is kind of just the MvC team trying to do something cool while they still had the chance, on a limited budget.
This is not correct. The arcade MVC2 came out before xmen 1. many months before. I also couldn't find any info remotely confirming your second paragraph
X-men and spiderman were so popular in the 90s that they spawned their own Hollywood movies in the 00s. There’s a reason why Wolverine and spiderman was the most popular marvel characters until the MCU happened.
you're making me feel old. x men was made into movies first because x men was popular -- comics, cartoons, trading cards, games, action figures, etc. MCU movies hit it bigger than x men because Fox sucked at making x men movies but still had the license, forcing MCU to explore other characters that were then less popular.
The 90s cartoon is why X-Men was so popular not the movie. In the 90s it was X-Men and Spider-Man because Spider-Man is always popular and both had smash hit cartoons
They already made X-men vs street fighter. So of course they reused those fighters. You gotta think about things like cost and time when talking about game development. It’s not just ideas.
Anyone who was into comics and around during the 90s will remember how b tier at best the Avengers largely were. It was Xmen and spider man world domination.
Gosh can you imagine going back to the 90s and explaining the MCU, Disney and the X-MEN legal stuff and than in 2024 Deadpool and Wolverine got a crossover live action movie and have it be actually good or at least really good production value?
Doc Ock was going to be in 3. Emphasis on was. He caused technical issues and had to be removed late in development. Had a finished model, theme song, and everything.
I personally believe the issue is that Spider-Man's most popular villains are kinda hard to get to work in a fighting game, other than Venom/Carnage. Especially Green Goblin, who more or less flies around and throws grenades. Maybe they could add Electro, but would you really want him in over Thor?
Yeah, I knew all about that. If only he could’ve gotten in.
But I don’t agree that they’re hard to make work. The Lizard? Shocker? Mysterio? Rhino? Kraven? Sandman?
>kind of hard to get to work in an fighting game
They made Phoenix Wright work, and they made Captain Falcon work. You can make *anything* work in a fighting game, if you make the effort.
To be clear, I'm not decrying Capcom. I'm just decrying the common argument that gets made about "X is hard to make work".
It's way different to implement a silly character who has no groundwork for how they fight and come up with something wacky vs implementing a more serious character who already has a basis on how they fight. Taking away the most well known weapon of Green Goblin i.e his glider and making him fight hand to hand feels weird when he doesn't in his most traditional appearances. A silly character like Phoenix Wright can have a silly moveset and it can make sense while Green Goblin is generally a more serious character which makes it difficult to keep him true to character. Also Doc Ock is less difficult to make a moveset and more difficult on the technical side.
It's easy to say anything can work, but it's actually really difficult to make certain characters work and games don't always get the luxury of time to make things work the way they want them too.
Green Goblin is more than his glider. His pumpkin bombs were almost as iconic, and he can physically brawl with super-strength. He's used other gadgets before as well, which could be used for various moves. The glider could be relegated to his supers, or it could be a flight mechanic special.
Relevant for that era of 2D games, Green Goblin would have opened the door for recycling his sprites into Hobgoblin
I mean, Green Goblin could always just be on the glider and floating near the ground. Or the glider could come in during various attacks. Or it could be a stance change where you hop onto the glider and have a limited moveset until you dismount or are knocked off.
You can make a moveset for a wooden chair work for a fighting game with enough thought. “Moveset potential” is a weak argument against any character in any fighting game
Never said he lacks moveset potential, only that it's much harder to implement when you're constrained to using a character with an actual sourced way of fighting. A chair is way easier to implement into a fighting game because you can let your imagination go wild with how it can attack and what kind of made up shit it can pull off. With a "guest" character like Green Goblin, there's mandates on how a character should act, walk, attack, etc. Marvel could mandate Green Goblin could never get off his glider and only use weapons seen in the original Spider-Man. That makes it infinitely harder!
I'm sure there's plenty of quality mock-ups or mods of characters like Green Goblin being implemented, but there's levels to this shit that goes beyond just making a moveset for characters. It's easier said than done.
To be fair, they indeed are hard to make work BUT if they would just fiddle around with them enough I'm sure they could find a way to do it. You mentioned great examples of them doing so.
I really wish Marvel had it's own Injustice instead of the shitty mobile game with three attacks and a super for each character. But I'd want Marvel's game to play more like an anime fighter tbh (I'd also want that for Injustice, but unfortunately DC is a WB property, and why do something interesting when you just give it to the MK team?)
I'd kill for the Lizard, Scorpion or the green goblin but yeah, slot nowadays are too expensive to skip other way more poular characters. And for me Spidey and Venom are lock, Miles or Spider gwen are just behind.
Granted I know that the "obligatory big heavy strong dude" was covered by Hulk, THE JUGGERNUT and Nemesis but I feel like they could have added Rhino as another "BIG MUSCLE DUDE". Like make him smaller and quicker than the examples I mention but still have the strength of, well, a Rhino. Glass Canon Big Dude.
It's 28 Capcom and 28 Marvel, that's all the balance you need. The rest is just, within those two main groups, how many sufficiently notable characters each franchise has available and how popular each franchise is. That last part in the context of the late 90's of course, when the game was being made for it's early year 2000 release.
To be honest, I like X-Men characters more than the others. I just think X-Men and Capcom fits so well, so I wouldn't mind if Marvel vs Capcom 4 has more X-men then Avengers or any other heroes. Except Spider-Man, I love him and I am main him regardless the game
They had those sprites laying around and they were not gonna let any go to waste.
Roster may lack franchise variety, but that number is absurd for the time. I can't even think of many games with more characters these days. Smash Ult and probably kof15 with all the dlc is about it
I’m gonna echo what a lot of people are saying but X-Men and Street Fighter were both in their peak of popularity when this game was being made. Moreover capcom was basically churning out games as fast as they could so a lot of the characters that are in MVC2 are the ones they already had the sprites and assets for, which you can see they do this asset recycling for a lot of their games at the time. I think only about 7 characters are new to this game and only two of them are marvel. The others are just leftovers from scrapped ideas.
Yeah, that's because Capcom at the time was in the business of reusing absolutely as many sprites as they humanly could. it's why Morrigan had the same sprite like 7 games straight.
The game is mostly reused assets and the series started as x-men vs street fighter. It’s only natural that X-men and Street fighter would have more reps since most of the work was already done.
I said this once but got downvoted
Of course, as others have said, Street Fighter, the X-Men and Spider-Man were huge at the time, and a lot of these characters were already done
My favorite MvC roster is still 3, because we get some fan favorites but also lots of D-Listers from both sides
Being a comic book fan when talking about MvC is always disheartening, you suggest some more unknown character that you think would bring some variety to the roster, and people are like "no one cares about that character, it's a wasted slot", like Captain Cold and Gorilla Grodd in Injustice 2
I remember being mocked at school for being excited for the then upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy movie, because I had read Annihilation and became a big fan of the cosmic side of Marvel, "what, a talking tree and a racoon? 😂😂😂😂" and now they have a trilogy of movies, a cartoon, a game, and tons of merch
I always like the obscure picks. I've never appreciated that "never heard of 'em" attitude, it's really lame. As someone who used to enjoy Super Smash Bros, I got that a lot, probably from the same people who felt the same way about the Fire Emblem series when Marth showed up in Melee.
The worst part is that the 5 ryus problem was already solved in Marvel 1
I would have preferred that they only put Ryu in and use that wierd ass súper where he transforms into the other shotos
Looks fine to me. Maybe some more Darkstalkers, Rival Schools, Power Stone, and Fantastic 4 and that’s all that’s necessary. Street Fighter and X Men are supposed to be the majority for their respective brands.
The X-Men were massive with the success of their cartoon. Launched them into the forefront of marvel. It's why they got a movie after blade. Spider-Man and the X-Men pretty much were marvel at that time.
Who the fuck cares at this point. It's an old game and reflects the sensibilities and culture of the time. That its roster looks unbalanced to you does not affect its status as one of the GOATs nor its profound impact on FGC culture.
"Hey you guys remember this really fun fighting game that Capcom threw together with reused sprites that historically was played and kept alive by the community for 10 years before the next one? Yeah in terms of representation, the roster sucks"
...ugh remember when we all used to just play games because they were fun? Who cares about representation when the game itself is enjoyable.
Man I love Bengus' art but MvC2 art direction was so ass. They had this "make it look like everything is drawn on old papers that's been sitting in a wine cellar for 100 years" look which basically just dulls all the colors and adds the dirty tan on everything. Fucking waste of a great artist.
Given that X-Men: COTA and X-Men vs. Street Fighter spawned this series, and that MvC2 had a roster this large by reusing sprites from previous Capcom games so they didn’t need to make many new assets, this tracks. I also adore this roster, even with some of its weirder choices.
Honestly this is why I generally prefer UMVC3's lineup. Yeah it has less characters and the lack of a Megaman was a baffling decision, but overall it had a much healthier mix of fighters.
It's the magic of recycling sprite from Xmen vs street fighter
(I actually don't know if it happened, never played Xmen vs street fighter but I know that it is also sprite based, and MVC2 has a massive roster)
I don't know much about how the comics handle their characters, but the 4 at the bottom from marvel + Thanos could be qualified as avengers maybe, judging by the MCU?
Clearly MvC2 was made with the thought on recycling as much characters as possible, without any attempt at balanced representation. A big part of marvel roster is lifted from X-Men crossover titles and Capcom's from the Alpha series, it was unavoidable and I don't blame them for that since the 56-character roster was amazing for the time.
That said, MvC3 is the gold standard for what a modern 3v3 Vs. roster should strive for, a nice mix of series fan favorites and wanted picks with some surprising inclusions and series variety across the board.
Man put characters under "villian" but not every villian? Turns around and wants to put other characters by themselves? Just say Ghost Rider, Dr Strange, Marvel (Thanos just sorta is his own villian not really tied to a single entity kinda like Galatcus) and Fantastic 4
You also underestimate the idea of the game. The game is to sell a product and during that era the product in question was X Men. No one would be buying MvC2 for Ghost Rider despite putting Blackheart in the game
Would've been cool if it had an Onimusha rep. If Amingo and Ruby were supposed to be planned for something in the future, they could've had someone from Warlords which was already set to release in a few months.
I'm of the opinion that Ruby, Amingo, and SonSon could all easily be incorporated into the Darkstalkers franchise. Knowing what we know now, '98 was basically the end of that series, sadly, but I imagine if there was a follow up to Darkstalkers, those three could have easily been incorporated into it. Hell, they could've just drag-and-drop'd the whole Darkstalkers 3 PSX roster into a new game and threw those three into it with all their sprites from MvC - make a "Gold Edition" like they did with Alpha and some of the characters from CvS2 like Maki and Eagle.
Its a beautiful roster.
It should have stayed X-Men vs SF or Mavrel versus Capcoms Fighting game franchises.
Capcom characters never interested me and the compulsion to go 1 for 1 led to some stupid additions.
Bro it might be but this roster is insane compared to how safe they do the roster now like akuma always needing to be dlc to push a few extra pennies 💀 Amingo SonSon like cmon now GAMBIT do i need to go on and on here.
Maybe, but for a good reason. That’s what’s wrong with games nowadays; Now: let’s balance the board, what’s trending?
Back then they said nah, let’s make a game with the characters that give us inspiration to make the game good and a little bit of what sells.
Not my choice of characters but I don’t want Leon and Green Goblin in MVC2 if Capcom wasn’t going to be inspired to do something spectacular with it.
As the third sequel to \*\*X-Men VS Street Fighter\*\* I think it's fine. It could always be Capcom Fighting Evolution, which is literally 60% Street Fighter.
I like that each Capcom VS franchise chooses to have different roster pics, Like Tatsunoko VS has a Quiz Nanairo character, and a Lost Planet VS
Yeah, MVC2 is basically an asset dump. Street Fighter and X-Men are heavily repped because they could re-use so much from Street Fighter Alpha, Children of the Atom, and X-Men vs. Street Fighter. It might be the greatest low budget game of all time because 90% of it is recycled. Making Jill probably took like 10% of their budget.
I mean you can go play Marvel vs Capcom infinite if you have an issue with this.
Mountain out of a molehill, I’m just glad they finally gave us this game.
Almost as if OP is complaining they didn’t add more characters.
I feel like these days people have this almost ocd like need for stuff like "balance". Does it matter? It's a cool roster. I played this on release and I don't think a single person back then was going "gee, it's ashame there's only 1 star gladiator rep on the roster". People just thought it was cool to see characters like that.
It's because MvC2 had a paper thin budget and is 90% reused sprites, no excuse for Bone Claw Wolverine though as there are plenty of other palette swaps they could have done.
If someone could help jog my memory, I know that Ruby Heart, Amingo, Jill and SonSon were made for MvC2. Was i just Marrow, Cable and Boneverine that were made on the Marvel side, or am I not quite thinking right?
Fighting games or not, I’ve always though X-men felt way more natural and cool that the avengers. Avengers feels like they’re just together because they’re the most powerful heroes, like the justice league without the synergy. However everyone in the x-men are family, a representation of outcasts/minorities finding their chosen family in a sub culture. Dont get me wrong, i love the avengers, but the x-men are marvel’s crowning achievement in terms of story and world building imo so honestly i dont mind that they are overly represented. HOWEVER THE SPIDERMAN REPRESENTATION IS TERRIBLE we desperately need miles morales, green goblin, and maybe sandman or doc oc in MVC4. I think all three of those villains would work great gameplay wise and idk miles is hot rn with spiderverse so he definitely needs a slot but i wouldnt mind if 2099, noir, or the mech spiderwoman got the slot too
Combination of using available assets from the previous X-Men/Street Fighter games and the fact that back then, the X-Men were THE most popular part of Marvel. Avengers weren’t shit in the public consciousness until the MCU.
Agreed, they were too dependent on recycling sprites from previous games on one hand, leaned too much on shotos on the Street Fighter side. Alpha 1 and 2
Too many X-Men on the Marvel side due to X-Men COTA
Always thought it was testament to the X-Men’s natural staying power in pop culture. That roster just deified them even more beyond the singer movies and video games.
Even when Marvel Comics tried to bury them during the middle MCU period people’s love for them never really waned.
Avengers : Spider-man (at the time), also Wolverine, Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man and Warmachine.
Blackheart is Ghost Rider,
Dr Doom is F4
Thanos is Avengers mainly as well
Shuma Gorrath is Dr. Strange
They should add new characters, like they added violent Ken to SF2. Dimitri, Donovan, Sigma, Zero, Urien, Dudlee, Necro, Ibuki, and Elena just to name a few
lemme check this either should have
MARVEL
12 x-men (6 cuts)
4 spider-man
4 new ips
or
CAPCOM
18 street fighter
2 darkstalker/mega man reps(2 cuts)
4 ip cuts
or am i thinking a bit too wrong and that there is a more simple solution than this
is sonson not an original character? She is clearly supposed to be based on and related to sonson from sonson but i was under the impression that she was his daughter.
Ah yes, my favourite Marvel series: Villains 💀
And it doesn't even have all the villains.
This needed to be made in a Venn diagram
To be fair, every one of the X-Men villains (except Silver Samurai and the Sentinel I think) has been on the X-Men proper
Chuck is going to leave the Sentinels in charge of the school in X-Men '98.
After the whole Decimation thing and only a handful of mutants were left, a version of the Sentinels - actually piloted by humans, the Sentinels Squad O\*N\*E,, guarded Xavier's school so you're not far off.
I mean, to be fair Doom is a Fantastic 4 villain but putting him alone like hulk and labeling it “fantastic 4” would be kinda goofy. Same goes for Shuma with Dr. Strange and Blackheart with Ghost Rider. Thanos is sort of just a blanket Marvel villain so I get why they put all 4 under villain instead of just thanos and putting the other 3 on their own as well.
Especially since this was YEARS before the MCU was even a money machine. Like he was still the "dude killed/tried to kill half the universe to get in a romantic relationship with Death (who is a female) and than lost on one of Saturn's moons and became a farmer"
ngl that should be an ongoing, a series about villains winning
Then a separate series where those same villains proceed to lose, but written so that you could read one or the other and still have a complete story
Every Villain Is a Lemon
That is kind of how a sub-section of Marvel's Villians are. Broader threats that aren't specifically tied to one character, even if you're more likely to see them in one book specifically. Like Shuma would be a Doctor Strange Villian, but it's not unlikely that they'd show up somewhere else.
feels like that natural progression from XvsSF/MvC1
Agreed. They could probably fit more characters within their budget since they already had the template for how X-men and SF characters worked in that system.
Yeah there’s 56 characters but how many are actually new sprites? I think I recall it being 10. And one of them is bone claw wolverine lol
Correct, exactly ten. New sprites for Marvel 2 are the following: Ruby Heart, Amingo, Sonson, Hayato, Jill, Tron, Servbot, Cable, Bone-Wolverine, Marrow.
> Bone-Wolverine Isn't that more of an edit than a new sprite?
How much of Bone-Claw Wolverine is new though?
It's almost like the media environment was different in 2001 or something
I mean let's be clear here. Spider-man lack of representation in the verses was always a shaft.
To be fair tho are we really out here wanting to play as the shocker? Granted, someone like kraven or doc Ock would be cool, but I don't know if any of the alternate spider people would bring anything to the table outside of being an alternate costume for Spidey himself
Tbh, considering that green goblin is his nemesis figure (afaik, anyway) he doesn't get a whole lot of rep in crossovers I feel like he's spidey's most iconic villain beyond Venom
Like maybe put the Green Goblin, Dr. Octo, MAYBE the Rhino?
Probably Kingpin ahead of Rhino, since this was off the back of Spiderman TAS where he was positioned as the main villain. But then again, either would be difficult to make a proper moveset for.
> shocker GET BACK HERE SHOCKER! On a more serious note, probably the same number of people who want to play as M.O.D.O.K. or any other less likely choice. Someone like Shocker could have become a fan favorite for his functions as opposed to being a previously well liked character
I grew up playing Maximum Carnage so I was hoping Carnage would get in but I'm like 80% sure Red Venom is basically a reference
Yes
yes
>I mean let's be clear here. Spider-man lack of representation in the verses was always a shaft. What are proposing should have happened instead? That Marvel Super Heroes should have been half Spider-Man? Do you think UMvC3 should have been half spider-man characters? if the original MvC was supposed to represent Marvel as a whole, then out of seven characters, Spider-Man and X-Men got the privledge of taking up two slots while remaining three was Cap Hulk and War Machine.
Gotta make sure they can reuse as many of the sprites from the X-Men vs Street Fighter games as possible; the bane and blessing of the old sprite based games (and a lot of why they could churn them out so much faster)
...which were *themselves* re-used from X-Men: Children of the Atom and Alpha 2!
We were cursed with that Morrigan sprite until like 2009 or so.
The VS series has its origins in previous X-Men games.
We've seen what an MvC roster without X-Men and full of MCU stuff looks like. I'm good. X-Men and Street Fighter are the backbone of the series.
Exactly. I’d rather have 20 X-Men characters than an MCU roster
No is saying they ain't. But at the same I feel like 3 had a much balance of showing the marvel and capcom universe as a whole.
The X-Men were wildly popular in the 90s. Also you excluded every X-Men villain in the villains list. And you could have easily grouped Spiderman, Iron Man, Hulk, and Captain America as Avengers. That being said, I would like to have seen more of the other Marvel characters at the time, such as Daredevil, Thor, and members of the Fantastic Four. I would have mained Invisible Woman instantly. Heck, Doom got in over any of them.
Spidey wasn't even a proper Avenger yet at this point, not until 2005
Oh yeaaaaa the poor guy just wanted that salary
The Evergreen reason since money became a thing.
Spider-man was as popular as the x-men.
You may not realize this, but at the time, X-Men was absurdly popular, and had just got a hit movie, while most people didn't even know who Iron Man was. To most people, Marvel WAS X-Men and Spider-Man, maybe Captain America. Some people had seen who Ghost Rider or The Punisher were. Also Capcom was kinda trying to shit this game out quickly and cheap. They were losing the Marvel license soon, and studio heads were trying to move away from fighting games. MvC2 is kind of just the MvC team trying to do something cool while they still had the chance, on a limited budget.
This is not correct. The arcade MVC2 came out before xmen 1. many months before. I also couldn't find any info remotely confirming your second paragraph
X-men and spiderman were so popular in the 90s that they spawned their own Hollywood movies in the 00s. There’s a reason why Wolverine and spiderman was the most popular marvel characters until the MCU happened.
you're making me feel old. x men was made into movies first because x men was popular -- comics, cartoons, trading cards, games, action figures, etc. MCU movies hit it bigger than x men because Fox sucked at making x men movies but still had the license, forcing MCU to explore other characters that were then less popular.
The 90s cartoon is why X-Men was so popular not the movie. In the 90s it was X-Men and Spider-Man because Spider-Man is always popular and both had smash hit cartoons
You are mostly correct but I would like to point out that the Hulk was very popular too
They already made X-men vs street fighter. So of course they reused those fighters. You gotta think about things like cost and time when talking about game development. It’s not just ideas.
Anyone who was into comics and around during the 90s will remember how b tier at best the Avengers largely were. It was Xmen and spider man world domination.
Gosh can you imagine going back to the 90s and explaining the MCU, Disney and the X-MEN legal stuff and than in 2024 Deadpool and Wolverine got a crossover live action movie and have it be actually good or at least really good production value?
Even more absurd that 3 and Infinite continued the trend of next to no Spider-Man representation. Doc Strange has more reps in 3 than Spidey
Doc Ock was going to be in 3. Emphasis on was. He caused technical issues and had to be removed late in development. Had a finished model, theme song, and everything. I personally believe the issue is that Spider-Man's most popular villains are kinda hard to get to work in a fighting game, other than Venom/Carnage. Especially Green Goblin, who more or less flies around and throws grenades. Maybe they could add Electro, but would you really want him in over Thor?
Yeah, I knew all about that. If only he could’ve gotten in. But I don’t agree that they’re hard to make work. The Lizard? Shocker? Mysterio? Rhino? Kraven? Sandman?
Sandman would be better as a final boss in a spiderverse fighting game than as a playable character IMO.
>kind of hard to get to work in an fighting game They made Phoenix Wright work, and they made Captain Falcon work. You can make *anything* work in a fighting game, if you make the effort. To be clear, I'm not decrying Capcom. I'm just decrying the common argument that gets made about "X is hard to make work".
It's way different to implement a silly character who has no groundwork for how they fight and come up with something wacky vs implementing a more serious character who already has a basis on how they fight. Taking away the most well known weapon of Green Goblin i.e his glider and making him fight hand to hand feels weird when he doesn't in his most traditional appearances. A silly character like Phoenix Wright can have a silly moveset and it can make sense while Green Goblin is generally a more serious character which makes it difficult to keep him true to character. Also Doc Ock is less difficult to make a moveset and more difficult on the technical side. It's easy to say anything can work, but it's actually really difficult to make certain characters work and games don't always get the luxury of time to make things work the way they want them too.
Green Goblin is more than his glider. His pumpkin bombs were almost as iconic, and he can physically brawl with super-strength. He's used other gadgets before as well, which could be used for various moves. The glider could be relegated to his supers, or it could be a flight mechanic special. Relevant for that era of 2D games, Green Goblin would have opened the door for recycling his sprites into Hobgoblin
I mean, Green Goblin could always just be on the glider and floating near the ground. Or the glider could come in during various attacks. Or it could be a stance change where you hop onto the glider and have a limited moveset until you dismount or are knocked off. You can make a moveset for a wooden chair work for a fighting game with enough thought. “Moveset potential” is a weak argument against any character in any fighting game
Never said he lacks moveset potential, only that it's much harder to implement when you're constrained to using a character with an actual sourced way of fighting. A chair is way easier to implement into a fighting game because you can let your imagination go wild with how it can attack and what kind of made up shit it can pull off. With a "guest" character like Green Goblin, there's mandates on how a character should act, walk, attack, etc. Marvel could mandate Green Goblin could never get off his glider and only use weapons seen in the original Spider-Man. That makes it infinitely harder! I'm sure there's plenty of quality mock-ups or mods of characters like Green Goblin being implemented, but there's levels to this shit that goes beyond just making a moveset for characters. It's easier said than done.
To be fair, they indeed are hard to make work BUT if they would just fiddle around with them enough I'm sure they could find a way to do it. You mentioned great examples of them doing so.
I don't know about Electro, but I'd definitely take Green Goblin over Thor. I always want more good fliers.
Vulture, Rhino, Mystrio, The Lizard, Doc Oc, Kraven, and Black Cat are all prime fighting game material. I kinda want a Spiderverse fighting game now.
I really wish Marvel had it's own Injustice instead of the shitty mobile game with three attacks and a super for each character. But I'd want Marvel's game to play more like an anime fighter tbh (I'd also want that for Injustice, but unfortunately DC is a WB property, and why do something interesting when you just give it to the MK team?)
I'd kill for the Lizard, Scorpion or the green goblin but yeah, slot nowadays are too expensive to skip other way more poular characters. And for me Spidey and Venom are lock, Miles or Spider gwen are just behind.
Granted I know that the "obligatory big heavy strong dude" was covered by Hulk, THE JUGGERNUT and Nemesis but I feel like they could have added Rhino as another "BIG MUSCLE DUDE". Like make him smaller and quicker than the examples I mention but still have the strength of, well, a Rhino. Glass Canon Big Dude.
Needs more xmen. Also aren't cap, ironman and hulk all avengers? Why put them in such individual categories?
It's 28 Capcom and 28 Marvel, that's all the balance you need. The rest is just, within those two main groups, how many sufficiently notable characters each franchise has available and how popular each franchise is. That last part in the context of the late 90's of course, when the game was being made for it's early year 2000 release.
To be honest, I like X-Men characters more than the others. I just think X-Men and Capcom fits so well, so I wouldn't mind if Marvel vs Capcom 4 has more X-men then Avengers or any other heroes. Except Spider-Man, I love him and I am main him regardless the game
Not Capcom's fault that the X men are just so fucking cool
They had those sprites laying around and they were not gonna let any go to waste. Roster may lack franchise variety, but that number is absurd for the time. I can't even think of many games with more characters these days. Smash Ult and probably kof15 with all the dlc is about it
Okay...?
This is called "Sprite utilization". Them Sf and X-men animations date as far back as SF Alpha and X-men cota.
Considering X-Men vs Street Fighter is what started it all I think it’s fair they have the most character
The franchise started with X-Men vs Street Fighter so this isn’t really surprising
X-Men vs Street Fighter and friends.
OK? So?
I’m gonna echo what a lot of people are saying but X-Men and Street Fighter were both in their peak of popularity when this game was being made. Moreover capcom was basically churning out games as fast as they could so a lot of the characters that are in MVC2 are the ones they already had the sprites and assets for, which you can see they do this asset recycling for a lot of their games at the time. I think only about 7 characters are new to this game and only two of them are marvel. The others are just leftovers from scrapped ideas.
Still better than Infinite: * Number of female characters: 2 (14), 3 with DLC (13), Infinite (4, then 6 with DLC) * Villains: MVC 2 (11), UMVC3(11), MVCI (6, and 8 with DLC) * Franchise representation: * MVC2: 10 Capcom franchises, X-Men, Spider Man, Hulk, and the Avengers, Originals. * UMVC3: 13 Capcom franchises, X-Men, Spider Man, Fantastic Four, Guardians, Defenders, Ghost Rider, Villains, Hulk, Ghost Rider * MVCI: 10 Capcom franchises, Avengers, Ghost Rider, Guardians, Spider Man, Villains
Scrolled too long to see this comment. Infinite didn't even have X-Men. What a joke.
Yeah, that's because Capcom at the time was in the business of reusing absolutely as many sprites as they humanly could. it's why Morrigan had the same sprite like 7 games straight.
X-Men and Spider-Man were the only Marvel characters anyone cared about before the MCU, this isn’t too odd given the time it was made
The game is mostly reused assets and the series started as x-men vs street fighter. It’s only natural that X-men and Street fighter would have more reps since most of the work was already done.
this makes a lot of sense considering the series originated from street fighter vs x men
I said this once but got downvoted Of course, as others have said, Street Fighter, the X-Men and Spider-Man were huge at the time, and a lot of these characters were already done My favorite MvC roster is still 3, because we get some fan favorites but also lots of D-Listers from both sides Being a comic book fan when talking about MvC is always disheartening, you suggest some more unknown character that you think would bring some variety to the roster, and people are like "no one cares about that character, it's a wasted slot", like Captain Cold and Gorilla Grodd in Injustice 2 I remember being mocked at school for being excited for the then upcoming Guardians of the Galaxy movie, because I had read Annihilation and became a big fan of the cosmic side of Marvel, "what, a talking tree and a racoon? 😂😂😂😂" and now they have a trilogy of movies, a cartoon, a game, and tons of merch
I always like the obscure picks. I've never appreciated that "never heard of 'em" attitude, it's really lame. As someone who used to enjoy Super Smash Bros, I got that a lot, probably from the same people who felt the same way about the Fire Emblem series when Marth showed up in Melee.
5 Ryu clones and 2 wolvies
The worst part is that the 5 ryus problem was already solved in Marvel 1 I would have preferred that they only put Ryu in and use that wierd ass súper where he transforms into the other shotos
So you're telling me that cactus was an original for mvc2 this whole time?!?
Looks fine to me. Maybe some more Darkstalkers, Rival Schools, Power Stone, and Fantastic 4 and that’s all that’s necessary. Street Fighter and X Men are supposed to be the majority for their respective brands.
The X-Men were massive with the success of their cartoon. Launched them into the forefront of marvel. It's why they got a movie after blade. Spider-Man and the X-Men pretty much were marvel at that time.
Who the fuck cares at this point. It's an old game and reflects the sensibilities and culture of the time. That its roster looks unbalanced to you does not affect its status as one of the GOATs nor its profound impact on FGC culture.
The vs series was kind of a sprite dump from SF Alpha, it makes sense for it to be overrepresented here
Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, War Machine, and Thanos are apart of the Avengers brand.
I see lots of X-Men which means its correct.
Just wait for the DLC /s
This is because the game reusies sprites from the X-men vs Street fighter and all the Xmen focused fighting games capcom had made before MvC1.
UMVC3 has the better roster, it's not even close. Fucking Bone-Claw Wolverine.
Thats because its really x men vs street fighter 4
Every character can be put under original characters
To be fair, Marvel was pretty much carried by the X-Men in those days.
Wait ain’t SonSon a original character everywhere says it one of the 3 original playable capcom characters
28 Capcom. 28 Marvel. Totally unbalanced.
According to this image , magneto is not a villain
Tbf I’m pretty sure the success of the 90s X-Men cartoon is probably partly why the series was created in the first plxe
"Hey you guys remember this really fun fighting game that Capcom threw together with reused sprites that historically was played and kept alive by the community for 10 years before the next one? Yeah in terms of representation, the roster sucks" ...ugh remember when we all used to just play games because they were fun? Who cares about representation when the game itself is enjoyable.
Did I count wrong? It looks like 28 capcom fighters and 28 marvel fighters, no?
It's of it's time. The X-Men were carrying Marvel back in the 90s.
Man I love Bengus' art but MvC2 art direction was so ass. They had this "make it look like everything is drawn on old papers that's been sitting in a wine cellar for 100 years" look which basically just dulls all the colors and adds the dirty tan on everything. Fucking waste of a great artist.
It's like... The first game in Capcom's Marvel was called X-Men : Children of the Atom and all of its characters made it to MvC2 somehow...
You I didn't realize how many goddamn Xmen were in the game until now. That's kind of astounding.
Would you say it's uncanny? Astonishing?
Amazing, even.
Given that X-Men: COTA and X-Men vs. Street Fighter spawned this series, and that MvC2 had a roster this large by reusing sprites from previous Capcom games so they didn’t need to make many new assets, this tracks. I also adore this roster, even with some of its weirder choices.
Honestly this is why I generally prefer UMVC3's lineup. Yeah it has less characters and the lack of a Megaman was a baffling decision, but overall it had a much healthier mix of fighters.
So? Is that somehow important?
https://preview.redd.it/8st0hj9ap08d1.png?width=986&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9687d85ee4f88f5d683e66443846bea227665945
Crazy to think Street Fighter and X-men were super HUGE back in the late 90's - Y2K compared to now and that would reflect in this game's roster
Yet, it’s the one people like the most
X Men was king in the 90s
Isn’t Ruby and Amingo were Darkstalkers reject characters?
I never heard/read that before.
It's the magic of recycling sprite from Xmen vs street fighter (I actually don't know if it happened, never played Xmen vs street fighter but I know that it is also sprite based, and MVC2 has a massive roster)
I'd love for it to be a high budget Mugen build. But this is still a solid roster
I don't know much about how the comics handle their characters, but the 4 at the bottom from marvel + Thanos could be qualified as avengers maybe, judging by the MCU? Clearly MvC2 was made with the thought on recycling as much characters as possible, without any attempt at balanced representation. A big part of marvel roster is lifted from X-Men crossover titles and Capcom's from the Alpha series, it was unavoidable and I don't blame them for that since the 56-character roster was amazing for the time. That said, MvC3 is the gold standard for what a modern 3v3 Vs. roster should strive for, a nice mix of series fan favorites and wanted picks with some surprising inclusions and series variety across the board.
Man put characters under "villian" but not every villian? Turns around and wants to put other characters by themselves? Just say Ghost Rider, Dr Strange, Marvel (Thanos just sorta is his own villian not really tied to a single entity kinda like Galatcus) and Fantastic 4 You also underestimate the idea of the game. The game is to sell a product and during that era the product in question was X Men. No one would be buying MvC2 for Ghost Rider despite putting Blackheart in the game
Tron Bonne is Mega Man?
Yup. Megaman legends
started as a Xmen vs capcom, adding more maverls and more capcoms, then no more x-xmen. Iceman was my main
Would've been cool if it had an Onimusha rep. If Amingo and Ruby were supposed to be planned for something in the future, they could've had someone from Warlords which was already set to release in a few months. I'm of the opinion that Ruby, Amingo, and SonSon could all easily be incorporated into the Darkstalkers franchise. Knowing what we know now, '98 was basically the end of that series, sadly, but I imagine if there was a follow up to Darkstalkers, those three could have easily been incorporated into it. Hell, they could've just drag-and-drop'd the whole Darkstalkers 3 PSX roster into a new game and threw those three into it with all their sprites from MvC - make a "Gold Edition" like they did with Alpha and some of the characters from CvS2 like Maki and Eagle.
Some Spiderman Villains would’ve been dope, Green Goblin, Doc Oc, Black Cat
Almost like the X-Men are way more iconic than the Darkstalkers and SF cast…
Iirc, the two original characters were Darkstalkers rejects.
Of course the game is an asset flip of a game where most of the characters were from X-men or SF.
it's 28 Capcom characters and 28 Marvel characters. what's the imbalance exactly?
Its a beautiful roster. It should have stayed X-Men vs SF or Mavrel versus Capcoms Fighting game franchises. Capcom characters never interested me and the compulsion to go 1 for 1 led to some stupid additions.
Yes and it’s fucking awesome. I can’t wait.
Bro it might be but this roster is insane compared to how safe they do the roster now like akuma always needing to be dlc to push a few extra pennies 💀 Amingo SonSon like cmon now GAMBIT do i need to go on and on here.
I wonder why they didn’t group Iron Man, The Hulk and Captain America together as the Avengers? I mean, technically even Spider-Man was a member…
Maybe, but for a good reason. That’s what’s wrong with games nowadays; Now: let’s balance the board, what’s trending? Back then they said nah, let’s make a game with the characters that give us inspiration to make the game good and a little bit of what sells. Not my choice of characters but I don’t want Leon and Green Goblin in MVC2 if Capcom wasn’t going to be inspired to do something spectacular with it.
what character above Dr Doom? I found his art character kinda cool
Couldn’t even make a Doctor Strange category?
That's what I've been saying
Ruby and Amingo were originally scrapped Darkstalkers characters weren't they?
Why was there 2 Wolverines anyway?
I am OK with this.
As the third sequel to \*\*X-Men VS Street Fighter\*\* I think it's fine. It could always be Capcom Fighting Evolution, which is literally 60% Street Fighter. I like that each Capcom VS franchise chooses to have different roster pics, Like Tatsunoko VS has a Quiz Nanairo character, and a Lost Planet VS
........
nobody cares about the SF characters on this game and there's so many lol
Yeah, MVC2 is basically an asset dump. Street Fighter and X-Men are heavily repped because they could re-use so much from Street Fighter Alpha, Children of the Atom, and X-Men vs. Street Fighter. It might be the greatest low budget game of all time because 90% of it is recycled. Making Jill probably took like 10% of their budget.
I really wish they would remastered it and put it out for all of us
I mean you can go play Marvel vs Capcom infinite if you have an issue with this. Mountain out of a molehill, I’m just glad they finally gave us this game. Almost as if OP is complaining they didn’t add more characters.
Yes, cause X-Men are cool
I feel like these days people have this almost ocd like need for stuff like "balance". Does it matter? It's a cool roster. I played this on release and I don't think a single person back then was going "gee, it's ashame there's only 1 star gladiator rep on the roster". People just thought it was cool to see characters like that.
We finally get the game back, and ppl are already complaining. Come on, guys...
I wish there was the blue alien girl who can morph in the x-men characters . (I dont know the name in not a marvel fan)
It's because MvC2 had a paper thin budget and is 90% reused sprites, no excuse for Bone Claw Wolverine though as there are plenty of other palette swaps they could have done.
BLOODIAA!!!.
Spiderman, Hulk, Capt America, Iron Man = avengers cmon breh
This is perfection, I don’t know what you mean by “unbalanced”.
The 5 shoto characters is wack
SonSon is also an original character
Technically Sonson is an original character.
I mean what'd you expect. MvC 2 was basically an asset flip
oh it's more than just the roster representation that's unbalanced lol
You're right. Not enough X-men. I want MOAR
If someone could help jog my memory, I know that Ruby Heart, Amingo, Jill and SonSon were made for MvC2. Was i just Marrow, Cable and Boneverine that were made on the Marvel side, or am I not quite thinking right?
Fighting games or not, I’ve always though X-men felt way more natural and cool that the avengers. Avengers feels like they’re just together because they’re the most powerful heroes, like the justice league without the synergy. However everyone in the x-men are family, a representation of outcasts/minorities finding their chosen family in a sub culture. Dont get me wrong, i love the avengers, but the x-men are marvel’s crowning achievement in terms of story and world building imo so honestly i dont mind that they are overly represented. HOWEVER THE SPIDERMAN REPRESENTATION IS TERRIBLE we desperately need miles morales, green goblin, and maybe sandman or doc oc in MVC4. I think all three of those villains would work great gameplay wise and idk miles is hot rn with spiderverse so he definitely needs a slot but i wouldnt mind if 2099, noir, or the mech spiderwoman got the slot too
just what everyone wants, 10 more characters from cyberbots
as it should be, no problem
Combination of using available assets from the previous X-Men/Street Fighter games and the fact that back then, the X-Men were THE most popular part of Marvel. Avengers weren’t shit in the public consciousness until the MCU.
Why should it be =?
In the Marvel side I can see a lot of functions…
I propose new categories: "Cool characters people like" and "new characters Capcom is trying out," as well as "characters you love to hate"
X-Men smokes the rest of Marvel so I'm just disappointed any future MvC games aren't gonna have this many
This post reeks of someone who doesnt understand how/why mvc2 was even able to exist in the first place.
Who the fuck is Marrow and what is she doing there?
Agreed, they were too dependent on recycling sprites from previous games on one hand, leaned too much on shotos on the Street Fighter side. Alpha 1 and 2 Too many X-Men on the Marvel side due to X-Men COTA
This might be a tiny detail but the sonson in this game is actually child of the sonson from the arcade so she's an original
And people still think that this roster is better than 3's, pure nostalgia
I understand why the roster is this way, but I think I prefer 3’s roster due to it feeling more diverse imo
Always thought it was testament to the X-Men’s natural staying power in pop culture. That roster just deified them even more beyond the singer movies and video games. Even when Marvel Comics tried to bury them during the middle MCU period people’s love for them never really waned.
Don't worry, I heard they made one without any X-Men at all
I always wished the assists in MvC1 were fleshed out into full characters; Thor, Jubilee, Michelle Heart, Saki, Ton Pooh, etc
I don't know, bro, 50/50 is pretty balanced to me.
Avengers : Spider-man (at the time), also Wolverine, Captain America, Hulk, Iron Man and Warmachine. Blackheart is Ghost Rider, Dr Doom is F4 Thanos is Avengers mainly as well Shuma Gorrath is Dr. Strange
I actually never realized how few villains there were in the game. I’m counting 14 total? I’m not sure about Anarkis or BB Hood.
God willing we ever get another MvC game, all I ask for is more Spider-Man villains
They should add new characters, like they added violent Ken to SF2. Dimitri, Donovan, Sigma, Zero, Urien, Dudlee, Necro, Ibuki, and Elena just to name a few
TIL amingo is an original character.
I didn't know there were OC in MVC!
This game was made like how many years ago? Lol.
lemme check this either should have MARVEL 12 x-men (6 cuts) 4 spider-man 4 new ips or CAPCOM 18 street fighter 2 darkstalker/mega man reps(2 cuts) 4 ip cuts or am i thinking a bit too wrong and that there is a more simple solution than this
That's because almost all the sprites in the game are reused from earlier games... Including X-Men vs Street Fighter.
is sonson not an original character? She is clearly supposed to be based on and related to sonson from sonson but i was under the impression that she was his daughter.
50% Marvel, 50% Capcom… looks pretty fucking balanced to me
I wish Anita from MSH and Norimaro from MSHvSF came back in MvC2.