Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection (available digitally 12th September 2024, physically 22nd November 2024)

[Julius]

Doooooooooooooood

Quote

Gonna take you for a ride back to the arcades with MARVEL Vs. CAPCOM Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics!

7 legendary games, all in one Super Heroic collection, coming to Nintendo Switch this year.

- X-MEN CHILDREN OF THE ATOM

- MARVEL SUPER HEROES

- X-MEN VS. STREET FIGHTER

- MARVEL SUPER HEROES Vs. STREET FIGHTER-

- MARVEL Vs. CAPCOM CLASH OF SUPER HEROES

- MARVEL Vs. CAPCOM 2

- New Age of Heroes - THE PUNISHER

Confirmed also for PS4 and Steam. 

Edited August 27 by Julius

[Dcubed]

ALL THE MARVEL... and the Punisher too I suppose.

Very nice

[Jonnas]

Absolutely unreal... So many gems in one place! So many janky, fast-paced games!

[Julius]

Thought it was worth sharing Maximilian Dood's reaction in this thread, definitely one of my favourite reactions of his over the years 

Following Max for a while was genuinely the only reason I knew this was a fairly big deal, but I certainly didn't know all the ins and outs of why that was the case. So who better than him to explain it all?

Anyways, I'd heard great things about MvC2's OST before, but hadn't really dived into any of the tracks. I changed that after this announcement and it is nothing short of freaking phenomenal. I luuuuuuuurve me some jazzy and funky tunes in video games, and this one sure as hell delivers on both fronts. 

Also, I haven't played a Street Fighter from start to finish before so it's safe to say that I haven't heard every rendition of these two classic themes...but these are definitely my favourite versions of Ryu's and Ken's themes from what I can remember having listened to. 

This is all a very long-winded way of saying: I'm in. Similar to backing the Shenmue 3 Kickstarter and checking out the first two games because of Huber's passion for them, I'll 100% be picking this collection up based on Max's passion for them. 

Not sure which platform I'll pick them up on, mind you...

Edited July 8 by Julius

[Jonnas]

1 hour ago, Julius said:

Following Max for a while was genuinely the only reason I knew this was a fairly big deal, but I certainly didn't know all the ins and outs of why that was the case. So who better than him to explain it all?

The MvC series has had multiple ups and downs over the years (Max didn't delve too much into it, but the period between MvC2 and MvC3 was also a "dark age" of sorts for the series, where it legitimately felt dead as well). The fact that the last game was such a flop pretty much spelled doom for the iconic partnership. Basically, if Capcom and Marvel aren't doing stuff together, it's easy to believe that all is lost.

That said, a collection of MvC is the stuff of miracles. Fighting game collections are still somewhat uncommon, and to think that one was made of so many titles that historically have had little or no console presence... It's mental.

3 hours ago, Julius said:

Also, I haven't played a Street Fighter from start to finish before so it's safe to say that I haven't heard every rendition of these two classic themes...but these are definitely my favourite versions of Ryu's and Ken's themes from what I can remember having listened to. 

My personal favourites out of the "classic" tunes are Magneto's and Captain America's. Great stuff.

3 hours ago, Julius said:

Not sure which platform I'll pick them up on, mind you...

In fighting games, the controller should be your top criteria. Whichever controller lets you do quarter-circles, half-circles, and Shoryuken-motions fairly comfortably, that's the one you should prioritise (Charge motions are also significant, but if you aren't used to 2D fighting games, these are going to be awkward regardless of the controller you choose).

The MvC series in particular has a motion that's significant across the board: the super jump (down-then-suddenly-up). It's a bit awkward to perform on a d-pad, but a joystick can do it with a flicking motion.

[Hero-of-Time]

The later games in the series suffered from ugly visuals and pretty bad rosters. It didn't help Marvel/Disney refused to use a lot of the X-Men characters due to Fox still owning them. The earlier games though? Utter class.

I played Marvel Super Heroes and X-Men Children of the Atom on my Sega Saturn. Both came at a time in the 90s when I was well into Marvel comics and the X-Men were very popular. My favourite comic book artist is Joe Mad who was pencilling Uncanny X-Men at the time. It was great seeing his work on the cover of Marvel Superheroes.

I was always gutted that the saturn version of Marvel vs Street Fighter and X-Men vs Street Fighter never made it over here. I had to settle or the PS1 versions that didnt allow you to swap in characters as the memory couldnt handle it. Not perfect versions but still great games.

Marvel vs Capcom 1 and 2 were something very special, especially the second game. I loved the character rosters, with the second games being significantly larger than the first. I also loved how in the second game you had to buy new characters from the shop. I remember me and my friends constantly backing in and out of it to rotate the stock in the hopes that our favourite characters were available to buy. Looking at you Gambit. I spent countless hours on both these games on the Dreamcast and then bought MVC2 again both on the PS2 and original Xbox.

I can't wait for this collection.

As for Max, sadly I can't get away with him. He does the whole stupid reaction face on a lot of his thumbnails and it never sits right with me. He has a large enough audience now to not play that game but unfortunately he still does it. 

[Julius]

20 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

As for Max, sadly I can't get away with him. He does the whole stupid reaction face on a lot of his thumbnails and it never sits right with me. He has a large enough audience now to not play that game but unfortunately he still does it. 

Ah, I get that, but I think it's simply the cost of playing the game at the highest level – unfortunately, you need the algorithm and general audiences on your side, and for some stupid reason, stupid reaction faces up front in thumbnails for reaction videos just does it for audiences. 

I don't doubt for a moment that if it were up to Max and these things weren't a factor then he'd come up with something else; I mean, he's got an anime intro for his videos which goes far and beyond what most other channels even attempt to bring to YouTube with their intros. 

The unfortunate truth is, as is the case with most streamers and YouTubers, the majority of Max's demographic is going to skew young (early teens to mid-twenties), and while I think Max's probably skews a bit older than the average streamer (simply because the topic of most of his videos is fighting games and the FGC), these thumbnails are designed to get new audience members in rather than keep old ones around...which is also just going to naturally skew towards trying to attract a younger demo. 

It's the continued juvenilisation of media, and unfortunately, it's a game everyone needs to play these days to stay relevant and keep numbers growing -- can't say I'm a fan of these thumbnails either, but yeah, it is what it is I guess 

[Helmsly]

6 hours ago, Julius said:

I'd heard great things about MvC2's OST before, but hadn't really dived into any of the tracks. I changed that after this announcement and it is nothing short of freaking phenomenal. I luuuuuuuurve me some jazzy and funky tunes in video games, and this one sure as hell delivers on both fronts. 

 

Hey that's from my YouTube channel, so that should give you an idea of how much I love this games soundtrack. That particular song is one my favorites from MvC2 (although I like every song in this game soundtrack lol)

 

I have so many good memories of playing MvC2 on my Dreamcast back when it came out and I always went back to it to play as it was just one of those games I always enjoyed.

A Marvel Capcom Collection was pretty much my dream game but I had assumed it was not going to happen until last year when Arcade 1up released a cabinets of several Marvel Capcom games. From that point I assumed it was only a matter of time before it gets a home release as it showed it was possible for Marvel and Capcom to release these titles again. Seeing this collection in the Nintendo Direct a few weeks ago made me incredibly happy, i honestly can't wait to play MvC 2 again and also to play the other games, i have played a few of them over the years but but only a few goes in the arcade when they came out.

Edit- Its worth looking at the official website for this collection, they've put quite a bit of effort into it: https://www.capcom-games.com/marvel-vs-capcom-fc/en-uk/

Edited July 8 by Helmsly

[Jonnas]

By the way, something that occurred to me, in case you aren't used to playing/purchasing collections of fighting games, there's something you should keep in mind: these are very likely going to be the Arcade versions.

This means that single-player content is going to be as minimal as it gets. Most of the games in this collection have character endings, I think, but MvC2, notably, has no character-specific endings. In fact...

16 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

I also loved how in the second game you had to buy new characters from the shop. I remember me and my friends constantly backing in and out of it to rotate the stock in the hopes that our favourite characters were available to buy. Looking at you Gambit.

...I imagine that the MvC2 shop is not going to be there. The roster is probably already unlocked from the get-go.

That said, they did add a Training Mode and specific character achievements, so maybe there will be something there.

[Hero-of-Time]

4 minutes ago, Jonnas said:

 

...I imagine that the MvC2 shop is not going to be there. The roster is probably already unlocked from the get-go.

 

That would be disappointing. The 360 release done this and it felt pretty pointless.

[Helmsly]

6 hours ago, Jonnas said:

By the way, something that occurred to me, in case you aren't used to playing/purchasing collections of fighting games, there's something you should keep in mind: these are very likely going to be the Arcade versions.

That does seem to be the case, the official site mentioned which ROMS they are using for each game:

I had a look around and this is the ROM from the arcade release. In regards to MvC2, this means very little as the Dreamcast came out a month later, so its basically the same.

Capcom did this with the Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection and I remember being a bit disappointed that we didn't have a choice of which version to play. That said, the trailer shows we have quite a few options to tweak the game

Plus they could always add content in the future.

6 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

That would be disappointing. The 360 release done this and it felt pretty pointless.

I had mixed feelings on it. I remember that I enjoyed unlocking the characters but over time it was too much of a grind. As you know, each time you brought a character it increased the price to buy the next one, and so even though I was playing this game for hours every day, it took me way too long to get enough points to buy all the characters and stages. I remember i towards the end I resorted to leaving the game running on Training mode as that was a way to get points. Another option back then was you could download save files from Gamefaqs directly onto the memory cards via the Dreamcast internet browser and download a completed save file.

Edited July 9 by Helmsly

[Hero-of-Time]

Yeah, I also used the training mode trick. I think most people did.

 

 

[Dcubed]

Will be interesting how they handle character unlocks in MvC2, because the arcade version is notorious for being an insane grind...

... that being said, there IS a built-in unlock-all code that is accessible via the Naomi arcade version's test menu... I could see them flipping that switch by default here, as the natural method of unlocking all the characters isn't supposed to be really user triggerable (the idea was that each machine/location was supposed to unlock characters slowly over a period of years, through repeated play/credits/time, in order to maintain interest amongst the public; basically On-Disc-DLC before On-Disc-DLC).

[Julius]

A physical release of the game has turned up on ShopTo (I think maybe the first time it's been confirmed to any extent to be getting one over here?), with an attached release date of 22nd November 2024 – which has since been removed. 

I feel like there's a small possibility here of an initial digital release (shadow drop during a Direct or something?) + delayed physical release, just because this seems like the type of game to do that, but either way, seems like 22nd November might be the latest we get our hands on this. 

Put my pre-order in 

Edited August 15 by Julius

[Julius]

Digitally available on September 12th, and physically available November 22nd!

HYPEEEEE

[Hero-of-Time]

In typical fashion, Capcom be screwing over EU Switch owners with just a code in a box when it comes to a physical version.

 

 

[S.C.G]

9 hours ago, Hero-of-Time said:

In typical fashion, Capcom be screwing over EU Switch owners with just a code in a box when it comes to a physical version.

Capcom cheaping out again?

Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection was released in 2018 on a physical Switch game card, for either the same price or cheaper than the digital version.

Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection will be released in 2024 as a code in a box, for the same price or more expensive than the digital version.

It gets better...

• Street Fighter 30th Anniversary Collection - game size 5157.00 MB - price £24.99
• Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection - game size 3246.00 MB - price £39.99

The file size is less than the collection of SF games which came out six years ago, so it's not even because it would be too much to fit on a game card.

Well, it is a decent collection, but if you really want to support physical games then either only buying the Switch version when it's heavily discounted, or just not buying it at all would probably be the best option, though it's not great to feel like you might need to not buy a collection on principle, especially if you only have a Switch and you really want to play these games, and if the game collection then doesn't do so well, Capcom would probably just cite poor sales as a reason to not bother with any more fighting game collections on the Switch.

I can't see that happening, it will still sell I'm sure, but for anyone who owns a PS4 / PS5 the game is actually being sold on a physical disc at least, so this is clearly the better option for supporting physical games, though if you only own a Switch, or just want to play the Switch version, it doesn't seem like much of a choice here.

Either way, let's hope that Capcom might choose to at least make one print run of the game on game card, otherwise, it's just money left on the table... it seems like an easy decision for a company which I assume wants to make some extra fight money?

[Jonnas]

To give the benefit of the doubt to Capcom, the licensing for these games likely justifies the increased price compared to Street Fighter 30th. That's all that said benefit gives them, however.

I got nothing that justifies the physical version being a code in a box. The whole selling point of a physical version of these games in particular is that they get to be preserved and distributed for far longer than digital. Insane that they got a true physical version in the US, but not in Europe. They keep finding ways to make PAL players into second-class consumers, even in 2024.

[Hero-of-Time]

What's crazy is how inconsistent they are. The original Mega Man and X collections only had half the games on the carts. They then release the Battle Network and Zero collections with everything on the carts. Along comes Capcom Fighting Collection and it doesn't get a PAL physical release at all. They are all over the place with their Switch releases.