MARVEL vs. CAPCOM Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics Review

We’re living through a veritable golden age of fighting games right now. It feels like you can’t go more than a couple of months without a new feature-rich, mechanically dense and utterly addicting fighter coming out, and with the hefty amount of DLC support modern fighting games get, even the ones that are a bit long in the tooth still feel fresh years after release. There’s a new wave of gamers taking to these games and entrenching themselves in the fighting game community (FGC). Despite flourishing modern releases, though, so many of the older iconic staples haven’t been easily playable or accessible in ages. Enter Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics to right some of these wrongs.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is arguably the game that kicked off the culture and energy that we’ve associated with the FGC for so long. Now, thanks to Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, everyone and anyone can be taken for a ride in this all-time classic – as well as play the six other games that helped form the history and backbone that would ultimately lead to this all-star fighting game’s birth.

I can’t imagine there’s an equal amount of fever and hype around all of the games in this collection. Obviously, the star of the show is Marvel vs. Capcom 2 – the 3v3 crossover fighter from 2000 that is pretty undeniably one of the best fighting games of all time for multiple reasons and across numerous categories. It’s a game full of boisterous style and campy, flashy vibes that you can’t help but smile at. Sure, back when it first came out, people hated the soundtrack so much that you couldn’t go to a single FGC meetup without seeing someone rocking a custom MvC2 mixtape full of Ricky Martin and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony tracks. Nowadays, there’s as much of a charm to the goofy character-select music as there is to the beautifully rendered character portraits, the overwhelming stage animations, and the feverishly fluid sprite animations.

What I had never a strong finger on until now, though, was just how many games Capcom made as part of their partnership with Marvel, which ultimately brought them to the iconic character-stuffed tag fighter we all know and love. MvC2 is actually the fourth game in a series of Capcom x Marvel crossover fighters – and there were two Marvel-only fighting games based on Street Fighter 2 that came before that. Plus a Punisher beat-em-up!

All of those games make up this collection, and I wish the game itself did a better job of presenting that history and chronology. In-game, none of these titles get blurbs or descriptions explaining their historical context – you can’t even see what year they were released. I had a sneaking suspicion that X-Men: Children of the Atom and Marvel Super Heroes were made during the Street Fighter 2 era, but I couldn’t confirm that theory until I went to the official website for this compilation.

Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics isn’t entirely lacking in archival-focused features, though. There’s a Museum mode that provides dedicated art galleries and music players for each game in the pack. The art galleries are astounding, providing not just high-quality scans of every playable character portrait, but even arcade-ending sketches, design document pages, stage concepts, original arcade marquee images, and more. There should be a more structured way to sift through all of these, though – each image is numbered and vaguely titled, but you need to scroll through each one manually in full-screen. The music player is a little more robust, although you can’t customise any of the music played within the actual games.

Each entry in the pack has also been updated to be the most feature-rich version of each game. Every hidden character and unlockable/secret color palette is available, but you can decide to disable them or require their original unlock requirements if you so choose. Part of me wishes the game did a better job at providing documentation on how to access some of these secrets or what they specifically are, but it’s also kind of fun that you get to emulate that old-school vibe of frantically asking friends “Is Akuma in Marvel Super Heroes???” to seek the truth.

Each game also provides a new training-mode, letting you freely select your characters and stage on top of enabling access to frame data and extensive training CPU options. For a game like Marvel vs. Capcom 2, it’s a game-changer that makes competitive play more accessible than ever. And when you’re ready to compete, each game offers casual, lobby, and ranked online play for you to test your skills.

I’m honestly blown away by this release – in an era where Capcom has been pushing so many of their legacy franchises forward with high-budget, modernised sequels and follow-ups, seeing them concurrently respect their past and make it all so accessible is a standard that I wish every game publisher of their scale would follow. For this pack to not only exist, but be as feature-rich as it is, makes my heart soar.