MARVEL VS. CAPCOM 2
CAPCOM
DREAMCAST
FIGHTING

"ARRRGH!!!"

"Funamizu-san, what's wrong?"

"I'll TELL you what's wrong!  All this so-called 'fan' mail I've received about Marvel vs. Capcom is just people griping about characters that weren't in the game.  It's always blah, blah, blah, nag, nag, nag... where's Cammy?  Where's Juggernaut?  I mean, there's even a letter here from the Coalition for Crappy Self-Taught Martial Arts demanding that we release a Championship Edition of the game starring Dan Hibiki!"

"It gets worse, sir.  The post office just brought in fifteen more bags of mail, and just like last time, I'm sure half of those letters are from fans of the Marvel vs. series who want more characters in the sequel."

"Fine.  They want characters?  We'll give 'em characters.  Tell our programming team to extract all the sprites from all our arcade games featuring Marvel characters, up to and including X-Men: Children of the Atom.  And get another team to take at least a dozen characters out of Darkstalkers and Street Fighter Alpha... we're smashing as many fighters as humanly possible into the sequel."

"Well, I guess our CPS2 board could handle that."

"Probably not.  People also keep whining that the series hasn't changed enough over the last four years, so we're gonna change it, all right!  First, we're going to give players three characters per team instead of the usual two, and secondly, we'll make the backgrounds 3D, you know, to clam up those tech-headed dickheads at the professional gaming magazines.  Not the characters, though... we don't want a repeat of that Street Fighter EX 2 debacle that cost the company millions of dollars."

"But the only system that could possibly do all that is..."

"That's right.  Tell the programmers that we're shifting development from the CPS boards to Sega's new hardware... that Naomi thing.  It's more powerful than the second board, a whole lot less expensive than the third one, and it can handle a million or more of those polygons everyone seems to be going nuts over these days."

"B-but Funamizu-san!  It'll take years for our programmers to develop this game, especially since they'll starting from scratch with hardware they're not used to!"

"So be it.  Just be sure they get a damned impressive alpha on my desk in six months.  You're dismissed."

<SLAM>

"Heh, heh... let's see our customers complain about THIS game!"

Ah, I do love a challenge! Actually, I almost feel ungrateful calling attention to Marvel vs. Capcom 2's flaws.  I should be satisfied with the exciting three on three gameplay, the attractive backgrounds, and the fifty-six available characters, but I can't help but notice that, as close to perfect as this game is, it still leaves a surprising amount of room for improvement.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 does indeed have 56 characters, and that's fifty-six different characters for those of you who have a copy of Mortal Kombat Trilogy in your closet along with all your other skeletons.  Even more amazing than that is the fact that less than ten percent of the fighters offered aren't worth using... and I'm not talking about Dan or the easily dispached Servbot (they may be wimpy, but they're still fun to use!).  I personally don't like Thanos, Hayato, or the bone-clawed version of Wolverine, and I've taken a vow to never, ever play as Amingo.  I'm sorry, but that overgrown weed looks like a Mexican toddler's idea of the boogeyman, or that pickle thing from Fighter's MegaMix.  Everything about him, from the way he sprouts cactus patch kids to his moronic super moves ("Did he just whip out a pair of maracas?  OK, that's it.  I'm out of here..."), just makes me mentally blank out his portion of the character select orb when I first start a game.  And when the computer picks Amingo, I delight in pounding the chlorophyll out of him... at least he's useful as a punching bag, even with all those spines.

Even with those characters (morons) out of the picture, you still have a lot of fighters, and many of them are terrific, with plenty of special moves, some devastating and/or hilarious supers, and great personalities they didn't even have in their own games or comics.  That cheeky little monkey girl Sonson is the most cuddly character Capcom's made since the Mega Twins (or Chiki Chiki Boys, if you've played the game on the Genesis), and she even has that crazy POW symbol that used to be in all of Capcom's arcade titles... that is, before Street Fighter II was released.  If the POW touches Sonson's enemy, they become a great big fruit (OK, in Cyclops' case, he just becomes edible...) which she nibbles into oblivion.  Marrow from the X-Men looks like a female punk rocker with a calcium overdose, and those enormous bones jutting out of her back make great weapons.  Cable is the partially bionic, trigger happy son of Cyclops.  Thankfully, he's a lot less, er, festive than his old man, and that plasma gun of his is more than a match for dear old dad's eye beams.  Then there's the pirate Ruby Heart, Tron Bonne from Mega Man Legends, her most fragile Servbot, Jill Valentine from that crappy zombie game (you know the one...), and dozens of characters that have either appeared in a Marvel vs. game before or just felt they should be in this one.  Cammy's back, and so is the downright scary and damned cool Sabretooth.  Spiral's brought her endless supply of throwing daggers to the party, and Psylocke's still got both fists charged with deadly psychic energy.  Speaking of psychic power, M. Bison is ready to destroy all who oppose him with his, but Dan's just here to promote his Saikyo fighting style... hopefully without risking any life-threatening injuries in the process.  I could go on, and on, and on, but I'm sure you already see where I'm going with this... Marvel vs. Capcom 2 has a ton of wonderful characters.  Two tons if you include Juggernaut.

The number of fighters to choose from isn't the only thing that's grown... so has the size of the teams.  Now, players get to select three characters instead of two, and managing their resources becomes more important than ever.  For instance, your partners can be called into the ring briefly to attack, and any damage they take while assisting you can be recovered... but if they're already trying to heal from a particularly vicious attack, summoning them could give your opponent the chance to knock them out, robbing you of a teammate and a lot of potential energy.  Also, you can switch characters in the middle of super moves, cancelling the first and starting up a new one, but if you switch too quickly or use two moves that don't complement one another, you'll waste two meters of super energy on an attack that barely warranted the use of one.  Finally, you can use snapbacks which throw one opponent out of the ring and force another of your choice to take his place... this is great to use against characters you don't fight well against and enemies who desperately need time out of the ring to recover, but the snapback isn't always worth the level of super meter it costs.  Does your opponent's third character have enough recoverable damage to make it worth cheating him out of it?  Will you accidentally force in a fighter with lots of energy and a keen interest in avenging his partner?  Or will your snapback just be blocked?  These are all possibilities, and any of them could make winning the fight tougher than it needs to be.

Speaking of which, the Dreamcast controller isn't going to help you score any victories, either.  I mean, sure, you can use it to play the game, but you could also trim those unsightly nose hairs with a weed whacker.  Neither move is very smart, and both will leave you in a lot of pain, so in both cases you're strongly advised to use something else.  The standard Dreamcast joypad handles air combos and quarter circle motions well enough, but if you need to call in team members, forget it... you'll smash the controller's uncomfortable face buttons up to three times before one of your partners comes to your rescue.  Also, your teammates won't respond to a light touch of the analog shoulder buttons... you'll have to squeeze them down at least half way if you want to perform variable assists and team super combos.  No, that simply won't do at all.  If you can afford it, buy one of Agetec's Dreamcast controllers, or better yet, a controller convertor and one of the newer Saturn pads.  There isn't a joypad on Earth that's more responsive or better suited to fighting games... it's the next best thing to plugging your brain directly into the system.

You'll hear from about a million reviewers that the music in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 sucks, and I was inclined to agree with them at first.  After a few games, though, I had to admit that it's not bad for what it is... it's just that, well, it's the kind of music you'd expect to hear while holding some poker chips and a martini, not a Dreamcast controller.  Capcom's gotten into the annoying habit of creating themes for each of their game's soundtracks instead of writing tunes specifically for each character or round... it didn't bother me so much with Street Fighter III, because it was an entirely new game with its own style, but when Capcom introduced techno tracks to Vampire Savior and Street Fighter Alpha 3, it drove me nuts, because both the Alpha and Darkstalkers games already HAD their own signature styles that didn't need to be altered.  I was hoping that the Marvel vs. series would be spared from this fate, but unfortunately, it just took it a little longer for Capcom to ruin its soundtrack.  I'm sorry, but I don't want to swing my body while my characters are firing razor sharp bones out of theirs.  I could learn to live with a jazz soundtrack if it were in a game with an all-Capcom cast, but Marvel's superheroes demand something manlier.  I've heard rumors that there's a Playstation 2 version of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 in development... hopefully, it will include classic Marvel vs. tracks in addition to the ones in the Dreamcast game.

Until then, you can always divert your attention to Marvel vs. Capcom 2's fabulous graphics.  The character artwork hasn't changed much (did it really need to?), but the backgrounds are a quantum leap ahead of the ones in the first few Marvel vs. games.  They're all constructed from beautifully textured polygons which rotate just slightly when you walk by them, creating the most convincing illusion of parallax you've seen in a side-scrolling fighting game since the arcade version of the first Killer Instinct.  And that detail!  When you're aboard Ruby Heart's airship, you'll notice everything from the imposing metal dragon skull at the base of the crow's nest to the clouds that partially obscure the deck as the ship passes through them.  The southwestern stage is just as picturesque, with plenty of towering mesas in the background, a vulture that circles over the playfield (hoping to pick the bones of defeated fighters, perhaps?), and even a blanket and scarf left hanging on a clothesline, suspended between two (thankfully non-animated) cactuses.  If Arizona had been this pretty, I'd probably still be there today!

I suppose there's only one real problem with Marvel vs. Capcom 2 aside from the designers' strange taste in music... it's that Capcom crammed so many characters into the game that they didn't get the chance to let their personalities shine through.  Everyone shares the same ending, and instead of letting the fighters speak after they win a match, the announcer offers his own pointless commentary ("I almost had a heart attack!"  I'm sorry, but almost isn't good enough for me...).  You know, maybe some of us are interested in Sonson's opinion, or why she wants to beat the green goo out of that thing at the end of the game.  Just what is Abyss, anyway?  I don't read Marvel comics regularly but it seems like I would have heard about this guy from SOMEONE if he'd been an important character in any of them.  Is he a new Capcom character?  The mascot for Nickelodeon's Gak?  Bill Cosby after eating one too many bowls of lime Jell-O?  It'd be nice if there were SOME explanation for this thing's existance, but all I can figure out is Abyss was created by an orb-like artifact, and that you eventually have to destroy it to stop him.  But since he only seems capable of creating foul weather which threatens to kill Amingo and all of his stupid cactus people, why would you want to defeat him?  That just makes me want to send Abyss a fruit basket, or a lifetime supply of whatever it is ocean-sized blobs of green slime eat.

It's obvious that Capcom's ever-loosening grip on its sanity is starting to rub off on me, so I'd better end this review.  I can't honestly say that Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is perfect, but a fighting game that's better than Soul Caliber, Dead or Alive 2, and Street Fighter Alpha 3 has got to be pretty close.