Last week, Capcom released its latest compilation of retro arcade games to massive acclaim. Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics features seven legendary titles, including a stunningly faithful port of the arcade version of The Punisher, and the hugely influential Marvel Vs. Capcom 2. Altogether, the seven games chart the history of Marvel and Capcom’s partnership and the amazing games that came out of it. Thank goodness for it, because until this collection was announced, many fans believed that they might be stranded on older systems.
For years, fans of these fighting games have found ways around Capcom’s reticence to port them everywhere. Services like Fightcade have existed for a long time now, allowing players who legally acquired the ROM files of these older games to play them with others online. That hasn’t stopped campaigns like #FreeMvC2 from taking off in the last few years, especially with the support of personalities in the fighting game community like the prominent Youtuber Maximillian_Dood. With fighting games being bigger than ever, thanks to widely observed tournaments like EVO and the proliferation of titles like Guilty Gear Strive and Street Fighter 6, there’s never been a better time to make these classics easily accessible. Now that the collection is finally out, folks are thrilled to have some of their favorite games readily available again.
The collection is more than just a few simple ports. All of the games feature online matchmaking—with some platforms faring better than others in this regard—and feature quality-of-life adjustments, like one-button-supers for beginners. Unfortunately, one-button-supers has not spared players online from being haunted by Justin Wong, one of the fighting game community’s most prominent competitors, known on the leaderboards as Wazzler. Since the collection was released, the FGC has already begun joking about how Wazzler is whooping people left and right in pursuit of the No. 1 ranking online. Over the weekend, he even purchased the Switch version of the collection, and has publicly stated his intent to try yo get the top rank across three different platforms simultaneously.
Unfortunately, everything is not exactly peachy on every platform. While consoles have had relatively few issues, PC players have been suffering through long matchmaking times, an inability to connect at all in some cases, the odd glitch or crash, and issues rebinding controls. And that’s all before getting their asses handed to them by Wong. While it’s definitely frustrated many players who have been looking forward to this collection for some time, these problems haven’t entirely slowed the game’s momentum or the outpourings of love.
Suffice to say, the community has shown up for this latest collection in tremendous force. MvC2 has now been freed, after all, and tons of other great games have come along with it. Their joy at the existence of this collection is utterly infectious, and nowhere does that seem more apparent than the game’s recent crop of Steam reviews. If you want a full picture of the Marvel Vs. Capcom experience, here it is.
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