Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 recently celebrated its 20th anniversary. It’s a game that I never really played “seriously.” I don’t play many games that way now, although there are games that I do wanna play in a more serious way. But MvC2 is still something that means a lot to me; and on the occasion of its 20th birthday, I wanted to try and write something, or at least get some thoughts down on paper. Naturally I’m doing this later than I’d have hoped, for a lot of reasons.
One of the things I come back to the most when I talk about the fighting games I like, is how satisfying it is to just press buttons, how good it feels to play the game when you have no idea what you’re doing. It’s why Dragon Ball is so fun, and why, even though all I’ve really done with MK11 is play the story mode, that remains an enjoyable experience. Because there are so many games and not enough time, so it’s impossible to play or take everything seriously; if you do, you’re on the road for major burnout down the line. Which is why “just pressing buttons” — and I mean that purely in the act of pushing buttons in the game, not in the way it gets used to minimize the real-world consequences of the actions of top players — is so important. Sometimes that’s all you have time for. And when you’re first learning games, just pushing buttons is what matters; it’s the thing that brings you back to a game.
When I first played Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, I was maybe 12. And before it changed a few years ago, there was this huge arcade thing in Disney World in Florida. I went there with family a few times when I was younger. And all the games in the arcade were free, so some afternoons and evenings, I’d go there with my brother, and we’d just push some buttons. There were lots of games there that came and went; at one point there was an iteration of Tekken, and I vividly remember playing Soul Calibur 2 and thinking Voldo was incredibly weird. But the game that sticks in my mind the most from those afternoons and evenings is definitely Marvel.
It was a kind of kismet. When I was first playing Marvel, it would have been the early 2000s, before the release of the first Iron Man, and the gradual global dominance of the MCU. I’d watched a lot of the TV shows — and to this day think that the TV versions of the Spider-Man Venom story, and X-Men Dark Phoenix one are infinitely better than their cinematic equivalent — and was gradually dipping my feet into the water of the comics via my dad. So of course, the game where I could play as Spider-Man and Venom and the X-Men is one that I would keep coming back to. I didn’t know what I was doing, there wasn’t really a command list I could easily access, to the point where I had absolutely no idea how to use Blackheart’s specials. But at the time, that didn’t really matter. What mattered was that I had fun, that I could jump around with Spider-Man and gradually work things out just by pushing buttons. And that’s always been my guiding philosophy for how I learn fighting games, and why I keep going back to the ones I do. Part of me wants to pick up Marvel 2 again as I write this.
Some of this obviously speaks to the power that a good IP can have when it comes to fighting games. It isn’t really a surprise I kept returning to Marvel, while the weirdness of Soul Calibur would mostly be a memory in the back of my head (Voldo’s strangeness, and the different axes that Astaroth had to choose from) until later when I saw and rented the PS2 version from Blockbuster (RIP), and that was a combination of both the curiosity of memory, and the fact that I could play as Heihachi, a character I recognized from playing my cousin’s Tekken games when I was too young to get them myself.
Given it was my growing affinity with superheroes — and, as is the way for so many people who end up going down a path where they don’t know how to describe themselves, the X-Men; even if that wouldn’t really fall into place until a few years later — and pop culture in my fighting games, that Dragon Ball also holds something of a special place in my heart. Because I’d wanted a game like DBFZ basically for as long as I knew that games like Marvel 2 existed. At home, on Friday nights, I’d watch the Dragonball Z TV movies; the future Trunks android story, Cooler’s Revenge, The Legendary Super Saiyan. And I always wanted a game where I could play as these characters, but like they were in Marvel. And in the end, I could, which is why DBFZ is the game I think about the most, the one I want to dedicate my time to, and maybe even compete in. And none of that would have been possible if I hadn’t stumbled onto an arcade cabinet of Marvel 2.
I never really got good at Marvel 2, or Ultimate Marvel 3. Like with its predecessor, it’s a game I’d play with my brother, neither of us knowing how to do everything that was available to us, but just having fun pushing buttons. When it comes to fighting games, competition, the lure of esports and prize money, I think things like that are easy to forget. It’s why “just pick a top tier” is simultaneously a meme and very good advice; if you’re playing to compete, why not just pick a top tier? After all, it makes it easier for you to win. But I think things like that make it easier to forget why people chose to compete, not just in fighting games generally, but in specific games. This obviously differs for people who are varying levels of “professional” when it comes to the FGC. But for a lot of people, I feel like competition straddles the line between that professionalism, and something that’s a little more personal. It’s why character specialists exist; they want to do well with a certain character, because that character means something to them. And often, certain games mean things to people too. It’s why everyone collectively lost their minds with the Marvel 2 Evo announcement (even if it was just a relatively small invitational, something that’s close to anathema for the FGC). Because the game means something. It came out at a certain time, when people were looking for something new, something that maybe captured other things that meant a lot to them. And maybe it is “only a game” but I don’t think that’s true. I think games like that are singular, and special.
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