It’s been a long time coming, but it’s finally here. The Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics includes some of your favorite Capcom-created Marvel games. 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, and The Punisher are all packaged together neatly. Thanks to the cries of millions of fans across the globe, all of these games are on modern consoles for the first time in years. This collection brings new features to the table while offering the same games fans know and love down to every detail. It’s official: Marvel vs. Capcom is BACK!
Well-Crafted Training Mode
The fighting game community has received a couple of re-releases of older games with revamped training modes. These revamped training modes allow new players to learn older games easily with some great learning tools. Capcom saw this as a great opportunity to apply this to the Marvel vs. Capcom collection, and boy, did they deliver. Aside from the usual showcasing of characters’ move lists, there is much to explore here. In all of the games’ training modes, you can set the dummy to do different actions like blocking, jumping, and crouching. You can also record the CPU to do an action and set the health bar and super meter to either auto-recover or not. However, the standout features in these training modes are the Attack Data, HitBox Viewer, and Network Delay options.
The Meat and Potatoes
Turning on the Attack Data allows you to see the damage of your individual hits and the total damage of your combos. It also shows you what’s the biggest combo you’ve done in the training mode so far and how long it will take to stun the opponent. The only thing I feel the Attack Data is missing is the frame data to see which of your attacks are advantageous, safe, or punishable on block. This would be helpful for players trying to learn offensive strategies with their characters.
Additionally, the HitBox Viewer is an exciting feature where players can see the maximum range of a character’s attack and see where they can get hit. For reference, the blue box is where you can get hit, whereas the red box is where your attack will hit. Finding your best pokes and how to beat characters’ tools will be done with this hitbox viewer.
The Network Delay option is a welcoming segment of these training modes. It allows players to set the level of network delay to simulate up to 10 frames. This is so that you can practice learning how to do your combos and move around even in the most delayed internet connections. Not every online match you play will have a flawless connection, so being prepared for this is critical.
Marquee Card
Lastly, I can’t discuss the training mode without talking about the Marquee Card feature. This card briefly overviews every character’s special moves, mechanics, controls, and much more. I can’t stress enough how useful this is because new players can get a quick summary of the games they are playing. It can be a lot to look at on paper, so I suggest taking your time and learning things slowly!
A Comfy Worldwide Brawl
Of course, we can’t talk about the latest fighting games without bringing up the topic of the online experience. This Marvel vs. Capcom collection gives all of these old games modernized online features that many will surely enjoy. You have your traditional casual, ranked, and online lobbies matches that you can enter, along with high-score challenges you can compete with players worldwide. The online lobbies allow you to spectate the main match, so there’s never a dull moment. However, the options you can customize for online matches stand out to me the most.
First of all, this game utilizes rollback netcode for its online connectivity. This type of netcode reduces the overall input lag and visual stuttering in online matches in fighting games. All the online matches I have played have been absolutely comfortable to play in and received next to no hiccups. Unfortunately, there are some matchmaking issues with how hard it is to find matches. As I write this review, Capcom is working on a fix for this problem, so I’m hoping for a patch as soon as possible.
Going back to the online customization options, you can choose whether you want cross-region matchmaking or not before selecting an online match. This is so that you aren’t limited to playing players that are only in your region. Moreover, you can decide to play either the Japanese or English versions of the games and change the input delay for online matches. Upon entering the match queue, you can play training mode, look at the museum, or play other games while waiting for a match. The online experience pretty much has everything you need to enjoy yourself, but I do wish that tournament mode was an option. Thankfully, there are a lot more quality-of-life features that add some flavor to this collection.
Multiple Ways to Experience the Game
This collection gives you the freedom to customize the way how you want your gameplay experience to look. In training mode, you can change the types of wallpapers, display filters, and display sizes you want. You can also make it to where you don’t have any wallpapers at all and just want to keep things simple. The display filters, in particular, are really cool because you can recreate the classic arcade visuals.
That’s not all, though, as you have in-game achievements called Fighter Awards that consist of in-game challenges for each game in the collection. It gives the player something to strive for in an offline setting. Having something like this is always good for players who might not want to enter online matches.
However, if you just want to sit on the game and vibe out, no worries! The game has a museum feature that has galleries of artwork, game design concepts, and soundtracks. It’s a great feeling to immerse yourself in this museum and see the amount of love and passion that went into making these classic games.
Fair Amount of Accessibility Features
But what if you are someone who finds these games difficult yet still wants to experience them? Well, you are in good hands, as I’m happy to reveal the accessibility options this game has in store for you. One of this collection’s biggest components is that you can do special moves with one button. This is for players who have a difficult time executing certain attacks, giving them an easier route. However, keep in mind that this feature can be used anywhere else except for online ranked matches.
Additionally, players can change the difficulty for all the games’ arcade modes. There are a total of 8 stars of difficulty, so play around with the setting and see what fits you. You can also change how much attack damage characters do to you, the timer speed, and the overall game speed.
Lastly, players are given the freedom to pause and unpause single-player content. What’s really cool, though, is that you can quick save at any time. This gives you the ability to instantly come back to a specific point in a level that was difficult for you and keep retrying it until you beat it. This is a common feature in a lot of classic re-releases now, so it’s great to see it here.
Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics Review – A Return to Form
Overall, this collection is absolutely spectacular! At long last, we have arcade-perfect ports of each of these titles that casual and competitive players can enjoy. Gone are the days when players had to find workarounds to experience these titles in perfect form. Additionally, the welcoming accessibility features and training modes make things easier for new players. Combined with the smooth online experience and great quality-of-life features, it’s hard to say this game is doing anything wrong. All we can hope from here is that Marvel vs Capcom 4 eventually becomes a reality sometime in the future.
Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics is available now for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and PC via Steam.
