S1E17 - Marvel vs. Capcom 2

Welcome back to another episode of Discreadair, the podcast where every week we dive into the fascinating and extensive library of the greatest selling video game console of time, the PlayStation Two. I'm Derek Kicker.

Hey, everybody, Ian here. I just wanted to jump in. I edit the episodes. This is the first time Kicker has first try gotten through the entire intro without flubbing it. And I think I needed to stop down the episode real quick and congratulate him. Congrats, buddy.

Welcome back to another episode of Discreed Air. Fucking shit. I'm never going to get that on the first rip. Welcome back to another episode of Discreet Air where every week we take a look no, every week we dive into the extensive and fascinating library of the greatest selling of the greatest I know. It's fucking so close. A podcast where we shit and forget our lines and fuck this whole goddamn thing up.

All right, back to the episode.

And this week, I don't got anything clever to say. We're just playing marvel versus Capcom. Two new Age of Heroes.

Bam. Capcom presets.

Marvel versus Capcom Two. New age of heroes. Marvel versus Capcom Two. Marvel versus Capcom Two.

Hell yes.

This game is very expensive. Tell me how much I believe on the Dreamcast version is like, well over $100.

Damn.

The PlayStation Two is $170.

That's fucking bonkers.

I'd like to thank Cody Butler from whatnot his account is at Butts for hooking me up with a copy of this on the cheap shout out. But this game has quite a reputation.

Legendary game.

It is part of a pretty large franchise that I don't think everyone quite puts together as a franchise.

Right.

Because there's three Marvel versus Capcom games. But that's not all the games in the franchise.

No, not at all.

Because there's also X Men versus Street Fighter, which was the first one on the PS One, and I think it's on the Saturn. And then there's Marvel Superheroes versus Street Fighter. Fighter.

Yeah.

Then there's Marvel versus Capcom Clash of the Superheroes, which is the first one.

There is also just straight up Marvel Superheroes, which that was the arcade cabinet I bought in like 2010.

Was this the one that you had in your apartment when we recorded that episode of STORYHOLE?

Yes, it is. Well, at that point, it had been converted to a 601. I just bought a Chinese knockoff romboard. But when I purchased it and I think it was an original cabinet for Marvel superheroes.

Nice. So obviously this game was developed by Capcom. I think Capcom might be like one of the greatest third party developers of all time. I mean, Street Fighter.

Yeah.

Dark Stalkers, resident Evil.

Fucking Resident Evil. Yeah.

Devil may cry. Just an insane library.

Yeah.

Also capped on the birthplace of two of the greatest video game directors of all time, shinji Mccami and Hideki Kamiya.

Yeah. Fucking awesome.

Of Capcom evil fame.

Hell yeah.

Amazing.

For some reason you always kind of know you're playing a Capcom game and I can't exactly explain why.

There's a vibe. I think the vibe is even in like even as early as the NES games like Gun Smoke or Strider.

Right.

Those games have a vibe. And Mega Man, of course. I'm a huge Mega Man fan.

Sure.

Particularly, and I mean, this is probably a controversial thing, I'm a big fan of the Mega Man Legends games.

I have not played that.

The first even like Mega Man soccer on the SNES SNES. But Marvel versus Capcom Two was released as an arcade cabinet in Japan in February of 2000.

Sure.

It was then ported to the Dreamcast and it would come out about a month later. But in my research, I did discover something very interesting about this in that instead of being developed on Capcom's arcade board, this game was developed. It was the first one of this franchise to be developed on this, on the Naomi, which was Sega's.

Oh, interesting.

Sega's arcade board, which had similar components to the Dreamcast, which is why the definitive version of this game is the Dreamcast version and the port was so easy.

Interesting.

Yeah, I found that to be very interesting. Of course, the Naomi had like four times the video Ram and the sound channels and everything as the Dreamcast, but similar components.

You know, it's interesting you talk about the Naomi board. I do have a fun fact about the former Capcom boards. I don't know the name of them. I can tell you what they look like because I own one. They're like this big blue thing. And the interesting thing about those is they have, I think, the kind of arcade enthusiast, whatever they call them, the Phoenix board, they have a battery in them and when the battery dies, the game is gone. It just ceases to exist. It cannot be blah, blah, blah. So there's a Phoenix operation that you have to do because these boards are all very old. If the game hasn't been plugged in a while, you have to solder a new battery in this one spot. Fascinating. But I think mine had come pre Phoenixed.

You had to defibrillate. Yeah, basically defibrillate.

Defibrillate, yeah. So a lot of if games haven't been plugged in a while, a lot of these arcade boards are just going forever.

So the PlayStation Two version is very similar to the Dreamcast version. The big differences, and I think this is just in the American versions in general, is that it does not have online play, but the Japanese Dreamcast version did. And along with it being on the Naomi, one of the cool things that came with that was that you could use a VMU from a Dreamcast on the arcade cabinet, collect experience on it and then use it on your Dreamcast to purchase characters or costumes and whatnot on your home console, which is pretty cool. But I do think that especially in modern in recent history, I think Japan does have more of an arcade culture 100% than the United States.

And I got to say, we were not ready for the VMU.

No.

Such a good idea.

So ahead of this time, fucking cool.

Yeah, absolutely.

I do love the dreamcast.

Yeah.

But like its previous games, it does have a story ish ish in this one. That story is that an ancient evil known as Abyss has been awakened by new character Ruby Hart.

Ruby Hart.

Ruby Hart, who does not have her own game, but would, I guess later be retconned into being part of an old 80s Capcom arcade game. So she uses her airship to transport the Capcom characters and the Marvel characters to Abyss to fight him. So he is the last boss in the arcade mode. And you get to him after defeating seven teams of three.

Right.

Which I think is really what makes this franchise unique in that it's a tag team based fighting game. So yeah, the story of this is very slim. I think in Marvel versus Capcom Three, they would expand it. There's a weird story to Marvel versus Capcom Three, but there's also like intermediate levels where it's more of a beat them up game than a classic fighting game. And there's a whole story with like modoc and trying to get the Infinity Gems.

Oh, that's right. They brought those in.

There's like a whole thing in Marvel versus Capcom three. But Marvel versus Capcom Two at its core is solely an incredible fighting game. And it being a fighting game means that I'm very bad at it. But that doesn't stop me from trying.

No.

What makes this game unique among fighters is a that it's a tag team game. And with that mechanic, there also comes some nuance to that. You can call in one of your other two characters to do like an assist move. That was in the original. That was in the first game, too. Capcom calls it the variable assist gameplay mechanic.

Sure, guys.

So one of them will come in and shoot something. And one of the cool things is that, and this gives this game a lot of variety, is that every character also has three types of assists they can do.

Yeah.

So not only do you have to put some thought into how the synergy of the three characters you pick because you're going to be swapping in and out of them, you also kind of have to think about what assist style you're going to give them.

Yeah, exactly.

For example, me being the Resident Evil head that I am, I played this game mainly with Jill Valentine, who is a newcomer to the franchise, of course, after the huge success of Resident Evil. And she has a heel assist, which is great, where she will give whatever character you're playing as a green herb and heal them, which is I love.

The way they worked in the different characters and they're like within their existing games and universe. It really makes it like this is what makes it a classic.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's one of my favorite parts about this game. I think we're jumping the gun, but I mean, it's pretty clear and it's hard to hide the enthusiasm. But I do like this game quite a bit, even if I am bad at it. But every character seems well thought out, intentional. These don't just seem like reskins of each other.

No, not even close.

The combos are very different. Per character. All of their special moves feel very unique and feel very true to them. And that goes a long way, especially with so many characters, which is another huge thing about this game in that you only start out with 24 characters, which is still a lot.

Quite a few to start.

Yeah. I think 24 might tie or be just under the entirety of the characters from any other game. But you can unlock an additional 32 characters, giving you a roster of 56 playable characters.

Incredible.

And there are some poles here. Right. So if you look at the Marvel characters, one of the first Marvel characters you can unlock, and you unlock them all by playing through arcade mode, playing through high score mode, which is like arcade mode, but without the need for continues. There's a training mode you can also get points from that. You use those points to buy costumes for characters or characters themselves. And one of the first Marvel characters you can unlock is Blackheart.

Sure.

Which one of the coolest looking characters. And he looks incredible in this game, but that seems like kind of like a deeper cut Marvel character, maybe. Yeah. There's also Marrow, which I had never heard of, but she is apparently an X Men. Then there's Omega Red.

Yeah, he's a bad guy.

Who's another bad guy? There's Schumagarath.

Not familiar.

It's a doctor. Strange thing. It's like a starfish with an eyeball, but not the one not the one from a suicide squad.

Well, yeah, that's DC. Anyway.

Yeah. You can also play as a Sentinel, which is a very cool villain from X Men. Thanos. Thanos. Than.

You got to have him. Yeah.

On the Capcom side, you have your standard roster of Street Fighter characters. Rayu Zangif. Ken Bison guy akuma cammy.

I don't know anything about Akuma Kuma. I've missed the whole Akuma thing.

You haven't played any Street Fighter Alpha games?

I mean, I have, and I've probably played Ism, but I've just never had the connect. He just feels like a reskin to me.

Akuma had the same trainer as Rayu and Ken.

Okay.

Killed him and stole his beads and what. It did the Dark Power, and he's like the devil. But also we kind of lean into a little bit more. So in the previous Marvel versus Capcom game, there was only one character from dark Stalkers. I think Dark Stalkers maybe had not taken off quite as much. So the only Dark Stalkers character in the first one was Morgan, but now we have Morgan, Felicia, and Anacaris, who is a big fucking Sarcophagus mummy who is awesome. There's also Amingo, who is a cactus with a sombrero why not? Why not does not have his own game. He's an original. I had read that he might have been part of a game that had been canned, but these are the only games that he is in.

Wasn't from Sunset Riders.

Right. Well, I mean, there is Strider. Strider is also in this game. And then you have Mega Man, which was originally in the first Marvel versus Capcom, but you also have Serve Bot from the Mega Man Legends Games and Tron Bond, who I think other than Jill might have been my favorite character to play as.

Right.

Just an awesome character. Again, feels very real to her character in her own game. And yeah, there's a lot of characters.

A fuck ton of characters.

We didn't even name half of them. No, but tons of characters to unlock and have have fun with. So as cool as this game is with all the characters, it really is gameplay focused, which is why I think this game endures to this day. There's still a huge community of people playing this game, and especially when they rereleased this game on the PS Three and the 360, which allowed online play, this game kind of took off. Whereas I think there is still like a pretty lively community that play Marvel versus Capcom Three. I think most people kind of feel like this one was the best one.

Yeah, absolutely.

And there is a huge depth.

We had talked about it in the Mortal Kombat episode, but this is how you do depth and this is how you attract kind of the pro scene. The competitive is this is how you're supposed to do it. You don't try to reinvent, you just build on what you did. Right. Instead of saying, oh, well, yeah, people aren't going to like, let's change everything. You know what I mean?

Yeah. And there's a certain level of trying to min Max, your team, which will always draw in the more, I guess, serious players. And I think whereas this game is very hard for someone who's not good at fighting games like me. But if I can get through it, I feel like most people can get through it. But there's a difference between getting through the games arcade mode and there is an easy mode. But I pride myself on not playing easy modes.

Fuck you.

Even though they're probably made for people exactly like me.

Exactly like me.

But in a competitive scene or even against like just, I guess regular gamers who like fighting games, you would get absolutely stomped, right? Absolutely.

Exactly. But as you said, you can pick it up and against the computer. You can have fun and feel like a badass and that's the key to the whole thing.

And that may shorten the replayability for casual players. I would say that unless you love fighting games and we'll bringing back an old segment that we haven't done in a while, but this is a rent game. Unless you really love fighting games and you have friends that come over and play these fighting games with you because there's not a ton to it, you want to obviously unlock all the characters so you can try them all out. But beyond that, this game has very limited replay value. Unless you are the kind of person that is really into fighting games.

Yeah, it's not a game that you're like, oh, I got to beat it with everyone. Because really, you don't get a new ending. You only really get the ability to play it again in a different way. But if you're one of these people like us, you don't care all that much because you're not looking for the like you were talking about Min Max combo or the team that really speaks to your style. It's just like, I beat it. I didn't see anything new. Oh, cool. I can use Ice Man now.

Yeah. Which is I doubt that Jill Valentine is really part of any sort of Marvel versus Capcom two meta team. No, I don't think that that's what's happening. But I can still play through the whole game with my favorite character in this game and it's still fun.

Yeah, exactly. There might be, I think, the one aspect that I don't know if it helps the popularity, but I always think if a game has a certain, like a flaw can help a game seem like more of a classic. And this game has and I don't know if I'm speaking out of TURB, but the music in this game is atrociously bad. It's weird, it's bizarre. It doesn't fit. It's almost jazz.

It almost seems like it's jazz when playing it. I was like, this is like a fucking Oceans Eleven height music.

Right? It's very weird. It doesn't fit at all. It just feels like that was the last thing they had to do. And they're like, well, we don't want to do any of our classic Street Fighter and there's no real way to or any other Capcom game, so let's just pick it out of a weird jazz music library.

Actually, I think there's other games too, around this time, other Capcom games and fighting games in particular that have weird music choices. I think the first two Tekken games had some weird music choices.

Yeah, they did.

I don't know, it's hard because Street Fighter has such an iconic soundtrack.

Absolutely. It's so good. It's so good.

I even think Dark Stalkers has like a pretty unique and memorable soundtrack. But yeah, there is. I mean, hey, video game music is such a wild genre of music. Just hitting everything, hitting every type of influence and weird stuff. I'm reminded of the end credits song for Resident Evil Two, which is, like, just a shredding guitar solo like, ballad thing that makes no sense.

No sense.

So let's talk about how this game was received, I think by fans. It's pretty obvious that this game is well received, but critics, I'm looking at it right now, and I'm kind of surprised a little bit upon its release. It received positive reviews.

Okay.

IGN praised it for its refined battle system.

Hell, yeah.

And despite its sheer level of insanity, labeled it one of the best fighting games out there. Which is great.

True.

But it's important to note that most of this is on the Dreamcast version.

Interesting.

So Game Rankings has the Dreamcast version at 90% out of 100.

Wow.

It has the PS Two at 76% out of 100, the Xbox version at 67%.

Bad port.

Right. Metacritic has the Dreamcast version at 90 out of 100, which is fucking wild. That is such a high credit score.

That's crazy.

The PS 276 out of 100, same as Game Rankings xbox 65. But then the ports to the more modern consoles, the 360 and the PS Three got an 82 and an 85. So it's very weird. I wonder if part of it was when it got ported to the PlayStation Two, they didn't think that it changed enough.

Right. That makes sense to me.

It rubs me the wrong way that they would give it, because I can't imagine there being, like, a huge gameplay difference.

It's maybe just in the two years between I don't know.

Yeah, maybe that's what it is, is that it was so revolutionary or so impressive in 2000 that by 2002, it was old hat.

Right. Exactly. That's what I'm kind of thinking.

Maybe that could that could be it. Eurogamer gave the PS Two version a seven out of ten. IGN gave the PS Two version 8.4 out of ten, but gave high watermark.

Right.

Gave the Xbox a 3.9 out of ten.

Something was up with the Xbox.

The Xbox One must be bad dog shit.

It's got to be.

They gave the dreamcast one a 9.3.

Okay. Yeah.

Which I mean, people just love the Dreamcast version of the game. Across all the platforms, though, many reviewers cited the jazz inspired sound thank you. As the game's biggest flaw.

Thank you.

IGN described the music as plain God awful, stating that the jazzy lounge lizard music and snappy beats did not fit the action in the slightest at all. Eurogamer expressed disappointment that the game's visual flair was backed by a horrific lift, music oriented soundtrack and low quality sound effects.

Sound effects are pretty on par. I've disagree.

I don't think they're anything special for a fighting game. That doesn't bum me out too much. Game Revolution said that it's some of the lamest music that you've ever heard disagree with that.

I can't disagree with that. Oh, God. Thanks for playing marvel versus Capcom Two. Your name will be inscribed in the.

Pages of fighting history. This game is on a lot of people's list of their best fighting games ever, and I think you'd be hard pressed to disprove that. And in fact, in 2010, Game Pro chose it as the 33rd best PlayStation Two game of all time. And this game is better than every Mortal Kombat game on PS Two.

Oh, 100%.

100%. I would also say that this game is better than every Tekken game on PS Two.

I would have to agree with that as well.

I think there's an argument to be made that there are better street fighter games on the PS Two, but probably this game is a high watermark for fighting games on the console and for just how good this game is. I'm going to give it eight out of ten.

Julio Guns, eight out of ten. Eight out of ten about right.

I feel pretty good about that. It's hard for me to ever give a fighting game ten out of ten because I'm so fucking bad out of them. Bad at them that like, I don't get the full experience.

Right. I think I'm gonna stay. I'm gonna stay there. I'm gonna say eight out of ten. Lounge singing bullshit. Eight out of ten is exactly right. That's a perfect review for this. That was Marvel versus Capcom Two. New age of Heroes for the PlayStation Two. Of course.

Thank you for hanging out and listening to us bullshit about this game. You can find us on social media at Discrete AirPod on Instagram. You can find me at funeral. Casual games on Instagram.

I'm at Ian Golding Games.

And you can also find us on Whatnot at Funeral Casual, where every few months we try to do a charity auction. We did one in December that went really well. We were able to donate over $5,000 to Arc Southeast, which was a charity that helps women in the south access reproductive health care. And this June, we have a charity stream that all the proceeds are going to go to the Trevor Project, which provide mental health services, including suicide prevention services for LGBTQ teens.

Yes, sir.

It's going to be a good time. It's going to be on June 4. So please check that out, bookmark it.

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Thank you for listening. We'll see you next time. Padaboo.