My favorite part of this origin is that it all just came down to one guy who was insistent on taking inspiration from American comics as opposed to manga and anime like they were used to. It also just goes back to how incredibly dirt cheap character rights were back then and this was despite stuff like X-Men almost single handedly carrying comics sales during the early 90's. The Capcom dude's badge just saying "Marvel fan" instead of his name is priceless And on paper crossing over these two properties just made no sense and thats why it became so embedded in pop culture later. Smash made sense, SNK and Capcom made sense, but Marvel was legit a passion project from people who loved Marvel Comics and that's so endearing
@@icedcapplord710 yeah without the xmen marvel would have probably went down quicker due to the 90s comic book crash Also makes you think what if they went the traditional route and teamed up with shonen jump instead of marvel back then
FYI: This all also started because Marvel was in a very bad financial situation, so they started selling the licencing rights of their characters to several companies of different media.
Lets be real, Smash was just as big a culture clash and still is. The number of people who've pointed out "...Dude, Sephiroth is in a game with Yoshi" should be evidence, but even back in the 64 days that was still *nuts* to consider. Samus Aran was a dark and foreboding space epic, Mother was this existential trip, and then there's Mario where it's all dressed like a stage play or Captain Falcon in a cheesy *racing* game. Make no mistake, this was as nutty a collab for them. But Nintendo *owned* all those IPs, so like Multiversus so long later, they could just say "screw good taste, lets give them the framing device of toys come to life and run with it." And it worked! ...Smash, not MV. Marvel and Capcom takes that whole tone clash and ramps it up to the next damn level of maintaining *brand image.* This is why the most nutty incarnations were back when Marvel was in a weaker place and were willing to let Capcom play around even if it strained the Westerner's sensibilities (See; The Punisher) because it was going to be better than norhing. Fast forward to MvC3 and Marvel's wringing necks over not getting Strange's hand motions right, and MvCI flat out refusing to use many legendary characters *they still own the legal rights to use in games* because they don't have the *film* rights yet, and *that* was more important than making a good game.
The entire bit about the voice actors had me in shock the entire time - Capcom tried to do the voice over with JP talent originally?? - Marvel rejected that, but also didn't refer them to the voice actors of the animated series as a response??? Just a "no" with no notes??? - They still somehow managed to get a session with the studio that short term???? - The whole thing just cost Capcom 5000 CAD (minus travel expenses)????? - And they just kinda did that without Marvel knowing, just kinda assuming they'd approve?????? Just a wild time for game development, especially for something as trailblazing as MvC
the voice actor for Wolverine didn't enjoy it too much either because he just had to voice his phrases without any story context. I appreciate he stuck thru and still did a great job.
This series used Deadpool and Rocket before they were decent sized household names and it probably introduced a lot of people to them, which is really cool.
@@krono5el he first appeared in an issue of new mutants back in 1991 where he had a different personality compared to the one he has today he wasn't added into any of the vs games till mvc3 in 2011
@@loopseekerthat was my first proper introduction as well to Deadpool (Legends 2). I remember seeing pictures of him before then in random issues of comics back then, but didn't really knew who he was.
How great is it that Captain Commando's game technically inspired Capcom's The Punisher, which inspired X-Men Children of the Atom, which birthed the Marvel Vs. series? this proves without a doubt that Captain Commando absolutely demands a spot in a future Marvel vs Capcom game.
The X-men VO story kinda sucks to hear considering the cast was kept in the dark about the popularity of the animated series so the studio didn’t have to pay them more. They didn’t know how beloved the series was until they started doing cons in the past few years
I have no doubt they received very little pay for their work, but those voices are what will always be in my head when I see those characters. Even after Hugh Jackman's run, it's still the animated series Wolverine I hear in my head.
This games history so interesting. I even did a presentation on the history of the games and the effects it had on Marvel and Capcom respectfully. Like how it pushed Deadpool to the mainstream and introduced people to characters like Shuna Gorath. Even talked about the Punisher arcade game. Long live Marvel baby!
I feel like Deadpool got it's mostly major exposure though the Marvel Ultimate Alliance games. At least, that's what got me looking into him back in the day and instantly fell in love with his comics
The fact that Marvel was doling out licenses for peanuts back in the 90's, and now the IPs are extremely valuable makes it even more impressive that MvC Collection actually happened. Kudos to the people behind the scenes. edit: also that story about booking the voice actors is WILD.
The creepiest thing about Black Heart was his first appeared in a Daredevil comic of all things! While shuma-gorath came from Doctor Strange, which makes sense with him dealing with the paranormal and galactic threats out there; Black Heart was definitely a shocker to many!
It's crazy to think they wanted well known characters like Venom, Thor and The Thing for MSH and they put obscure characters like Blackheart and Shuma-Gorath instead
To be fair by 90's standards Thor was considered a weird pick for casuals since he had no current cartoon and neither as much exposure as others like the Hulk and even Iron Man back then.
@bazzjedimaster I feel he still wouldn't be that weird of a pick considering he at least cameo in the 90s Hulk and Fantastic Four cartoons. Oh, and the 90s Avengers one as well.
It’s crazy how certain pieces of media can only exist in a specific time. Capcom having access to pretty much all the marvel characters is an awesome chance that probably wouldn’t happen today. If the MVC games were created in modern times they probably wouldn’t have access to certain characters that are synonymous with MVC. It would be like an even worse marvel infinite
Honestly when I was doing my research for my own MVC collection video What really touched me was how passionate akitomo was about Marvel to the point he was literally translating a comic books for the staff to read for reference. Really goes to show you how one person's passion can create something beautiful but also touch many people.
Polygon’s oral history of fighting games series is incredible. They’re worth giving the site the traffic to take a look at yourself. I wish Max would link these sources in his video descriptions sometimes. Good journalism doesn’t get done when there isn’t a readership supporting it.
Well they noticed the impact of Kingdom Hearts and now the KH version of Mickey is at the theme parks. Only a matter of time before we get MVC references in the Deadpool and Wolverine show they have there.
I mean it helps now that Disney/Marvel owns a majority of their properties again (the only thing they don't have is the movie rights ro Spider-Man and their characters), it also helps that the MCU has been on the downward trend and they're willing to branch out and do more different things now instead of focusing on Synergy. People love these games and, as long as they sell, they will be made again.
@@DeamonChocoboVideo game rights, X-Men & Spidey notwithstanding, for the most part are mostly resolved now, which means that utter nonsense of MvCi and Fox rights inclusions can go the way of the dodo. Just a damn shame that game burned so many bridges that many want the next game to be only X-Men as Marvel reps as some sort of revenge and restitution.
@@myriadmediamusingsMVCI could have gotten the characters but Disney just wanted to reduce the value of the characters to buy them from Fox, it wasnt just games, comics were also removing these characters and we saw far less of them.
As a kid, i remember those early days of watching X-men on Fox Kids with my uncle, only for him to be like "alright lets go play COTA" on the Saturn back in 96'. I miss my childhood so much 🙏
We need more of those "Who are THEY?" moments in crossovers if they start making new crossovers again. More unknown Capcom characters, more unknown Marvel characters, hell even more unknown SNK characters.
A Capcom Vs. game with something like 2000AD (The only characters people know from that company is Judge Dredd and maybe Rogue Trooper) would definitely take people for a ride with the sheer amount of literal whos.
The pressure with Japanese studios not screwing up a franchise was felt with Metroid, too, as they thought Super Metroid was peak. Many thought 3D Metroid was a toxic prospect. Retro Studios proved them wrong.
"Unfortunately, Mavel comics weren't popular in Japan back then, so we included characters that they could identify with (includes the tentacle monster)" eerrrr...
>Sees Polygon had made a good, well-researched article THEY DID IT. THEY PULLED THROUGH. THEY MADE AN ARTICLE THAT'S NOT SHIT. IT'S NOOOOOOOOOT SHIIIIIIIIT.
Polygon has a great track record with retrospective pieces. They dropped one yesterday on Toonami that’s worth a read. Plus; their oral history pieces have always been good.
The one thing that I hope Capcom will published from this MvC revival is an art book that connects sketches and work some across all the Marvel games with a hard cover.
10:30 If you’re wondering why Marvel was in trouble and desperate at this time, ‘96 is when the speculation bubble finally popped and everything involving comics came crashing down just as the housing bubble in Japan had done a decade beforehand.
I’ve always been 100% bummed out that the marvel vs capcom series got its start with the punisher and nick fury, and yet neither have appeared in any of the actual fighting games. What a waste of
I always found that super odd, marvel 2 or 3 were probably the most perfect times both could've feasibly gotten in, however with x-men still being crazy popular around marvel 2 I can see why Marrow and Cable were chosen. As for Marvel 3 I totally feel that Capcom may have prioritized the resident evil cast to be the big gun toting characters (which all of them being from one entry felt really bleh) Honestly it all felt like a case of wrong timing for them sadly
Hopefully they finally do show up eventually in a future entry. Yes, I do believe a new MvC game will happen between now and the heat death of the universe.
legit the fact i can learn fighting games and come to this dudes videos to learn about the culture is incredible, i started getting back into fighting games around a year ago from my love of them when i was a kid on mk2 and mk9, i started playing streetfighter 6 last night and i gotta say the experience of learning and having fun is incredible i have played games like dark souls for years and felt that rush of "dang im good at having fun" but fighting games are a different level, i thought mk1 was good but im ready to get into the marvel vs capcom 2 stuff in the upcoming release and enjoy these games for years to come, also to be honest man ive been listening to your videos at work and this stuff is addictive, it is evolution of chess in terms of mental exersise, the experience of learning and having fun is incredible max i genuinly mean this when i say you are a inspiration with your attitude about who you are and what you love cant wait to see what is to come good luck my friend!
This is a great story on how Capcom Marvel games came to be. The Konami X-Men game was cool when it came out, but the characters weren't represented very faithfully. Wolverine and Colossus had special moves that don't line up. But the Capcom games were way more faithful. COTA was amazing for the time. I couldn't believe a Japanese company would try to be so close to the American source material.
I really love the art style of the MvC series… not so much with MvC infinite, but all the stuff either hand drawn manga style or pixel rendered sprites were awesome. Along with great gameplay and great composed music… always a winning combo.
MVCI is sad too look at when you see the character reference sheets used for the 3D models and how cool they look in those drawings compared to the final 3D models.
We don’t have to imagine. I think the Insomniac leak put the licensing fee for Spider-man at $30 million. I don’t know if that’s per game or if it’s an upfront fee to make games over a certain time period or a certain number of games… I also don’t know if Disney gets a per unit sold cut, too. Regardless, it’s not in the $500K range anymore.
I agree so much. You Need people behind the scenes who are just invested in something and use that. That‘s why everyone from „my“ part of the Gaming scene was/is so into Baldurs Gate 3. You could just feel Larians passion for the project from the first Dev Blog. If the creators of the thing are also its biggest fan, you got the recipe for something magical
It’s interesting how different marvel was before the movies vs after the movies The biggest stars were spiderman, xmen, fantastic 4, and the hulk Characters like Thor cap iron man were considered b or c tiered characters some movie studios before the mcu was made even viewed Ironman as a z tier character in regards to popularity And now iron man captain America and thor are some of the most well known characters in marvels repertoire Especially for Ironman after the events of the civil war comic he wasn’t that liked
I've literally heard of three or four of these marvel characters everyone loves. I only knew about iron man because of the black Sabbath song. It's wild to me that those movies are so popular. The stories are abysmal at best.
I was born in 2000. My father was a collector. I recall before 2008. In my early childhood. Just how COLORFUL, and experimental and free feeling everything was in Property of Marvel. The 90s animated shows on Jetix. I personally got into MVC2 at like 5-6 years old. X-Men evolution and the Straight to DvD movies. Ultimate comics and games as well as the previous iterations of 80s and 90s comics still being fresh in memory at the time. It was the culture of my household but...after Iron Man up to Avengers. The scope narrowed. Severely.
@@jackmakackov7077did you not play video games or watch TV pre MCU? I knew a lot of the more obscure (at the time) Marvel characters then because of that
Capcom Making The Punisher Arcade Game was like If Namco made a Hong Kong Phooey Arcade Game Imagine If we lived In a Alternate Universe If that happened Hanna Barbera x Namco would've been a PS2 flop I'd Play Ivy Valentine Vs The Mighty Mightor would make me laugh
Thank goodness the rights issues are resolved and the knucklehead that spearheaded this X-Men exclusion movement, Ike Perlmutter, is out of Marvel and Disney.
The next Marvel VS Capcom title needs to be done in a style similar to arc systems works..with Bengus’s designs and illustrations from X-Men VS Street Fighter.. the character select screen and versus art are the best art that Capcom has ever showcased..arc systems would do a great job and the game would look just like guilty gear or Dragon Ball fighterz.. please make a beautiful game and give the fans what they deserve!!!! Use Bengus’s X-Men VS SF art.. we don’t want chun li to be ugly and We don’t want ken to have bananas for hair.
@@emikox i’m talking about the literal artwork for X-Men vs Street Fighter from 1996.. It’s similar to the art for EX part 1.. He was drawing characters similarly also in star gladiator.. he had a distinct style that year and it was awesome.. his current work is definitely not my favorite.. very different
CotA was Capcom's first game to use the Toronto VAs they'd use in like, all the VS series thru MvC2 as well as many of their console games starting with RE2 and Mega Man Legends and ending with stuff like DMC1, Onimusha 1, RE0 and Wesker and Ada in RE4. 3rd Strike had these guys for Alex, Dudley, Urien, Hugo, Q, Necro, Twelve and Gill, along with 6ix legend Infinite as the game's announcer (he does the game's three vocal tracks as well) the fucking Power Stone anime had these guys too...don't believe me? Ashford plays Wang-Tang and Regina plays Ayame.
Ahh. Shuma Gorath. In my opinion, the reason for the famous character select song from MvC2. “I’m gonna take you for a ride.” “YEAH, to the Chaos Dimension!!!!” (If you haven’t taken a ride to the Chaos Dimension, can you really consider yourself travelled?) P.S. - The voice actor part was probably one of the coolest parts of this video. Getting them to fly up to Canada to get the actual cartoon voice actors in on it. And in such short notice.
So….um about blackheart. When I was a kid and teenager, I have never was a huge comic book fan so I didn’t know he was from the Ghost Rider comics. I didn’t even know what his stage was UNTIL “MARVEL VS CAPCOM: Orgins came out on the PS3 (2012-2013) that his stage was hell and the shadows were the souls of the damned! Now here I am, Turning 42 on Friday so I can’t wait to get it on next Thursday. All good things happen on my birth month.
I didn't know Blackheart, either. As a Marvel fan in the 90s, all i knew was X-Men, Spider-Man, Iron Man, and Captain America. I didn't even know Dr Doom was a Fantastic 4 villain, and i had no idea who Thanos was.
@@jefferyquick3280 Silver Samurai was in the 90s X-Men cartoon, so he had some degree of familiarity to fans of that show. Spiral, on the other hand, is very much obscure.
I remember when I was young I was at a pizza place with a friend, and when we were waiting for our pizzas we saw a marvel vs capcom arcade machine and we’re so confused on who we’re some characters, captain commando? Shuma gorath? But then we saw megaman and Spider-Man and other marvel characters but we’re so confused abt the other characters. It’s now a few years later and we’ve learned so much about the marvel vs capcom stuff I can’t wait to get the collection in September!
Now I want to know the stories of how Sakurai and his team got the licenses to use characters (or even the Mii outfits) in Smash 4/Ultimate. There has to be some contract signed in blood somewhere within his team to license a character.
OMG what their views on Punisher and what they said about Konami's X-Men was the exact feeling I got when I played those games for the first time. With X-Men Nightcrawler looked fairly normal and I recognized Cyclops but their costumes confused me like, "Why is his head covered up? Why is Wolverine wearing dark brown instead of his normal yellow with black strips and blue trunks? Who the heck is Dazzler? Who's Pyro?" I didn't get into Xmen on a regular basis and reading the comics until 1992 or 1993 and the look and time line that I understood was from the X-Men Animated Series which was adopted in COTA. I also definitely remember feeling like the game was unfair in that it was such a quarter muncher that no matter how skilled I got at the game you were just going to die at certain parts and certain bosses even worse than '89 TMNT. Punisher is great but my first time playing I thought, "Damn this is dark and brutal!" So it's rather surreal to hear that impression from Japanese arcade goers back then when I thought it was just me overreacting as a pre-teen.
"Controlling madness" is the "wild balance" of the 90s. I'm so glad this series happened. Capcom's sprite based animation for Spiral, Gambit, Venom, etc remains some of their most stylish and expressive work.
I cannot express how thankful I am for this type of videos. As a “new” fighting game player I have learned so much over the years with this channel. Max is one of my favorite people on the internet. His love for the fighting game genre is incredibly contagious. Thank you for what you do, Max!
Max, You should do a video talking about your first reactions to characters. Like how you talked about blackheart etc. Talk about your experience when you first saw new characters since the 90s are now a thing of the past. I think it would be an interesting video. I was in arcades during the 90s but I never quite played too much capcom fighting games. I was more of a tekken boy. the usual house of the dead, time crisis, metal slug & etc. I was quite aware of capcom games, but you kinda got stomped with the usual pro 6 hovering the machine so it was quite intimidating to lose tokens for that. Haha
X-Men was so huge we traded cards of them on the playground like baseball cards. Not because it was a competitive game, or because they were worth anything... we did it because the X-Men were just that fucking cool.
It actually impresses me how every time I start thinking about learning more about a fighting game Max just releases a video about it, it's happened several times amongst the years and I don't believe it's a coincidence. Get out of my walls, Max...
Seemed like Capcom was--almost yearly--blowing my mind in the early to late 1990's. That was a magical time...I remember feeling sad watching other people play MVC2 in the arcade in 2001 and thinking 'This is it. It will never be better than this.'
Dana Moorshead actually taught my comic book and story writing classes at art school. Back in 2016-2017 @ OTIS College of Art and Design. When I read these, I actually reached out to him about it on Facebook since we were friends on there. He is a really great dude. Tons of knowledge and he brought Scott Koblish into our class who was working on a lot of Deadpool stuff which was dope considering the film was coming out around that time.
I know tldr 🙄 My awesome experience with this series is I was a kid with a snes I loved sf2 and I watched X-men the cartoon and I had a small collection of marvel trading cards. I didn’t read magazines and had no way of knowing about the collab. So one day I walk in to our local very small arcade and I see X-Men vs Street Fighter in all its glory! It was awesome and the day I went in there was a local police officer in uniform just beating everybody down nobody could beat him it was really fun to watch I was amazed! Shortly after maybe a year or 2 I ended up getting a Dreamcast brand new with MvC and 3rd Strike! I love fighting games and Max and his buddies are a blessing to casuals that love this stuff!
wow man...growing up as the consumer just getting into the series and a dumb 8 year old in 1998, I would've NEVER known game development went THIS DEEP Japan once again trying to do "everything in Japan" with the voices, they didn't even CONSIDER the original VAs man lol really good video Max, thank you
If you listen to arcade games from that era a lot of them used Japanese ESL voices for English speakers, SNK was really bad at this. I played charlotte in Samurai Shodown III/IV. Imagine a Japanese woman trying to speak English with a French accent.... cracks me up.
thank you for this max....the 10 year old in me is so heartwarmed by all of this nostalgia and news i didnt know before about my fav fighting game franchise
Crazy launchers, significant air mobility, flashy easy to input supers, and a lovable brand. It honestly strikes me how the brew for success on COTA was very similar to the brew Arc Sys eventually cooked up for DBFZ
The way I heard it, despite Shuma-Gorath being incredibly obscure, he had his own entry in a "Guide to the Marvel Universe" lorebook they were referencing. They decided he was so strange and weird, they wanted him to add variety to a cast full of humanoid costumed heroes. Guaranteed, if he hadn't been put in these games, he'd be about as well-known as Asbestos Man.
I miss that era of games. When Japanese video game market was so healthy and the companies were hungry for growth. The answer to grow was that Japanese companies wanted American licenses to enter the US market. Capcom made some great Disney games as well.
It’s crazy how Marvel was only known for X-Men, Spider-Man and Fantastic Four and Hulk; to today where Marvel has characters like Jeff the LandShark, Devil Dinosaur, Baymax and Shuma-Gorath are just as well known as the A-Listers
I love that they do, as I feel that it shows the sheer versatility and marketability of Marvel in so many ways. As great as DC is and their storied legacy, let’s be real it’s always gonna be Superman this or Batman that with a dash of Wonder Woman if we’re likely. Attempts to try and branch out beyond the big three have been extremely mixed to say the least among the mainstream.
I was one of many who didn't know Blackheart was a Marvel character. And then around that time a comic came out which was as a surprise. Don't remember the name but it had Ghost Rider, Wolverine and Punisher teaming up to take Blackheart down.
Hater: Marvel vs. Capcom. What a stupid idea! Who wants to see comic book characters fight video game characters?! Intellectuals: 🎶I wanna take you for a ride🎶
Some pretty cool history. Funny how Marvel were back in the day and how they are now. The passion and love these creators had. I’m so damn happy MvC is back. Can’t wait to play these games for the first time. Not long left now. 💙❤️
It’s good Alex Jimenez didn’t get his way on Marvel Super Heroes. Me and a number of my friends were really into Marvel comics at that time, and we didn’t know who Blackheart and Shuma-Gorath were, but they were so cool looking it didn’t matter. They’re so cool looking that when you saw them you weren’t like “why are these two here?” you were instead wondering why these characters weren’t in more stuff, and why you didn’t know about them like you knew about any number of more well known Marvel villains.
