Marvel vs. Capcom: Origins

I've always dug Capcom’s fondness for digging up its old arcade classics and porting them to modern systems. Games like Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Dungeons & Dragons and Darkstalkers 3 are either difficult to come by or their home ports simply weren't good. With that in mind, I still found it strange that Capcom would do a HD re-release of Marvel Super Heroes and Marvel vs. Capcom. Neither game is very expensive or hard to come by. In addition, the star attraction, Marvel vs. Capcom, has a Dreamcast port that’s nearly arcade-perfect. It was an odd cash-grab for Capcom and the high price tag didn’t make it an appealing purchase when it came out. However, now that every other Marvel vs. Capcom title has been delisted, I think it’s worth diving into. 

Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes

The original Marvel vs. Capcom quickly fell off the radar after Marvel vs. Capcom 2’s release a scant two years later. To make matters worse, its contemporaries like Third Strike and Darkstalkers 3 overshadowed the game. Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes is almost like the neglected middle child of late 90s Capcom fighters. It was popular for a time but its little brothers overshadowed it fairly quickly. It may not be as deep or refined as Third Strike or Darkstalkers 3 but it’s still a fine game in its own right. At any rate, it’s an absolute shame that it’s been given the shaft for so many years.

Marvel Super Heroes

First thing first, Marvel Super Heroes has no balance whatsoever. I can’t even tell if it was intended to be a competitive fighter because there is nothing here resembling fair. The game’s main gimmick manages to kill any competitive scene the game could have potentially had. The result is one of the fastest, most furious fighters to come out of the Early 90s. As far as unbalanced fighters go, Marvel Super Heroes is one of the better ones.

Binary Domain

With all the Resident Evil 6’s and the Lightning Returns out there, it’s becoming more evident that Japanese developers feel the need to emulate Western titles in order to find success overseas. If they weren’t killing our favorite series in the process, it would be almost cute. As it stands though, this recent trend is destined to kill established series. That’s not to say that some developers didn’t get it right though. Sega’s “Binary Domain”, developed by the up and coming Ryū ga Gotkou studio, developers of the distinctly Japanese “Yakuza” series, isn’t the perfect marriage of Western and Japanese sensibilities but achieves that desired blend far better than much of its Japanese brethren have.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds

The Legend of Zelda has been in a bit of a rut for a while now. Every game since Ocarina of Time’s release in 1998 has tried to surpass it by adding in some kind of gimmick or innovation to separate it from Ocarina of Time. Nintendo has tried nearly everything in their quest to break out from under Ocarina’s shadow. Touch controls, 1:1 sword controls, sailing, they even tried to make Zelda gritty. After a while, these extra gimmicks made Zelda games a decidedly more complicated affair. So, Nintendo decided to go back to basics with Link Between Worlds. The results are one of the finest Zelda games in recent memory and one of the best titles on the 3DS.