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The Secrets Behind The X-Men vs. Street Fighter: Development, Characters, and Gameplay



In Japan, Game Machine listed X-Men vs. Street Fighter on their November 1, 1996 issue as being the most-successful arcade game of the month, outperforming titles such as Quiz Nanairo Dreams and Stakes Winner 2.[38] A reviewer for Next Generation scored the arcade version three out of five stars. He complimented the tag team mechanic and noted that the game continued the inflation of explosive projectiles and lengthy combos from Capcom's previous 2D fighters, but felt this breed of game had been milked out, concluding, "X-Men Vs. Street Fighter is a fun game, but it's just a bit of an overdose of the kind of game of which we've already played way too much."[39] In a retrospective review, AllGame gave it a score of four stars out of five, praising its combination of two of the most popular franchises of its era and its tag team mechanic.[40]




The X-Men vs. Street Fighter




A number of U.S. publications reviewed the Saturn version as an import. Reviewers praised the Saturn edition's close recreation of the original arcade version, particularly the animation and sound quality, fast loading times, and absence of slowdown.[6][33][35][37][10] Jeff Gerstmann of GameSpot commended the character sprite animations and background details, claiming that "there is no better looking 2D fighter on any console system". While Gerstmann also praised the port for its fast loading times and lack of slowdown, he criticized the game for its defense-oriented gameplay and recycling of the Street Fighter music themes.[33] Game Informer lauded the port for running and looking identical to its arcade counterpart, declaring it "one of the best arcade conversions ever seen to date."[6] Next Generation focused all its praises on the requisite 4 MB RAM cart, viewing the performance improvement resulting from a simple increase in RAM as a foretaste of the possibilities of the next generation of consoles.[35] GamePro was pleased by the tag team feature, responsive controls, and accurate arcade conversion, though they remarked that "the gameplay at times relies more on flash than actual skill." They gave it a 4.5 out of 5 for graphics and a perfect 5.0 in every other category (sound, control, and fun factor), calling it "one of the most fun fighting games ever to hit the home market."[10] Rich Leadbetter, reviewing the later cancelled European edition of the Saturn port for the British Sega Saturn Magazine, criticized the lack of PAL optimization and compared the game unfavorably to its predecessor Marvel Super Heroes, saying the selection of characters is less exciting and the lack of console-exclusive modes is conspicuous. However, he acknowledged that X-Men vs. Street Fighter is a much more accurate conversion of its arcade counterpart, and concluded it to be outstanding in absolute terms.[37]


Here's what you get. All of the fighters from the coin-op version (Ryu, Gambit, Ken, and the lot), all of the stages, and all of the moves. What you don't get - and here's the stinger - is the innovative tag-team fighting mode which made the arcade original so unique. Instead of being able to switch between characters on the fly, your second fighter comes into play only during special attacks. D'oh!


Beyond the glaring omission of the tag-team play, and a few frames of animation, the game is still a solid and entertaining fighter. It's just not that much different from any other Capcom fighter in its watered-down state.


If you like the characters a lot, or simply must have every single Capcom fighter that's put out, I'd recommend this game. But if you're expecting a gameplay experience equal to what you remember in the arcades, you're unfortunately out of luck.


When a system is incapable of doing justice to a game, one would think a company would be smart enough to not release the game on that system. But for reasons that are probably based entirely around making money, Capcom has released a completely butchered version of its arcade fighter, X-Men vs. Street Fighter, on the PlayStation. The only thing added to the game is super cancels, which allow you to string multiple super combos together. Super cancels were lifted out of Street Fighter EX without much forethought, so some characters' cancels work better than others. In fact, the entire game seems to have been designed without much forethought. Even if this were a perfect translation of the arcade game, the simple fact remains that X-Men vs. Street Fighter is a terrible, unbalanced, pound-on-buttons-at-random-and-win-anyway fighting game.


Marvel needed to bounce back in a big way. Part of their road to recovery involved licensing the company's comic book characters to anybody who would pay handsomely for them. At the time, Capcom had been producing arcade games featuring Marvel's finest heroes. X-Men: Children of the Atom and Marvel Super Heroes were acclaimed fighters in their own right, but as Marvel had fallen into bankruptcy, Capcom stepped forward with one of its boldest ideas yet.


With characters from two universes colliding, having them face each other wasn't enough. Capcom wanted them to team up in order to make the most of the crossover concept. Therefore, X-Men vs. Street Fighter became the first of the publisher's "Versus" series. Two characters would take part in a tag team battle, where players could switch fighters at will. Rather than go with the classic "two-out-of-three rounds" format, the last team standing would be declared the winner.


This new Versus fighter would also introduce some new mechanics. Hyper Combos were back, allowing players to show off some dazzling finishing moves. However, X-Men vs. Street Fighter took it to the next level with the "Variable Combination" tandem finisher. Defensively, players could trade in one level of super meter for a "Variable Counter," which would allow a fighter's tag team partner to deliver a counterattack and swing the fight's momentum in the other direction.


Everything about X-Men vs. Street Fighter felt "bigger" than any of Capcom's previous fighters. The character models themselves were larger than before. To keep up with the mutant roster, the Street Fighter characters upgraded their standard arsenal. For example, Ryu and Ken threw larger Hadokens to match powerful projectiles like Cyclops' Optic Blast. Even the single-player Arcade Mode was bigger in scale, culminating with an epic final battle against X-Men uber-villain Apocalypse, who was so massive that he took up the vast majority of the screen.


X-Men vs. Street Fighter is a 2D tag-team fighting game developed and released by Capcom for the arcades (under the CPS-2 engine) on October 4, 1996. The first installment of the long-running Marvel vs. Capcom crossover series, the game pits fighters from X-Men: Children of the Atom with the fighters from Street Fighter Alpha 2, in a fast-paced high-flying tag team match. Using the "Variable" system, players can tag in their backup character (either on-the-fly or as a counter-attack) or perform a special "combination" attack (in which both characters perform their Hyper Combos simultaneously).


X-men charactersCyclopsCyclops is a balanced fighter. His powerful projectile attacks make him a favorite among beginning X-Men vs SF players, and his gene splice can be chained for repeated combo hits. A good partner to use with him is Ryu.Optic blast - QCF + PGene splice - F, D, DF + PKicking attack - QCB + KHyper combo: Mega Optic Blast - QCB + 2PHyper combo: Hyper Optic Blast - QCF + 2P


While known throughout fan circles as one of the great classic arcade fighters, X-Men vs. Street Fighter had an uneven conversion to home consoles. The reason was that due to the RAM limitations of the Playstation, the port was significantly inferior to the arcade in both graphics and gameplay. Some animation frames had to be removed and slow performance during special moves made the game less similar to the arcade version. Because of memory limitations, this version also lacked the arcade's tag-team setup, unless a code is used for both players fight using the same pair of characters.


In this awesome installment of this excellent franchise you get to choose between the classic X-Men and Street Fighter characters to learn and master their fighting skills to enter the ring and take on deadly fights to defeat opponents of ranging skill and abilities from the other team of fighters! Select your dominant fighter and then learn their skills and moves to become the most deadly warrior the world has ever seen and take down the other progressively difficult fighters one-by-one!


The time was 1996 and the fighting game business was absolutely booming. It was during this chapter that the Versus series was born as Capcom had created Children of the Atom, an X-Men fighter that also featured a special guest appearance from Street Fighter's Akuma, two years prior. 2ff7e9595c


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