This game made its first appearance as a Tag Team Fighting Game in an Arcade Machine, an equipment much more powerful than the PS1, but the developers wanted to convert it into a release for the popular Sony Console. The results were better than the attempt with the X-Men VS Street Fighter version, thanks to the inclusion of additional game modes and other content.
One of the game modes included in both versions was the Battle Mode; in this one our goal was to defeat all of our adversaries until we got to the last stage against the final boss. It also had the typical versus mode that all the games of this genre come with, which as usual, is about fighting against another player.
If we have to choose the most interesting Game Mode of the console version, then that one would be the Hero Battle Mode. This one is about choosing between the side of the Superheroes and the side of the Street Fighters. Once this choice is made, we get to choose the pair of characters we wish to control, and to this decision the game answers by choosing the best opposing pair.
The big challenge was that each fighter had only two life bars that wouldn’t heal after a fight; this meant that if we lost a battle we only had one life bar left to face our new foes. This made essential to choose wisely the characters before a combat, if we made the wrong choice we could end up losing all the characters on our side since the game offered no “Continues”.
On the other hand, one of the best parts of playing this game in an Amusement Arcade was that you could choose two characters that could be switched during the fight as much as we wanted. Insufficient memory in the PS1 made this impossible in this version, and we could only play with one fighter per fight, our secondary character could only be used for the Super Combined Attacks and some Special Hits.
It’s worth mentioning that the developers tried to solve this problem by including a final Game Mode, one in which we could switch our characters in the middle of a fight, but it didn’t work the same way as it did in the Arcade version, we could only fight against a same pair of fighters as ours. The worse aspect of this is that the game decided which pair of fighters was going to be in the next fight, to avoid repeating again the same battle encounter.
In conclusion, for a game that barely managed to be released for the PS1, the graphics are a spectacular show of fireworks on the screen. The game also has some really interesting frenzied soundtracks that go really well with the rhythm of the battles. Still, this version can’t quite capture the full magic of the Arcade version in all its wonder, and that’s the reason why I only recommend it to those who are big fans of the Marvel VS Capcom saga.