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[img width=640 height=616]http://image.gamespotcdn.net/gamespot/images/box/8/6/8/197868_50344_front.jpg[/img]
Street Fighter II.
...and now that I have your attention, I'll tell you a bit about my love of 2D fighting games. You see it all really began with Street Fighter II. Sure I played other fighters back then -- your Fatal Furies or Mortal Kombats -- but Street Fighter II would remain the standard for me. It's one of those games that I've bought over and over again in many different forms. Over the years I've owned multiple versions of SFII on SNES along with ports to Game Boy Advance, PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, XBox 360 and so on. And while in many ways I feel that Street Fighter III (and perhaps even IV) are ultimately better games, it all comes back to II as the one I have the fondest connection with. So while I was away for gaming for much of what Capcom delivered post-SFII, it was with great enthusiasm that I went back discovering many of these amazing games I had missed once I fell back in love with IV.
Some of you may know about my love for the Darkstalkers series, which of course was Capcom's "macabre Street Fighter" game. Once I had discovered the series, the doors opened up to me to start investigating the various Capcom Vs. games which included Street Fighter and Darkstalkers characters in the roster amongst other Capcom notables. Though I dabbled a bit with Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, it was really the third game in the series that got me excited as a current-gen fighting game. But this past week I've been spending some time with the first Marvel Vs. Capcom on Dreamcast. Of course the roster is smaller, the visuals aren't high-def and there's no online play. But the truth is, I'm probably enjoying it even more than MVC3.
[img width=480 height=360]http://image.gamespotcdn.net/gamespot/images/screenshots/8/197868/marvcap_screen001.jpg[/img] [img width=480 height=360]http://image.gamespotcdn.net/gamespot/images/screenshots/8/197868/marvcap_screen011.jpg[/img]
Upon booting the game up I was greeted to some excellent music, which got me excited as I perused the roster. My first impression was how small the roster was compared to the third game in the series, or even other Capcom Vs. titles I've played. But when I looked closer, it seemed like that wasn't necessarily a bad thing. See a lot of the characters chosen are ones I'm fond of -- Morrigan, Chun-Li, Wolverine to name a few. I'm still on the look-out for a legit Dreamcast fight pad, but I do have a Total Control adapter so for now I'm using my Nubytech Street Fighter II anniversary pad released for PS2. With no tweaking to controls whatsoever in the options menu, this sets the six face buttons to classic Capcom style light-medium-strong attacks. Perfect!
I jumped right in using Morrigan and Chun-Li as my tagteam, who I've used as a team in other Vs. games many times before. Right away I was impressed with how visually stunning the sprite-work looked on the Dreamcast hardware. I've never played this game on the original arcade cabinet, so I can't speak much for how "100% arcade perfect" the game is as claimed on the back artwork. But I will say that everything is smooth and fast.
[img width=480 height=360]http://image.gamespotcdn.net/gamespot/images/screenshots/8/197868/marvcap_screen052.jpg[/img] [img width=480 height=360]http://image.gamespotcdn.net/gamespot/images/screenshots/8/197868/marvcap_screen092.jpg[/img]
Once I started playing for a while, there was one thing that caught me off guard: this game is hard. Or maybe I'm just rusty? Captain Commando and Mega Man both seem pretty ruthless in this game. Notice I said "ruthless" rather than "cheap." That's because as brutal as they and some of the other characters' AI can be, it always seems fair. If you put the time in to get good at Marvel Vs. Capcom, you will get good at it. Luckily the Dreamcast manual (remember those?) has pretty thorough move-lists. And before I knew it I was pulling off screen-filling specials that made me feel like a force to be reckoned with. That said, I'm still not able to beat the game on "a dollar's worth" of credits yet. But that's fine because much like the younger version of me playing Street Fighter II, this is the kind of fighter that you can sit and play for hours and have a great time doing so.
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I'm really impressed that our bloggers have been putting out such a large amount of excellent reads lately!
I was also a SF II junkie back in the day, and enjoyed the genre up through the Dreamcast era. I think on that machine is where these titles peaked for me. With Capcom vs. SNK there was just such a huge amount of content that could be opened up that I played it to death. SF III was a great fighter, although I never became good enough to really take out human opponents well. And of course, the subject of this blog.
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"Arcade perfect" is true. Look up the Sega Naomi arcade board sometime and you'll see what I mean.
Also, 25 years of SF this month. Wow! I know I'll be playing more in this latter half of the month.
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I know it is out of the budget for most, but if money (or a sale opportunity) permits, the 25th anniversary Street Fighter collection is a ton of cool. The PS3 box has an extra 4 games to download compared to the 360, and for a soundtrack fan like myself, 11 discs worth of neat. (Take that, 4 disc soundtrack to King of Fighters 13 pack-in!  )
Oh, and concerning MvC, I think that the first may also be my personal favorite in the series, though I own and enjoy each one. I graduated from X-Men Children of the Atom, Darkstalkers, Night Warriors, Marvel Super Heroes, Marvel Super Heroes Vs. Capcom, and almost every game up to MvC, and it still plays almost like the pinnacle of that line. MvC 2 will always hold a special place for the fun it brought, but the feel was a bit of a departure for the series.
Thanks for the reminder!
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@Duke.Togo: yeah man, I kind of purposely left it out of this post but Capcom Vs SNK (either of them/both of them) would be my favorite Vs game of the series. What an incredible game with an incredible roster. I'm also a big fan of SFIII -- though I'll be covering all these games in later blog posts. 
@OatBob: someday I'm gonna build a "fake NAOMI"... it'll just be a cab with a Dreamcast in it. Haha.
@slackur: That 25th Anniversay set certainly looks nice, but I'd be more prone to just buy a boxset of the soundtracks since I've bought every game in the set already (most games, numerous times.) Also, the bust of Ryu does nothing for me. Had it been Chun-Li...
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@noiseredux: Yeah, one of the many things video game collecting has taught me about myself is that I'm apparently a huge fan of redundancy. I own physical copies of every game in the 25th Ann. set, some multiple times on different systems, and yet the whole package allure just drew me in. That light-up Ryu statue is also pretty sweet, gotta tell ya.
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@noiseredux:
Had it been a Darkstalkers release with Morrigan...
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@Shadow Kisuragi:...my beloved might have vetoed. And this is the chick who plays the Dead or Alive series and Soul Calibur series extensively. Of course, if Morgan were in her daywalker outfit...
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@slackur:
I have a Morrigan cel I was planning on displaying with it. What a dirty mind you have, sir.
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@Shadow Kisuragi: I have this wall-scroll: http://i.imgur.com/rxFqml.jpg
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One of my favorite gaming memories is with this game. I owned the PS version when I was in high school, and one of my friends was always up very early for swim practice. He had about an hour before school started after his practice and would come over prior to school since I lived about 2 blocks from the school.
We would occasionally rotate games, but most of our playing was MvC pretty much every morning mon-fri. The roster was varied and interesting enough for us to keep with it for about two years until high school ended. Definitely holds a special place in my collection and is one of the titles I'm REALLY glad I held onto.
@Noiseredux - That wall scroll is really awesome. One of the best pics of Morrigan I've ever seen.
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@Crabmaster2000: yeah my wife found me that wall scroll for my birthday this year.
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@noiseredux:
Fantastic wall scroll. It's hard to find tasteful Mai and Morrigan artwork out there at times, but that one's well done.
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So... I just learned about MvC Origins coming out this (next?) week. I think I need to pull this fighter out again.
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Talk about timing! My beloved just scored this for us on our latest road trip! The first copy we had was stolen, and my second died a terrible disc rot death and keeps locking up. So we're jumping in again soon 
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