Marvel vs. Capcom is a legendary gaming icon today, but getting the series truly off the ground was nothing short of a miracle held together by effort and coordination from one side of the world to the other.
The secret Japanese Marvel vs. Capcom website from the ’90s held a lot of information that remained mostly hidden for almost 30 years — including how the companies debated about who to use as a final boss in the first MvC.
We recently translated part of the developer blog from the site rediscovered by TheSeventhForce where MvC Producer Kenji Kataoka discussed how Galactus was rejected by Marvel as the game’s big bad.
This is of course pretty ironic because the massive godlike being did end up becoming the boss of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 almost two decades later, but there was of course more villains brought up in their discussions.
They needed someone big to follow up Apocalypse after he was in X-Men vs. Street Fighter, but Marvel was trying to push a pretty unexpected choice.
After Marvel shot down Galactus and Capcom wasn’t interested in Loki, the comic book company suggested Fin Fang Foom.
“‘So, what about Fin Fang Foom? He’s big, and he’s a dragon’, said Marvel,” as written by Kataoka and translated by our own Nicholas ‘MajinTenshinhan’ Taylor.
“I don’t know if they were aware that I had worked on Dungeons & Dragons: Shadow over Mystara, but to me it was an enticing proposition. (If you know it, again you’d be quite the connoisseur).
“‘But for Japanese people, sure we know of dragons… But just having ‘a dragon’ doesn’t feel that exciting.’
“So then Marvel said, ‘Don’t worry, in the world of Iron Man he’s famous. He’s his biggest boss enemy.'”
Kataoka pointed out the problem with that considering they were told earlier in the process they couldn’t use Iron Man himself.
“I totally understand what you’re saying, but when we asked you if we could use Iron Man you said no, you did that just now.
“Why can’t the main character Iron Man be in, but his boss can?”
That’s when the Producer would put forth an apparent solution even if it wouldn’t come together right away.
“As I tried to constrain myself from saying this, I said ‘Onslaught’… I knew it’d be rejected as I said it, but Marvel were silent.
“At this point, I was desperate. I’d just keep throwing out famous names until I got one to stick!!
‘Carnage!!’
“… We looked at each other… We turned our heads to each other.
These were the only two names I could think of at the time.
“We left Los Angeles with a feeling of ambiguity over where we’d ended up.
“So, time to talk to the team about the results.
“Onslaught really does fit as the last boss.
“A boss that exceeds Apocalypse, there’s only Onslaught for that.
“He makes you think ‘whoa…’, he’s strong, he’s cool, he has style…
“I asked Shaky Akitomo if he could do another petition and ask Marvel for Onslaught.
“And then, the answer came. ‘We’ll think about it.’
“Ohh, did we actually find a loose thread to pull on?
“And then, several weeks passed.
“Unbelievably,’OK’ came back as a response… They sent us reference materials. You’re amazing, Marvel.
“And so, the Marvel side characters had been decided.”
So there you go. Onslaught wasn’t really either side’s first or second pick to be the final boss of Marvel vs. Capcom, but the stars aligned to make him fit pretty perfectly into the role as someone that could be an even bigger threat than Apocalypse.
And playing the game, he’s a bigger jerk too.
It’s also funny that Capcom was asking about Carnage all the way back in like 1997, but we still never got to see him as an official fighter across three more mainline entries.
Fans would have to wait for modders to add the Spider-Man villain to Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
And the only time we’ve really seen Fin Fang Foom was as a card in UMvC3’s Heroes and Heralds mode and in Arthur’s ending for the game.
Now that the company is working together again, perhaps we will see more of these characters should Marvel vs. Capcom 4 actually come to be.
For more translations from the MvC Producer’s Essays, we’ve also covered Capcom’s desire for Howard the Duck, the characters absolutely required by Marvel and more rejected fighters like the Fantastic Four.
Source: Event Hubs
