A little while ago, Atsushi Tomita, designer for X-Men vs. Street Fighter and various other Marvel and Capcom crossover projects, released some fascinating information regarding the development of the series.
At the end of X-Men vs. Street Fighter’s arcade mode, players were tasked with defeating Apocalypse as the final boss. Just before the fight would begin, Apocalypse were fade out before reappearing as a gigantic opponent.
According to Tomita, Apocalypse was chosen as the final boss for two reasons. First off, they wanted to shock players that reached this point.
“The reason we made Apocalypse so big was partly because we wanted to shock people, but also because of memory management.” — Atsushi Tomita
Upon initially seeing him for the first time as the round was starting, players would be given a certain impression as Apocalypse, standing at around the same scale as their own characters, greeted them from the opposite side of the screen. All of this would go out the window as soon as Apocalypse grew to his actual size.
However, the main reason why this was done was actually due to a technical limitation of the time. Essentially, the developers did not have enough memory to dedicate towards making another fighter.
“The reason we made Apocalypse so big was partly because we wanted to shock people, but also because of memory management,” stated Tomita.
“The CPS2 (Capcom Play System 2 arcade system board used since Super Street Fighter 2) had a lot of memory for characters on the ROM, but we were already quite filled up with what we had, so rather than make him a regular fighting game character, we figured that we could make him a huge character who didn’t move at all in order to preserve on memory. We used that limitation to turn it into a special effect like that instead.”
During gameplay, players would have to attack Apocalypse’s head and hand while the rest of his body essentially sat in the background. Though Apocalypse did have some animations, it was mostly like fighting a still image as movement could only be observed from certain parts of his body.
Regardless, the developers would then be inspired to go even bigger in later crossover fighting games featuring Marvel and Capcom. Of course, the request to use Galactus as the final boss for Marvel vs. Capcom was initially rejected by Marvel, leading the developers to give Onslaught this role instead.
It took some time, but the dream of having Galactus taking on Marvel and Capcom’s champions was finally realized with Marvel vs. Capcom 3. As expected, Galactus in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 was a lot more animated than Apocalypse ever was in previous games.
It’s interesting how such a limitation was able to shape future content within the Marvel vs. Capcom series like that. Had this limitation not been a problem, the Marvel vs. Capcom series as we know it today might’ve looked a little different.
A special thanks goes out to Nicholas “MajinTenshinhan” Taylor for the translations used in this article.
Source: Event Hubs
