Now that Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics is now available digitally on the PlayStation 4, Switch, and Steam, Atsushi Tomita, one of the prominent developers behind many of the original Capcom and Marvel crossover titles leading up to the first Marvel vs. Capcom, revealed some interesting tidbits about the development of these games back in the 90s.
As many of us already know, Marvel wasn’t particularly popular in Japan back then. Of course, this meant that Capcom’s games centered around the Marvel IP weren’t selling particularly well in japan, but they were fortunately performing well overseas.
“Since X-Men: Children of the Atom and Marvel Super Heroes weren’t hits within Japan (they sold well overseas though), we weren’t really noticed at all within the company and were even told ‘A game like this shouldn’t be known by anyone and just disappear quietly,’ (since it was believed it would tarnish Street Fighter’s image),” said Tomita.
For most people, hearing something like this as a developer would probably be discouraging. However, it would seem that Tomita was only encouraged to try out new systems as a result.
During the development of X-Men: Children of the Atom and Marvel Super Heroes, Tomita served as the assistant designer. When it came time to develop the next game in the series, X-Men vs. Street Fighter, Tomita was promoted to the main designer for the game.
“Because of these circumstances, we had a lot of freedom, and our approach was ‘Let’s show them how good a system like this can be!’ continued Tomita.
Essentially, Tomita had a lot of leeway to just experiment with new system ideas since the majority of Capcom just didn’t seem to care about this sort of game.
X-MEN、MSHは日本国内でヒットしなかったので(海外では売れていたのだが)
社内では全く注目されず
「こんなゲームは(ストリートファイターキャラを汚すから)誰にも知られずにひっそり消えてほしい」
と言われたりして
おかげで大変自由に作れました
このシステムにどれだけの力があるか見せてやる！と— トミー朕 (@tommy_tin) September 17, 2024
Be sure to also read up on how Tomita decided upon X-Men vs. Street Fighter as the title for the third game. Once again, a special thanks goes out to Nicholas ‘MajinTenshinhan’ Taylor for handling the translations featured in this article.