From speaking with various fighting game community developers through the years, they’ve told me that one of the most intense debates that happens within their companies surrounds who will be included on the roster when a game launches.
These fires burn hot within the community itself, and you can only imagine how passionate the developers must be when they know that it takes 6 months to make a base character model, and about 4 months to create a signature move.
Back in the 1990s, when Capcom was working on what would eventually be called Marvel vs. Capcom, Marvel had very strict requirements on who had to be included on their side of the game’s roster, specifically Captain America, Spider-Man, Wolverine and Hulk.
“When we were starting the development of Marvel vs. Capcom, the contract stated that the four representative characters for Marvel had to be Captain America, Spider-Man, Wolverine and Hulk (meaning that these characters were essentially the faces of Marvel and were not to be excluded under any circumstance),” wrote the game’s producer, Kenji Kataoka, back in 1998.
It wasn’t just the roster that was under strict guidelines, as the colors they could wear in prior and future games would face scrutiny from Marvel.
“For player two colors, back then Marvel didn’t really give us the OK on any of our suggestions,” wrote Atsushi “Tomichin” Tomita, who worked as a planner on several Versus Capcom fighting games.
“Just the slightest variations of the first player colors were all that passed their checks, but they gradually become more lenient,” he said about X-Men Children of the Atom, which was released in North America in 1995.
Marvel wasn’t the only side of things where intense debates took place, as Capcom wanted to include some human characters as well, and settled on Sir Arthur (Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts), Strider, and Captain Commando as candidates for the first Marvel vs. Capcom.
“From home console games, we of course chose Mega Man, but Capcom had a lot of arcade games as well. When doing our research, we realized that there weren’t as many original humanoid characters as we thought, though,” wrote Tomita.
“We worked in the same building as the Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts team so we chose Arthur, and Strider Hiryu was popular in our country so we added him based on that (not personal feelings). Captain Commando had the company’s name on him so we decided we could push him a bit.
“However, for Arthur from Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts, my superior Funami-san didn’t allow it,” wrote Tomita. “I think he felt the art styles were too different.”
Arthur would later see his playable debut in 2011, as part of the base roster in Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
The lack of X-Men characters is often attributed as one of the reasons that Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite didn’t match sales expectations, which is ironic considering that Wolverine was one of the must-have characters that Capcom was contractually required to include roughly a couple decades before. Apparently, Marvel had no such requirement for MvC: Infinite.
Fans may be surprised to hear how much debate and red tape happens behind the scenes when it comes to their favorite fighting game characters. While not all cases are highly intense, roster debates can be a polarizing and challenging obstacles for development teams to overcome.