Things changed heavily after Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was released
Scrubby. Not competitive. Only played for fun. These were some of the things said about the Marvel vs. Capcom franchise through the years before the Fighting Game Community started taking the series seriously, from a competitive standpoint.
Whether a fighting game is competitively viable comes down to many factors, including: Game and character balance, and if a title has easy to replicate tactics that lead to checkmate scenarios, as things of this ilk can quickly get a game dismissed as not being competitively viable.
The Marvel vs. Capcom series was initially placed into the not competitively viable category by the Fighting Game Community, likely due in part because the developers of X-Men vs. Street Fighter said they abandoned game balance due to time constraints.
Our community did a similar thing with the Super Smash Bros. franchise, also likely due to Masahiro Sakurai saying Smash isn’t a fighting game, although he would later discuss how Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is a competitive game many years later.
Once your franchise had received the ‘not competitively viable’ tag by our community, it was hard to shake that reputation.
However, many Marvel vs. Capcom and Super Smash Bros. players took these games very seriously competitively, and with time both franchises would shake their prior reputations for not being strong FGC titles.
For the Capcom Versus series, this mostly began to change with the release of Marvel vs. Capcom 2 in 2000, and a little known player — at the time — by the name of Justin Wong, who started winning a bunch of Battle by the Bay/Evo championships.
Justin Wong was so strong and dominant, he earned the nickname ‘Marvelous’ back then, and allusion to his prowess in Marvel vs. Capcom 2.
For some, Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, released in November 2011, has been the pinnacle of the franchise from a competitive standpoint, as the game is still actively played to this day, and is seen as a very high execution and adrenaline rush fighting game. However, some would argue it’s still Marvel vs. Capcom 2.
Regardless of where you stand on what the best competitively viable Marvel vs. Capcom game is, it wasn’t all that long ago where these games were easily dismissed by the Fighting Game Community at large.
But with time, and more understanding from the developers and community about what makes a strong title in the Fighting Game Community, some of these franchises are now seen as exceptional from a competitive standpoint.
Source: Event Hubs
