Atsushi Tomita, designer for Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes, recently revealed some interesting bits of information regarding his time developing collaborative projects featuring Marvel and Capcom’s intellectual properties.
Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes was a 2v2 fighting game that introduced a mechanic that was new to the series of games that Tomita had worked on up to this point. Indeed, the “Variable Cross” essentially allows a player to control both of their characters at the same time.
It turns out that the idea for the Variable Cross mechanic actually originated from Tomita’s time developing X-Men vs. Street Fighter. More specifically, Tomita saw something interesting when Ikawa, the programmer for that game, was trying to get that game’s new tag system to work.
“We didn’t really have any new ideas for the game system itself so I was thinking ‘What should I do,’ but then I remembered that back when our programmer, Ikawa-san, did the tag system for X-Men vs. Street Fighter, there was a bug where two characters would stay on the screen.” — Atsushi Tomita
In one of the first tests for this tag system, it seems that it didn’t work as intended. Instead, a bug resulted in both of the player’s characters staying on the screen. While this was eventually fixed for X-Men vs. Street Fighter, the scene left a certain impression on Tomita when he saw it.
When thinking of ways to make Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes standout from the previous games, the development team initially didn’t have any good ideas. It was then that Tomita remembered this unintended interaction from X-Men vs. Street Fighter. Tomita got the idea to turn this bug into an intended feature.
“We didn’t really have any new ideas for the game system itself so I was thinking ‘What should I do,’ but then I remembered that back when our programmer, Ikawa-san, did the tag system for X-Men vs. Street Fighter, there was a bug where two characters would stay on the screen,” said Tomita.”
“At the time, I thought ‘I’m definitely using this at some point,’ and when I remembered, we decided to make that into the Variable Cross.”
Overall, the Variable Cross system was a powerful option that could easily overwhelm the most experienced opponents, but was limited by the player’s resources. Controlling two characters like this in a fighting game was a brand new concept.
It’s amusing how unintentional mishaps like these can sometimes serve as inspiration. This can be especially true for game design.
The next game in the series would end up being Marvel vs. Capcom 2. As it was designed as a 3v3 team fighting game, it would be a little too hectic to use the Variable Cross system to control three combatants at once.
However, something similar to the Variable Cross would return in Street Fighter X Tekken in the form of the Cross Assault. While we can’t say for sure that Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes’ Variable Clash system served as inspiration for Street Fighter X Tekken’s Cross Assault, the resemblance between these mechanics is uncanny. This bug from X-Men vs. Street Fighter seemingly had quite the impact on the fighting game genre.
A special thanks goes out to our very own Nicholas “MajinTenshinhan” Taylor for the translations that were used in this article.
Source: Event Hubs
