Sean Akizuki's Fantasy Critic

  People often said that Doctor Doom is harder than Thanos in the game. The same may go for most people who say Juggernaut is harder than Magneto in X-Men: Children of the Atom . Doctor Doom is arguably more popular than his recurring foes -- the Fantastic Four! It's even way too obvious that Supaida-Man based Professor Monster's design on Doctor Doom! Doctor Doom continues to be one of the most terrifying foes -- becoming a popular recurring foe! It's baffling how some fighting game bosses in the 1990s were actually TOUGHER than the final boss! Sagat was harder to deal with than the Dictator in Street Fighter II series. Goro and Kintaro are considerably harder than their bosses Shang Tsung and Shao Kahn. Are these incidents intentional or overlooked glitches? Marvel Super Heroes on the Marvel vs. Capcom: Legacy Collection let me play the game all over again. Yeah, I miss a lot of old games. Doctor Doom may just be a flatline human BUT he's one tough cookie. It gets ev...

It's no secret that I don't like Marvel (under Disney) now. I believe Disney RUINED Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite from reaching whatever true potential it had. I was excited for Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite only to find out that it's got a lackluster roster and no arcade endings. Sure, there was the Story Mode which doesn't have to be spectacular. However, Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite ended with a bad roster presumably due to the feud with Fox. I bought Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection so I could play the classic 1990s games. Yes, the good old days and I want to replay a close-authentic arcade experience. I could finally play Marvel vs. Capcom crossover games with the full crossover.  I played Marvel Super Heroes all over again. The default difficulty made me experience arcade frustration all over again. The PSX version was slightly easier although Doctor Doom maintained his, "I'm so good at keepaway! Doo dah! Doo dah!" Doctor Doom was a real bastard due ...

With the  Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection game around the corner -- I was tempted to visit one of the most popular villains ever. Yes, I'm talking about Doctor Doom who was first introduced as the recurring enemy of the Fantastic Four. However, as time passed, Doctor Doom became more and more distanced from his most recurring foes. That would be a peculiar thing since Doctor Doom's backstory starts with the Fantastic Four, having met Reed Richards in COLLEGE, and had a rivalry ever since. How did Doctor Doom become more popular than the Fantastic Four? The answer may lie with the Spider-Man franchise. Spider-Man may be more popular than the Fantastic Four. I'm no avid comic book reader because of the overdoing of retroactive continuity. However, in the 1960s, Spider-Man would also clash with Doctor Doom. Doctor Doom also fought with other more popular villains like the Avengers, Hulk, She-Hulk, and the Uncanny X-Men. Having fought with several superheroes BETTER than ...

  I guess Marvel does have a huge cycle, right? A bit of research will tell us Toei Ltd. once had a Marvel license, later Haim Saban acquired a Marvel license before getting a license from Toei, Disney later bought Marvel and later the Power Rangers brand, and then it's a weird cycle. Nothing's really completely original at all. I could go ahead and praise Haim Saban for doing Knights of Tir Na Nog though it's clearly not all that original. Heck, Toei Ltd. does seem to have a habit of making fun of a lot of stuff. One such case was when Japanese Spider-Man  or Supaida-Man was created. Sure, I expected it to be somewhat alike yet different. Instead, it's very different. The hero Yamashiro Takuya meets an alien who's the last of his kind. Yamashiro loses his father to the Iron Cross Army. Later, Shinji meets a Garian who gives him spider powers. Shinji Todo was famous for playing several villains such as General Hedder from Denji Sentai Denziman and God Neros' hum...

Way back when Capcom was still cool - I remembered some of the classic crossovers. Such was the Marvel vs. Capcom series which actually started with X-Men vs. Street Fighter followed up with Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, the Marvel vs. Capcom 3 series, and Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite . So far, I hear MVCI sucks so I wonder if I should even buy it just to play as Megaman X and Zero? I thought about how characters from the Street Fighter series were revamped when they were brought over to the MVC universe.  I remembered Street Fighter started adding Super Combos which were super moves that required at least ONE LEVEL of the Super Bar. They could be performed up to three levels while others were strictly Level 3 only. One level determined the strength of the Super. However, these Street Fighter characters that were added to the Marvel vs. Capcom non-canon universe were not given just aesthetic changes but a serious boost. Some projectil...

I was rewatching some of the X-Men: The Animated Series by Haim Saban and realized one thing -- Nightcrawler's father Azazel was only introduced in 2003 as a possible parentage retcon. Until then, there's been a lot of speculation who his father is. The 1990s X-Men cartoon did bring some hints during "Nightcrawler", "Lotus and the Steel" and "Bloodlines" which actually tend to point to one man -- SABERTOOTH! Why do I think that Sabertooth may have actually been Nightcrawler's real father ? In Bloodlines, Mystique told Nightcrawler that the latter's father was a wealthy nobleman. Yet, "Lotus and the Steel" does present a hint that Nightcrawler could be Sabertooth's other son with Mystique. Wolverine remembers Nightcrawler and then he sees Sabertooth. There's even a resemblance between Nightcrawler AND Sabertooth more than Mystique's husband and Nightcrawler. This has me thinking about it that Mystique may have lied...

I remembered how often I actually laughed or ridiculed Magneto in the cartoon media in the good old days before Disney got mutilated and then -- MUTILATED Marvel Comics for the worse. Now I thought about the whole fact that Saban's X-Men cartoon and some previous incarnations of Magneto just don't get the full extent of how powerful Magneto really is. His appearance in one of the old Fantastic Four series (where Human Torch was replaced by Herbie) was just oh-so pathetic and stupid while he did have an impressive appearance in two Spiderman series -- especially in Spiderman  Many of the media tend to limit Magneto's power. I remembered the X-Men cartoon as well as the X-Men movies tend to portray Magneto to be more focused on ferromagnetic powers ignoring that's not the only field of magnetism. I may not be a physicist but I understand more of the basics of magnetism by doing some actual research. So what powers would he actually possess? It's not just ferromag...

Considering today is father's day, I thought of this rather bizarre incident between Cyclops and his son Cable. Cable is the son of Cyclops and Madelyne Pryor (a clone of Jean Grey). Mr. Sinister assumed that if Cyclops and Jean Grey would have an offspring, that mutant would be powerful enough to defeat Apocalypse. It just happened that Jean Grey supposedly died and the Phoenix Force brought to life Mr. Sinister's failed experiment Madelyne Pryor making her more or less another Jean. This happened that Madelyne had now become more or less a "real person" capable of getting pregnant and that's what happened. It's most likely Cable was named Nathan by his birth mother because of Mr. Sinister's mental suggestion. Plus, Mr. Sinister's real name is Nathaniel Essex. Apocalypse was awakened by the birth of this new powerful mutant. Having his bond with the Celestials, he may have felt it was his duty to get that child and test it. Apocalypse infected Nath...

One of the best classic fighting games back before Capcom became Crapcom for not giving Megaman a proper finale before ending the game series, there was one of the games I enjoyed called Marvel Super Heroes.  There were ten selectable characters and two hidden bosses. For a start you get six heroes and four villains.  The heroes are Captain America, Wolverine, Spiderman, Hulk, Ironman and Psylocke.  The villains you can initially play as are Magneto, Juggernaut, Shuma Gorath and Blackheart.  The game itself has various special moves, air combos and the super meter.  When the super meter reaches at least one level (Shuma Gorath's only reaches one level and the others have three levels), one can execute the Infinity Super which is a damaging move.  But make sure it connects.  Trying to connect combos and Infinity Super to gain a high score was really fun. Aside from that, you also had the Infinity Gems.  These are Soul (life restoration), Power...