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 ...

I remember playing Marvel Super Heroes and Psylocke was my main character. Psylocke was my top pick either due to the Smurfette Principle or was it because she had cool moves? I didn't care too much about X-Men: Children of the Atom due to its monstrous difficulty. However, Marvel Super Heroes was far more appealing to me. It had better graphics and more reasonable difficulty. I find Doctor Doom and Thanos reasonably difficult compared to how Juggernaut and Magneto were in X-Men: COTA . It turns out Psylocke wasn't popular with the animators but only in the comics. Psylocke was probably an odd choice because she wasn't a regular in Saban's X-Men: The Animated Series . Marvel Super Heroes also featured other villains that were too oddball like Shuma Gorath, Blackheart, and the final boss Thanos. Thanos wasn't featured in any more animated variants aside from the Silver Surfer cartoon. Meanwhile, Magneto, Juggernaut, and Doctor Doom (a boss) are the easily recognizabl...

  I bought Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection -- the game that brought the 1990s (and Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Super Heroes ) in one disc. After all, it's already the eighth-ninth-generation console. That means there's more power than the fifth-generation consoles that forced the creation of the EX Edition of X-Men vs. Street Fighter up to Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes . I played both games to try and get the trophies. I could conclude that Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was pure hype compared to Marvel vs. Capcom .  Marvel vs. Capcom 2 came out in the early 2000s. It's easy to get hyped because almost all the characters from the Marvel vs. Capcom series are there. Norimaro wasn't added which wasn't a big loss either. Finally, I could play Psylocke again (who was my main in Marvel Super Heroes ). I see all the characters from the crossover series as well. 3 vs. 3 was definitely something new. It was exciting to see what teams one could form. In my case, I ...

Right now, I still have no plans for a PS5. I'm disappointed with the direction that Mortal Kombat took with Fire God Liu Kang's new messy era. I'm also disappointed with how Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite had so many bad reviews, missing X-Men characters, and how Disney has messed up Marvel. Marvel vs. Capcom: Fighting Collection is an interesting nostalgia trip -- way back before Disney (and Warner Bros.) bought as many franchises. Many can remember when Warner Bros. bought Midway out of bankruptcy and hence Mortal Kombat fell to their territory. Back then, Marvel was still cool and it takes me back to memory lane. The memory lane when Haim Saban actually handled something he knew better than Toei. Saban adapted the X-Men franchise and created a cartoon series out of it. I couldn't handle Power Rangers  but Saban's handling of Marvel has been far better! The fighting collection can remind me why the arcade was a quarter eater. Playing the games on default can have th...

The Marvel vs. Capcom series is built on a What-If storyline. Interestingly, Charlie was brought into the Marvel vs. Capcom series instead of Col. William Guile. Guile made his debut in the Street Fighter II series. Charlie's story was set up in the Street Fighter Alpha series -- which took place after the first Street Fighter game but before Street Fighter II series. Charlie made it into X-Men vs. Street Fighter   with a slightly modified version of his fate. Street Fighter Alpha 3 gave some interesting details such as how Cammy was made as a female version of the Dictator (which is just bad writing IMHO) and Charlie's death.  X-Men vs. Street Fighter has some what-if endings. However, Charlie's ending was confirmed canon. Charlie went missing and was assumed dead. However, it turned out that the Dictator decided to turn Charlie into Shadow. Shadow was a secret playable character in Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter and a Special Partner in Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of...

Street Fighter characters get revamped in the Marvel vs. Capcom series . One of the biggest revamps done was with the Dictator (Bison in the U.S., Vega in Japan). Bison was pretty much a charge-based character in the mainstream Street Fighter games. Playing as them can be challenging unless one knew the secret of holding downwards-back instead of just holding back to effectively use them. X-Men vs. Street Fighter and its follow-up Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter introduced the M. Bison incarnation that I love the most. After playing the Street Fighter Alpha series -- I felt that Bison's usage of a special move Psycho Crusher wasn't my style. Instead, having Bison use the Psycho Shot in its place and a Psycho Crusher as a highly damaging Super Move was the way to go. Sure, later games gave Bison a Psycho Crusher as a special move and a Super Psycho Crusher as a super move -- mostly for Level 3 only. The Marvel vs. Capcom series gave us an upgraded version of Bison from th...

Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes was hyped for being that crazy game. The reason why I wanted a PlayStation 2 was for this game. The Dreamcast CRASHED and it was a shame that Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes never got a sixth-generation update . Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes was fun at first -- it contained almost every character from X-Men: Children of the Atom up to Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes . The new hype was 3 vs. 3 combat. Therefore, it was only fair that the final boss was unplayable. An EX Edition was most likely impossible and Abyss was no longer playable in home consoles. After all, those playable bosses broke the balance in 2-player modes.  As Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was the beginning of a new millennium -- it was normal to try new things. The new boss had three forms. Abyss looked intimidating as he had three forms. The first form was the Armor of Erosion -- a slow but powerful boss. The second was a slimy alien form called the Guardian ...

Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes became significant for two things -- it became responsible for naming the franchise sometime after Capcom created crossovers with Capcom games. Instead of just having Street Fighter characters -- more Capcom characters showed up during the crossover. After two games dealing with Apocalypse -- the menacing Onslaught was added. Onslaught was the result of Professor X's darker side emerging. Professor X mind-wiped Magneto after the latter sucked off Wolverine's adamantium skeleton. So yeah, ironic that Wolverine should be playable with his complete adamantium in this game. Onslaught was introduced as the final boss. I remember playing Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes at the arcade. My mains were usually Classic Megaman and Ryu. I wasn't a big fan of the Special Partner system since it was chosen at random. Onslaught had two forms. The first form was a giant towering figure of Onslaught that could summon Sentinels (which he did i...

  Before all the games from X-Men: Children of the Atom up to Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite were coined under the Marvel vs. Capcom series -- we had X-Men vs. Street Fighter as the first official crossover. Apocalypse was also the sub-boss of Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter (criticized for being a cash cow rather than a well-thought game) since Cyber Akuma was the final boss. In X-Men vs. Street Fighter -- he was the second to the last opponent. The final opponent was one's tag team partner. So yeah, a Cyclops vs. Ryu match was always a friendly battle! I could remember the intimidation factor Apocalypse had. Most fighting game bosses were human-sized and difficult to defeat. Apocalypse would grow giant and his life bar was found at the bottom. I remember seeing people trying to beat Apocalypse in the arcade during the late 1990s. I was always intimidated by how huge Apocalypse was. One of Apocalypse's most devastating moves is his drill attack (where one should do a super...

Zangief's probably one of the most iconic characters from the Street Fighter franchise. It gets funny how Zangief became a bad guy in some of the Street Fighter adaptations (especially in the American adaptations) while he's really a good guy in the canon. It's probably due to some war with Russia that the American production made the decision -- especially the Street Fighter movie where Balrog (Mike Bison) was made a good guy and Zangief a bad guy who's unaware he's one. Zangief was added to the Marvel vs. Capcom series. In fact, he was a character in the first crossover namely X-Men vs. Street Fighter . Street Fighter characters got adjusted for better or for worse. Certain projectile super moves got a beam-type replacement. Ryu's Shinkuu Hadoken clearly mimics the Kamehame Wave from the Dragon Ball Z franchise. Chun Li's Kikousho formed a dome and it had bad recovery time. Zangief was added to the mix. Zangief lost his Aerial Slam Super Move and started o...

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 ...

Is it me or is modern Disney RUINING EVERYTHING? I even wonder if Warner Bros. buying DC Comics was a good or a bad thing. SJWs are ruining games such as badly written or for the sake of some small butthurt minority somewhere. Yes, all for the sake of representation and badly created messes such as A Little Mermaid remake. I don't mind a black Ariel but shouldn't she be a reason to move the whole story to Africa? Africanize the story? That would've been the best thing to do and say, "Well, let's reinvent it and take it to Africa!" Instead, the diversity didn't work. Disney ruined Marvel such as how Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch get retconned as no longer Magneto's children (which was a very interesting plot point), how certain X-Men characters just get written off without a good reason, etc. I believe that Disney actually ruined Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite . I was getting hyped for Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite for so many reasons. I get to play as my fa...

It's no secret that the Mortal Kombat franchise didn't only copy from Tekken but also from Marvel vs. Capcom series . I may enjoy playing Tekken Tag Tournament 2 over Mortal Kombat (2011) . However, I'n not going to shy away from trying to defend MK (2011)'s Tag Team mode and say that it may not be as broken as some people think. Yes, it's broken and sometimes, finding the right partner can make one an offensive but how broken was it? I'm going to do a review of some older games to make a comparison. Until now, I'm upset that Capcom didn't make arcade-perfect releases of the previous entries such as X-Men vs. Street Fighter up to Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes . Those were great times then I thought about using them as analysis. A lot of games were really broken in the 90s. Who can remember how broken Mortal Kombat Trilogy is for the PSX and the Sega Saturn? I could remember easing the game using the boss monsters, especially MOTARO. It was fun...

It's one thing that Mortal Kombat had copied a lot of stuff from the Tekken series . The creators did copy the 3D gameplay which DID NOT WORK as expected. Eventually, the series went for 2D gameplay while copying the one-button per limb system from Tekken . Now, it's time to really take a look at how Mortal Kombat copied from Marvel vs. Capcom in some way. Take note that Tekken also copied from several older games such as Street Fighter and obviously Virtua Fighter . So let's get straight to all of what, SHALL WE? Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe has to be the blatant one. The popularity of the Marvel vs. Capcom series (which started with X-Men vs. Street Fighter ) just couldn't be stopped, right? I remembered how this game came out and I heard the game wasn't good. I guess I wasn't much of a DC Universe fan and I would've preferred Mortal Kombat vs. Marvel Universe instead. Though, Disney buying Marvel and Warner Bros. later owning DC Comics came in. This was ...

While Ryu's Hadouken is better than Ken's -- Ken's Shoryuken is better than Ryu's. Ken was the first of the two to use a Shoryuken-based super-attack. Ken's first Shoryuken-based super was his Shoryuu Reppa and later added the Shinryuken. Ryu instead focused his energies on improving his Hadouken such as the birth of the Shinkuu Hadouken (which Ken could perform in a duo with Ryu in Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter ) and the Denjin Hadouken (from the Street Fighter III series). The Street Fighter III series also introduced Ryu's first Shoryuken-based Super Move in the Shin Shoryuken. Shin Shoryuken would translate as True Rising Dragon Fist while Shinryuken would translate as True Dragon Fist.  Ryu's Shin Shoryuken was introduced in the Street Fighter III arcade games - a game series that didn't enter until the sixth-generation consoles. The variations did appear in several other games such as the Street Fighter EX series and non-canon spin-offs su...

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...

  The death of the Sega Dreamcast (and fortunately I NEVER had one) sure changed Sega's direction. Some games that were Dreamcast exclusives ended up going into Sega's former rivals in the console market. One of those games was Marvel vs. Capcom 2 - the first arcade game I was able to "take-home" for the PS2. Though, Capcom was already getting douchy in many ways. Remember when the Dreamcast had the near-arcade perfect translation of the first Marvel vs. Capcom game? The PS1 owners had to settle for the cheap EX mode because the hardware couldn't handle it. The PS2 could handle true tag-team play. At first, I enjoyed MVC2 and just understood why Capcom didn't give individual character endings - TOO MANY CHARACTERS. Then I really remembered how I really missed MVC at the arcade where true tag team play was really giving excitement. Time passed when the PS2 was dying and it was time to get a PS3. Yes, a PS3 and I played through Mortal Kombat (2011) . One of the ...

I remembered all the hype Marvel vs. Capcom 2 got WAY BACK in the 2000s. I don't want to deny that many people lined up to play the game. Three vs. three? Heavier hitter specials? Many endless possibilities? The game had a lot of potential to become a better game. However, the more I play it - the more I realized I may have been better off with some of the previous installments of the Marvel vs. Capcom series such as  X-Men vs. Street Fighter , Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter  or the first Marvel vs. Capcom game. I feel like paying extra credits to get the game's full edition, which wasn't available during the PS1 days. I remembered playing this game on the PlayStation 2 and before that - the arcade. It was a fun experience but fun while it lasted for a good reason. Three vs. three sounded fun. All the insane team-up hyper combo possibilities were there. I could remember how I started analyzing which beam-type supers would work together. It was pretty much a chees...

There are great new games but just because it's new -- it doesn't mean that it's new then it must be good. That's a problem that some people have if they only care something is new -- rather than care if something new delivers the results it intended. The same can be true for Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite. I wouldn't call it to be extremely horrendous. Like Tekken 7 -- it had potential but it really missed out on what it could've done. The game's potential was reduced to severe levels. At first, I had great hopes for the game. Megaman X and Zero? Check! Two vs. two is finally back? I ended up disliking three vs. three seeing how ultra-chaotic and unfocused it is! A story mode? I really say that the story mode has some interesting concepts such as Sigma and Ultron coming in. But the game has ruined itself. Maybe, this game also helped me see how making Shao Kahn as paid DLC if you didn't pre-order Mortal Kombat 11 to be a bad thing. Wasn't Sigma ...