So I'm trying to put together a crew of like-minded individuals who want to make a super hero tag team game . We're gonna need composers, drawing artists, people who know about the technical aspects of the game. We're gonna need people who know EF 12, MUGEN, Yoyo Gamemaker, or just plain code.
Now here´s the long written version.
I don´t believe in choosing one´s favorite things without really thinking it. For something to truly be one´s favorite, it must prove itself time and time again. It's the only way to distinguish the passing fads and temporary caprices from what truly hits one's core.
But I think in a sense Marvel vs Capcom 2 has proven itself to be many people´s favorite. It was never a perfect game. The cast came from disparately different games and it showed. The stages weren't anything to write home, and while the 2d sprites that weren't from Darkstalkers looked good, the backgrounds where generic and aged terribly. The music choices are still baffling.
But for a game that basically was a last hurrah for the series collecting all the characters that had been on it, and rounding it with basically random stragglers(2 Wolverines and Anakaris? Amingo? Where's Anita, U.S. Agent and Shadow Lady? Where the hell is Cyber Akuma? No Warzard characters?) proved itself to have huge legs. For 10 years it was a mainstay of arcades, and the tourney years. 10 years. Halo is over 10 years. Do people still feverishly play Halo's multiplayer?
The known, colorful characters where certainly a plus. The game certainly held a lot of appeal with the promise of making a team with Street Fighter's Bison teaming up with Spider-Man. That's certainly part of it. But it wasn't the only fighting game with Marvel characters.
The success of that game is, at it's core, a design success. The gameplay is fast and accessible, but with 56 characters to add to a 3 character team, that means that there was bound to be 168 possible teams, which, every character having 3 assist types, raises the possible combinations to 504. Even the update to the sequel couldn't touch it.
Speaking of that, UMVC3 is nearing it's fourth year birthday. Fans of the series where pretty disappointing with Capcom's handling overall of UMVC3 afterwards. The DLC was certainly disappointing/on disk. Capcom seems to have given up on this huge seller pretty quickly. Can't even play it online no more.
The Marvel series is showing all the signs to be headed into an even longer slumber than the decade between MVC2 and MVC3. Capcom is not doing so hot, lately. Don't be surprised if in a couple of years Capcom goes under, or gets bought up or sold.
Meanwhile, Marvel is doing so good, it's decided it to treat it's games division as another subsidiary of the films, focusing on producing games aligned with the movies it's making more than anything. Which is why Activision isn't making X-Men and Spider-Man games anymore.
So, until Marvel's games model goes kaput and Capcom pulls itself out of the muck, the odds of MVC4 are low to nil. And this is where the story used to end, back in the early 2000's.
But it's not the early 2000's anymore. Now, when Microsoft won't release a new Banjo Kazooie game, former Rare staff make a kickstarter for Yooka Laylee. When Konami won't make a traditional Castlevania, it's original creator puts out a Kickstarter for Bloodstained. When Capcom won't make a new Megaman game, it's original creator makes Mighty No.9.
So where's our spiritual sequel to Marvel vs Capcom? I mean, fighting games have some of the more intense fan content generating scenes I've seen, and that's just MUGEN alone! We made Pokken before Pokken was cool. And that's what I'm here to pitch. An idea for us to get together and make a new MVC styled game.
Now, MVC had a pretty deep well of well known and obscure characters from which to draw. And all those guys are gonna be under copyright for the forseeable future.
But not all superheroes are under copyright. Over the years, hundreds of this heroes have lost their copyright due to their parents companies going under and other such fates.
While you wouldn't mistake any of these guys for anything other than 1940's superheroes in their original state, it's certainly possible to reinvent them as something more modern. Say, analogues to popular current comic book and videogame characters.
For some, you wouldn't even need to go too far. I mean, look at Comet and Spider-Queen.
You're making a fighting game and you're gonna make a moveset for "shoots eyebeams" and "Can shoot web from her wrist." Hello? Streamline the designs a little, and you have some cool chars for a game!
Alas, there's other characters that don't really have that much going for them in terms of powers. A lot of them just have what I call "The Basic Superman". Really strong, Can Fly. A lot of them just have a costume and a gimmick with no actual powers.
But WE'RE calling the shots. We can make this characters do whatever we want! For an example, here's Red Rube.
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| Also, apparently "Red Rube" is a sexual thing that I don't want to be image googling. |
Red Rube is a Captain Marvel(Whom, by the way, can also be on the game) knockoff with no actual powers other than being superstrong and supernaked. Like Captain Marvel, he's an orphan who transforms when he yells out a magic word. But when he transforms he does a thing with a tornado instead of a thing with lightening.
So why not extrapolate that power set to "he can shoot tornados!" If you wanted him to be an analogue, there's at least two MVC characters with whirlwind powers.
There's all sorts of things that can be done. You can make a legacy character so as to mold the character into whatever age or race or gender you want to. You can pretend the character had a lenghty history to say "hey, that's what the character looked like in the 90's!" or "eventually he got powers" or "He's actually a character from an old videogame, brought to life." We could totally work in those snubbed characters that definitively should have been on there, but whern't.
And that's all before even discussing making an original character. It's certainly a possibility. Jussayin' is all. It's not like we can't make a whole new character or anything.
As for gameplay, may I suggest starting off with a base MVC2 engine, and then improving on that?
For example, add a combo breaker or somesuch system. Batzarro's personally not a huge fan of infinites. Or how was that thing in Tatsunoko called? Megacrash?
Another thing I'd like is the ability to choose assist types on the fly. It would add unpredictability to fights to not be expecting something in specific everytime you see the assist character arrive.
It'd be pretty cool if all characters could buff up their stats, similar to Juggernaut's Power Up move, with the caveat that it'd drain their meter. You can continually buff on top of the buffs, but it'd keep draining more and more meter. Once you're out of meter, the buffs are gone. We could call this option "Retcon".
Inversely, you could maybe debuff yourself temporarilly in exchange for more meter. Would you be willing to be a bit more frail or slower in exchange for that necessary bit of hyperbar?
There's also non-fighting things that I'd like to improve on the Marvel Games. For example, the story. I'd like to think we can come up with something a little better than a slideshow for each character(or in MVC2's case, no even that). I mean, it doesn't have to be Mortal Kombat 9's or anything, but even Touki Densho had somewhat more of a story than a game with characters that have decades of story to them. That's right, Touki Densho. You haven't even heard about that one.
How about endings that acknoweledge that the characters where a team, instead of just giving an ending to the guy who last punched? I know at least MVC1 toyed with that for a bit, but there's certainly more that can be done.
I was making a fighting game story mode once, and while I couldn't ever finish it, It basically amounted to generic dialogue that could be replaced with character specific versions. You know, you say, for example "What would Ryu say HERE to start a fight? Something like 'I want to test my strength against you' right? But what would Wolverine say? 'Get out of my way, Bub!' probably!" Much like certain parts of Star Wars Kotor, different dialogues basically taking the story in a same direction.
How about Co-Op? The Marvel games completely missed the idea of Co-op, but this isn't 1999 anymore! There's no reason why multiple players can't control each characters. Hell, can you imagine 3 on 3 gameplay? That would be boss.
In short,I don't think we've done enough with the idea of a super hero tag team game and with fighting games in general. 10 more years? Let's NOT wait 10 more years. Let's get together and do it.
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| NOT THE FINAL TITLE PLEASE DON'T SUE. |
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