Marvel Vs. Capcom (series) - Gameplay

Gameplay

The conventions, controls, and rules for the Marvel vs. Capcom series have evolved over its near two decade-long run. Following the same gameplay mechanics from Street Fighter II, the series initially began with the standard one-on-one, best-two-out-of-three rounds format as seen in X-Men: Children of the Atom and Marvel Super Heroes. Players would select a character to use in battle and use various attacks to exhaust their opponent's health meter or have the most cumulative health when time ran out. X-Men vs. Street Fighter limited each match to one round, but added two-on-two tag team features. Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter later introduced the concept of the "assist" by allowing the player to summon their offscreen partner to perform a special move without changing their currently-controlled character. The feature was tweaked in Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes, which randomly selected an assist character before each match, and only allowed the player to use their assist a limited number of times. The assist features from Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter were used instead in the following sequel, Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes, once again granting players the ability to call in their offscreen characters at any time during the match without any constraints. Marvel vs. Capcom 2 also increased the number of characters per team by one, providing the series' current three-on-three battle format.

As Capcom's design philosophy for the series shifted to expand their user base to those unfamiliar with fighting games, the transition was reflected by the series' changing control scheme. The first five games utilized the same configuration of an eight-directional joystick and six attack buttons that was previously established by the Street Fighter II games. In Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes, the controls were cut down to four attack buttons and two assist buttons in order to make the game more accessible. The control scheme was further simplified with the release of Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds, which included three attack buttons, two assist buttons, and a "launcher" button used to launch opponents upward for air combos. In addition, Marvel vs. Capcom 3 included two different control scheme options: Normal Mode and Simple Mode. Simple Mode, tailored to people new to fighting games, allowed players to perform combos and special moves easily at the expense of limiting a character's available moveset.