Don’t ignore this underrated game in Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection

Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics is out now, and it contains six excellent fighting games starring iconic comic and game characters. There is one oddball game in the collection, though: The Punisher.

Released in arcades by Capcom in 1993, The Punisher is a beat ’em up like Final Fight rather than a fighting game like Street Fighter 2. It plays quite differently than everything else in this new collection, making it the oddest inclusion of the bunch.

Don’t let that steer you away from it. I recommend that everyone who picks Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection up give The Punisher a shot. While the fighting games will take hours upon hours of practice to get good at, The Punisher is something players can pick up and almost instantly have a fantastic time with and feel powerful while playing. It’s an underrated arcade classic, so I’m glad everybody finally has a chance to check it out here.

Welcome back, Frank

The Punisher is one of my favorite “heroes” in the Marvel universe because he’s both an action star and a nuanced tragic character. Yes, he’s a cool gun-toting vigilante, but he’s also a family man with a strict moral code who would hate the kinds of people who co-opt his symbol in the real world. Capcom’s game does not delve into much of the latter outside of an opening cutscene showing that The Punisher’s family was murdered; instead, it’s a celebration of the machismo side of The Punisher that sees him teaming up with Nick Fury to take on Kingpin and his criminals.

This quest to defeat Kingpin is spread across eight stages in a familiar beat ’em up formula. The Punisher and Nick Fury must fend off wave after wave of enemies coming at them as they slowly progress through these stages, picking up items on the ground to use as weapons and occasionally facing a tough boss character based on villains from the comics like Bushwacker and Jigsaw.

Even though I’m a fan of The Punisher, I had never heard of this game until I stumbled upon an