Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection is just the start for Capcom’s retro revivals

Capcom stands out from other fighting game developers by constantly bringing its old games to modern audiences for both new and veteran players. Following 2022’s release of Capcom Fighting Collection, Capcom is releasing its second compilation, Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, later this year. The hotly anticipated package includes seven games from the Marvel vs. Capcom subseries from the 1990s.

It’s easy to see why old fans are so excited about the news. At Evo 2024, Digital Trends played one hour of Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, and also spoke with producer Shuhei Matsumoto. The producer explained how the collection came to be and shed some light on whether or not we’ll see more like it in the future. Based on what we’ve learned so far, the ports are incredibly faithful to the originals, yet offer just enough new features to make new players feel welcome.

Diving into the past

The Evo demo build I tried had three of seven games available to play: Marvel vs Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes, X-Men: Children of the Atom, and X-Men vs. Street Fighter. Those three games feel exactly like I expected them to. They may not have all the bells and whistles of modern fighting games like Street Fighter 6, but Matsumoto and his team implemented some new tricks into the collection to buff up the retro offerings. The most noticeable and immediate change is X-Men: Children of the Atom’s new expanded roster, which already gives it a leg up in terms of content over its original 1995 iteration.

In the original, Marvel characters Magneto and Juggernaut were only nonplayable boss characters, while Street Fighter’s Akuma was a hidden character only unlockable via a cheat code. For this expansion, however, all three are now readily playable. Matsumoto says that the reason for their inclusion is because previously hidden secrets are now wide open. Anyone with an internet connection is able to discover them, so there’s not really much use in