In regards to fighting , it took the video game industry awhile to dive into a genre which would seem to be right for this type of game. Comic books had always been side scrolling games, but their very nature suggested that a fighting game would work more naturally. The group that made the jump first were the X-Men. After two successful fighting games, Capcom decided in 1996 to put them against their own group, Street Fighter. X-Men vs. Street Fighter was the first game in a series that blended two worlds.
While Street Fighter had been a success in the fighting game genre, this game took more from the first two X-Men fighting games. The biggest addition was that two characters were selected to form a team. A player could tag characters in and out as much as they wanted. While the X-Men were superheros, the Street Fighter cast had to upgrade their moves to stand a chance. Moves became much more animated, such as Ryu’s fireball, the Hadoken, filling the entire screen.
The game made the fighting genre and the players who played much more strategic. You could not simply have the most powerful character, because your opponent would select a character who could counter them. You had to put some thought into what team made the most sense. The characters from Street Fighter were from Street Fighter Alpha 2 while the X-Men were from the 90’s cartoon show. They even got the same voice actors to reprise their roles.
X-Men vs. Street Fighter was the first game to show that video game characters could exist in their own world as much as their comic book counterparts. The series would eventually include the entire Marvel universe while also expanding the video game characters to include everyone from Capcom. It was when we saw that a video game company had created characters that could spin off from their main games, even if they did not have a monthly comic book.
