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X-Men vs. Street Fighter (also called XMvSF by fans) is an arcade game released by Capcom in 1996 and is the first game in the Marvel vs. Capcom series of fighting games. It features characters from the X-Men franchise and characters from the Street Fighter game series.

It was the first game to blend a tag team style of combat with the well-known Street Fighter gameplay, as well as incorporating elements from Capcom's previous fighting games in the Marvel Comics franchise, X-Men: Children of the Atom and Marvel Super Heroes. It was also ported to the Sega Saturn in 1997 and PlayStation in 1998. However, the tag team system was omitted from the PlayStation version due to memory limitations.

Due to insufficient beta testing, every character in this game has at least one infinite combo; ironically, it is nevertheless praised by some Street Fighter fans as being the most "fun" entry of the Marvel vs. Capcom series for precisely this reason.

Gameplay[]

X-Men vs. Street Fighter uses a system similar to the style developed in Marvel Super Heroes, and adds the tag team gameplay feature. Instead of picking one character, a player picks two. The starting character can then tag the waiting one in at any time by hitting the Fierce and Roundhouse buttons, which activates the "Variable Attack"; the incoming player will jump in with an attack and taunt briefly. During their taunt, they are vulnerable to counterattack.

There are other ways to bring your other character in; the "Variable Counter", which replaces the Infinity Counter of Marvel Super Heroes, breaks your block to bring your teammate in with a counterattack at the cost of a level of super meter. Also, the "Variable Combination" is a two-character super attack which costs two levels, and will switch your character as long as neither character gets hit during their super moves.

Unlike some other tag team games such as Tekken Tag Tournament, X-Men vs. Street Fighter requires both characters to be defeated in order to win the match. This rule was later used in SNK's The King of Fighters 2003, where all three characters must be defeated in order to win the match.

The X-Men characters come largely unchanged from X-Men: Children of the Atom and Marvel Super Heroes, with the exception of Rogue, Gambit and Sabretooth, who were new to the series. The Street Fighter characters used their Street Fighter Alpha forms and their moves were given upgrades to match the larger-than-life atmosphere of the Marvel games (for example, Ryu's Hadouken is much larger than it is in other games).

Single player progression[]

In single player mode, the player-selected pair has to fight six other pairs before reaching the final boss. Magneto and Bison are always the sixth pair, most likely as a tribute to their boss roles in previous games.

Final Boss[]

* Apocalypse is the final boss of the game. After defeating him, the character that defeated Apocalypse is forced to fight his or her teammate. (The game will not accept new challengers at this time, even in the arcade version). If you can defeat your CPU-controlled teammate, you will get an ending, usually a character-oriented joke.

Characters[]

Reception[]

The arcade version of X-Men vs. Street Fighter was met with a widely positive response. It streamlined the style and introduced the concepts of the successful Vs. series. Borrowing elements from Darkstalkers and Marvel Super Heroes, the over-the-top gameplay and visuals were an immediate sensation.

The PlayStation port of the game was universally panned by press and fans alike, earning a "passable" 6.0 at IGN and a "bad" 3.6 at GameSpot. Due to the RAM limitations of the PlayStation, the port was significantly inferior to the arcade in both graphics and gameplay. A lot of animation frames had to be removed, making the game look awkward and choppy, and performance was still "unacceptable" with slowdowns during special moves that made the game essentially unplayable. Because of memory limitations, this version also lacked the tag-team setup; instead, it used a traditional best-two-of-three round setup in a similar manner to Rival Schools: United By Fate. It was possible to have a tag-team match through two-player "Crossover Mode", provided that each player uses a clone of their opponent as their partner. For example, if the player is controlling Ryu and his opponent is Wolverine, then the player's partner will be Wolverine and the opponent's partner will be Ryu.

The Sega Saturn version received much better reviews, getting a 7.4 "good" review at GameSpot. The Saturn version required a 4MB RAM expansion cartridge (which came packaged with the game), which enabled the Sega Saturn to produce an arcade perfect port and retain all the frames, animation, and the tag-team setup. However, the Saturn version was available in Japan only.

Merchandise[]

Action figures based on the characters of the game was released by Toy Biz in 1998. Each set contains two action figures, one character each from X-Men and Street Fighter. Charlie and Storm were not made into action figures, possibly due to being the least used characters.

Gallery[]

External links[]

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