One of the more ironic elements about certain gaming franchises is that we look at them from the scope of “How could no one see how big this would get?” versus the perspective of, “Wow, they were really swinging for the fences to try and make this work, huh?” There are plenty of gaming series that are legendary now but were viewed as “big risks” or “it may not do that well in certain markets,” and one could argue that the Marvel vs Capcom was one such series. Yes, it did have some games that came before this, but the first title was the true test to see if gamers would support it.
Over on Twitter, an original dev diary for Marvel vs Capcom, that came when the OG title’s soundtrack dropped, was found to be still active after 20+ years, and so when someone dove into it, they found all sorts of information. You can find the full breakdown in the thread below, but we’ll pick out the best elements to discuss. Mainly, we’ll talk about the character roster the game almost had.
While many of the “classic” MVC characters were selected by Capcom to be in the title, like Captain America, Spider-Man, Dr. Doom, Hulk, Wolverine, etc., there were also characters that wouldn’t appear in the roster until later titles, or not show up at all. For example, Thanos was supposed to be in the first game but didn’t become playable until the second game.
Oh, and Howard The Duck was also supposed to be in the game. Believe it. Other characters that were initially “approved” before being struck and that diehard Marvel fans would apparently include Deathlok, Medusa, Elektra, Fing Fang Foom, the Super Skrull, Machine Man, and more.
So, yeah, the roster was almost much different and arguably much more niche, especially given the time period, as this was pre-MCU, and many of these characters hadn’t been used in media outside of comics yet. Some of the characters that Capcom really pushed for sometimes had to be cut due to technology restrictions or straight-up legal contracts! That includes War Machine being in the game instead of Iron Man.
Another big change was that the original boss for the first game was Galactus. Yet, for some reason, Marvel wouldn’t allow it, and that confused the head of the gaming team greatly.
The whole thread is worth a read, and it’ll make you wonder just what the original title with Marvel and Capcoms characters would’ve looked like if initial requests had made it through.
