Marvel apparently knew what they were doing when they were producing Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics.
As reported by GoNintendo, Marvel’s Games Product Development Manager Laura Hathaway shared this statement in a recent interview:
“We’re always looking for ways to really surprise and hopefully delight our fans. The idea of bringing these games back was always really, really exciting to us, so we’re glad to finally be able to announce it.”
The collection fits in a very interesting niche that few other games or franchises also fit into. Many fans fondly remember that period when Marvel was working with Capcom on video games, decades before they would find true mainstream success with Marvel Studios, and of course become part of Disney.
As we have seen, Marvel shifted from making games that were based on the original comics and their storylines, to characters and themes that were used in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. If you told a Merry Marvel-ite 60 years ago that Marvel fans today would want to play as Loki in Marvel Rivals, instead of having him as an opponent, they would simply not believe it.
But the other side of this equation also matters. Capcom’s licensing of Marvel IP came at a time when they were peaking at making arcade games, and only starting to dip their toes into console video games. Alongside SNK, Midway, Bandai Namco, and Sega, Capcom was setting the conventions of what fighting games were supposed to be, and each game company played off each other in that big arms race for the biggest game in the world, the same race that Marvel Rivals now races in against Overwatch, Fortnite, etc.
But if fighting games have grown bigger in the past three decades, we need to acknowledge that they have become more of a popular niche, than reoccupying the spot of one of the biggest and most dominant genres in the industry. They were in the 1990s what live service games are today, but today, a lot of the appeal for these games lies in nostalgia, and seemingly more in that direction than in fostering a true young audience, or for that matter, a consistently successful esports scene.
But even gamers who never became good enough to compete in fighting game tournaments will want to buy this collection, because that nostalgic appeal is strong. Even if Marvel and Capcom had worked it out to consistently rerelease this game through the years, companies like Nintendo, Sega, Atari, and others have known that their loyal fans will buy old games again and again. Hopefully, this new release becomes successful enough that we can see them coming together to make a Marvel Vs. Capcom 4.
Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics will be released on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Windows via Steam.
