Marvel vs. Capcom Clash of the Superheroes

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

After the successes of X-Men vs. Street Fighter and Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, Capcom would bring out Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of the Superheroes in 1998. The game's setting is based on the Onslaught storyline, with Professor Xavier calling for help from within the Capcom universe.

MvC was mostly the same as its predecessors, with the addition of an extra Duo Team Attack mode where teammates would join together to beat down their opponent at the same time. Aside from the normal roster, the game also featured several random assist partners -- characters from both Marvel and Capcom's stables who could be called on for supporting attacks.

Followed up in 2000 by Marvel vs. Capcom 2.

Capcom side:

Marvel side:

Tropes used in Marvel vs. Capcom Clash of the Superheroes include:
  • A Boy and His X: Mega Man and Rush.
    • A Dude And His Xes: Strider Hiryu and his gadgets, but specifically his cyborg panther partner.
  • An Ice Person: Iceman drops a few glaciers down the opponent as an Assist Partner.
  • Anime Theme Song: Roll's "Kaze Yo Tsutaete", a poor midi version (in the English version atleast) of the one found in Rockman Battle and Chase. Tatsunoko vs. Capcom makes it a fully-fledged, four minute-long theme song.
  • Assist Character: There are several of these from both Marvel and Capcom libraries called "Assist Partners". In the arcade versions, these are chosen randomly, but you could choose one of these as your second partner in the home versions which didn't allowed the 2 on 2 gameplay. Aside from this:
    • Rush assists Mega Man.
    • Ginzu, Babyhead and Mack, the Commando Team, assists Captain Commando.
    • Blodia assists Jin.
    • The three Options assists Strider Hiryu.
  • Attract Mode
  • Audible Sharpness: One of the many reasons Strider Hiryu became so popular. SCHWING!
  • Automatic Crossbow: Lou uses one.
  • A Winner Is You: Winning with Secret Characters Gold War Machine, Red Venom, Orange Hulk and Onslaught nets you a flashing screen with the character and text saying "Congratulations! You've defeated the game with a Secret Character!".
  • Badass Adorable: Mega Man and Roll.
  • Badass Normal: Captain America (comics) and War Machine in the Marvel side; and Zangief, Captain Commando, Strider Hiryu and Jin Saotome in the Capcom side. With the exception of Zangief, all of them use Powered Armors, Humongous Mechas and/or weapons, anyway.
    • Counting the Assist Partners, there's U.S. Agent in the Marvel side; and Arthur, Unknown Soldier 1P, Saki Omokane and Devilotte's Terrible Trio in the Capcom side.
  • Background Boss: Onslaught in his second form.
  • Beating a Dead Player: Pressing start after defeating an opponent allows the player to continue attacking, with a bonus if the freeze frame is on a particular animation. The values would range from 1,000 points (for basic attacks) to up to 30,000 (for Jin's auto-immolation taunt).
  • BFG: War Machine's PROTON CANNON! and Morrigan's SOUL ERASER!
  • Big Bad: Onslaught.
  • Brainwashed: The Final Boss has a technique in which he uses one of the playable characters to fight in his place while he goes into the background and slowly recovers health.
    • In terms of story, there's Shadow and Shadow Lady, Charlie and Chun-li respectively controled by M.Bison and turned into killing machines. Though Shadow seems to break free of it in Chun Li's ending.
  • Bilingual Dialogue: With Capcom's characters speaking mostly Japanese and Marvel's speaking English all the time, this is to be expected. Especially when switching between tag partners.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: Captain Commando has quotes directed at the player.

"Thank you for playing this game."

  • Blow You Away: Storm, as an Assist Partner, can be summoned to throw a cyclone attack.
  • Calling Your Attacks: You'd expect this with the Fighting Game characters, naturally. But it even extends to the Marvel Superheroes, among others.
  • The Cameo: Many characters from both Marvel and Capcom universes make appearances in the endings and stages.
  • Combination Attack: Double Supers.
  • Composite Character:
    • Ryu in this game is referred to as "Complete-Change Ryu", since he has the ability to switch from his normal style into Ken's and Akuma's styles as a special ability.
    • Zangief also qualifies, since he has the ability to transform into Mecha Zangief during battle, who was technically a separate character in Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter.
  • Cool Shades: Captain Commando and the Unknown Soldier.
  • Cyborg: Shadow Lady, which among others can turn her hands into drills and fire off missiles from her back. Shadow too.
  • Death From Above: The Hulk jumps into space, and essentially pulls a passing meteor from space to drop it on his opponent.
    • Pure & Fur drops a bunch of huge dices into the enemy.
    • War Machine's War Destroyer Hyper sends a shower of missiles down his opponent. Smart Bombs also do, except in a less powerful way.
  • Demoted to Extra: Rogue, Storm, Juggernaut, Magneto, Cyclops, U.S. Agent and Shadow were all demoted from playable characters in previous games to Assist Partners. M. Bison suffered even worse, going from playable to a minor cameo.
    • Counting up XMen:CotA, it also includes Psylocke, Colossus, Iceman and Sentinel.
  • Desperation Attack: If Jin Saotome is left as the last man standing on his team, he'll start glowing gold and will gain a strength boost plus Super Armor (needs two hits to enter the stun animation).
  • Everything's Better with Spinning: Zangief and Jin Saotome.
  • Flash Step: Strider Hiryu makes use of this in several of his techniques.
    • Akuma!Ryu can use Akuma's Ashura Senkuu.
  • Flight: War Machine has an special move that allows him to fly.
  • Fragile Speedster: Strider Hiryu is a good example, but then there's Red Venom, a special version of Venom who moves thrice as fast as any character in the game, but has almost no defense or health, making him go down with very few hits.
  • Freaky Friday: Lilith-Mode Morrigan's ending: Morrigan and Lilith have switched bodies after a collision, and they decide to try it again to fix it. Just at the last moment, Zangief jumps in believing they were amidst a "head crush training", and crash into Morrigan head-first...in the end, while Morrigan is back to normal, it seems Zangief and Lilith have switched bodies themselves.
  • Genius Bruiser: The Hulk, where he's in the guise of the Merged Hulk/Professor persona. (remember, The Green Scar from Planet Hulk and World War Hulk had yet to be created at the time)
  • Henshin Hero: Captain Commando is one according to his intro.

"Henshin, Commando!"

  • Heroic Sacrifice: Captain America in Hulk's ending (itself a Shout-Out to the ending of the Onslaught saga in the comics), Jin in his own. (See "Late to the Party" for another version.)
  • Hot-Blooded: Jin Saotome, oh so very much.
    • Parodied in his taunt - if you keep pressing the attack buttons while he uses it, he literally sets himself on fire.
  • Humongous Mecha:
    • Jin's Blodia, used in some of his attacks.
    • Mega Man and Roll both have supers that turn them into this.
    • From the Assist Partners, there's Sentinel and Devilotte's Super-8, though most of it is underground/not visible.
  • I Am Legion:

Venom: "We are Venom!"

  • Japanese Ranguage: Very, very odd inversion. The announcer reads the first word of the name "Strider Hiryu" right, but when it comes to the second, Japanese word, it incidentally slips into "Hilyu". Of course, this may be the fault of audio quality...
  • Joke Character: Roll.
  • Kamehame Hadoken: The second part of the trope's name comes from the version of the Shinkuu Hadouken, which is the best known of many, MANY, MANY instances.
  • Katanas Are Just Better: Jin Saotome in one of his Victory Poses.
  • Kick Chick: Chun-Li. Ton Pooh also qualifies.
  • Laser Blade/Hot Blade: Strider Hiryu's Cypher.
  • Late to the Party: In Shadow Lady's ending, Bison kills Jin, and then she and Charlie find his body. They came to the conclusion that they only could cybernetize him. Jin gets better.
  • Leitmotif
  • Marth Debuted in Smash Bros:
    • Saki Omokane, a character who would've remained in an obscure Japan-only trivia game had it not been for her appearance.
    • Most fans had no clue who Jin or Devilotte were when they made their debut in this crossover.
    • Morrigan for many
  • Mega Manning: In Mega Man's ending, he gains a super move from Onslaught. And in the ports, you can actually unlock a secret version of Mega Man that has this attack.
  • Megaton Punch: Jin's entire fighting style, especially the Blodia Punch, which is a Megaton Punch by a Humongous Mecha.
  • More Dakka: Mega Man's and Roll's Lv1 super has them becoming Mazinger Z's expies firing many types of projectiles at will.
  • Non-Fatal Explosions: Upon being summoned, Princess Devilotte will issue his subordinates to attack...but instead, all three just blow up on the spot (the explosion turning into the attack itself).
  • One-Winged Angel: Onslaught.
  • Paint It Black: Shadow and Shadow Lady (roboticized versions of Charlie and Chun-Li). The same happens to Jin in Shadow Lady's ending.
  • Palette Swap: Like the previous game, there are unlockable alternate versions of existing characters, albeit with odd color schemes.
    • War Machine counts as a replacement for Iron Man, and even has it's own palette swap in the form of Gold-armor War Machine. The gold version cannot be stunned.
    • Lilith-mode Morrigan, a.k.a. Morrigan with Lilith's color scheme.
    • Shadow Lady, a cyborgized Chun-Li in the vein of Shadow from Marvel Vs Street Fighter.
    • U.S. Agent, one of the Assist Characters. He uses the same sprite as Captain America (comics).
    • Hyper Venom, a secret version of Venom who's constantly in Berserker mode. Also known as Red Venom.
    • Orange Hulk, a faster Hulk who uses his old Marvel Super Heroes moveset and lacks super armor. Also known as MSH-Performance Hulk.
  • Panty Shot: Roll gives a lot of these, so much so that you can, at the peak of her jump in exactly one frame, see all of her panties and part of her midriff underneath her skirt. She also squeals ecchi! [1] if you jump and decide not to cover her skirt with an attack.
  • Playing with Fire: Captain Commando's Power Glove uses fire and electricity on his attacks. Jin's punches and attacks are all fire-covered, one even setting himself on fire.
  • Powered Armor: War Machine and Captain Commando. Then there's Gold War Machine, a special version of War Machine who moves slowly, barely jumps and CANNOT block BUT his defense is insanely high, he has an infinite hit buffer allowing him to continue moving forward against enemy attacks, and many of his projectile attacks are amped up. An even better bonus is that some Hyper combos like Maximum Spider and Weapon X hit for the FIRST hit and the other player is repelled off the armor. He can still be thrown though. Onslaught has this as well.
  • Power Floats: M.Bison in his cameo appearances and Onslaught.
  • Ramming Always Works: The style of attack used by U.S. Agent, Colossus, Sentinel, Psylocke, Rogue and Juggernaut when summoned.
  • Ryu and Ken: Subverted in MvC1, where Ryu can transform into Ken and Akuma. Played straight with Mega Man and Roll.
  • Shock and Awe: Captain Commando's power gloves use both electricity and fire as attacks. Assist Partners Saki and Thor shoot out a lightning bolt as well.
  • Shotoclone: Aside from Ryu, Spider-Man, Captain America (comics) and Morrigan qualify for this.
  • Shout-Out: Check the page.
  • SNK Boss: Onslaught.
  • Stripperific: On the ladies' side, Morrigan, who technically doesn't even wear clothes. And on the men's side, Hulk, Zangief, and, if one is feeling crazy, Colossus.
  • Surprisingly Good English: All Marvel characters are voiced by native English speakers.
  • Suspiciously Similar Substitute: Due to legal issues, Iron Man was unavailable for this game, so War Machine was selected in his stead (for all intents and purposes, he's a Palette Swap of Iron Man). As a result, his theme in this game is based off of Iron Man's Marvel Super Heroes theme.
  • Tag Team
  • Terrible Trio: The Devilotte team.
  • There Is No Kill Like Overkill:

"HYPER COMBO FINISH!"

    • Duo Team Attack mode where both characters become controlable simultaneously and have infinite supers temporarily. The bar must be at Level 2 in order to execute this. However, getting one more bar (Level 3) will allow you twice as much time (with varying percentages based on how much of the third bar was filled when you execute the command).
  • This Is a Drill: One of Mega Man's/Roll's specials has Rush becoming a Drill Tank controllable by the player. Shadow Lady can turn her hands into drills for certain attacks. Also Jin HK attacks.
  • Transforming Mecha: Rush Drill and Beat Plane. Both controllable by the player.
  • The Unexpected: Jin. Many were unaware of his existence prior to that. The same is true for Strider Hiryu and Captain Commando.
  • V-Formation Team Shot: Captain Commando and his team does this after his Captain Storm super move.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifter: Venom makes plenty use of this trope in his movelist. Morrigan can change the shape of her batwings into several different forms during battle.
  • Winged Humanoid: Michelle Heart.
  1. ↑ That's Japanese for "pervert!", by the way.
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