Technically excellent compilation of two arcade games from Marvel's "Vs" series of cross-universe fighting games: Marvel Super Heroes and Marvel vs. Capcom.
The joystick response and audio-video quality achieved here by Iron Galaxy are absolutely top-notch. They also added in various collecting and challenge goals, I think, and also online play?--but those aren't really things I'm into.
Single-player gameplay-wise, what you've got is pretty much Arcade mode. I'm not fond of the gem mechanic in MSH, or Iron Man's "Repulsor Blast," and MvC is where the series started to get into a huge emphasis on super meter spam and giant combos, which aren't my thing so much. But for those who do like these original arcade games, you'll be hard-pressed to find a better console version.
Dang well I don't think I'll really be able to play Marvel Super Heroes anymore--and it's the last real 1-v-1 game they made in the series, after X:Men COTA which was a bit crude--because I found that when any character other than Spider-Man, Wolverine, Psylocke, and possibly Thanos scores a hit while having an activated Power gem, the screen flashes red. ; P I had to go back and edit out 29 Power gem activations from this darn video I just made:
* Jin Saotome is the main character from Capcom's fighting game Cyberbots: Fullmetal Madness
I had no idea you could break through to that women's bath house bathing room. : o Or that Orange Hulk could ambush you in Arcade Mode! Or that Ryu has a hcb+P "Mode Change" super that can put him in "Ken Mode" (MP) or "Akuma Mode" (HP) where he has different supers and stuff. Or that pretty much the point of the hidden variant characters is to double up on characters you really like! ; D (And "Lilith" really *is* just a weak Morrigan. :PP)
And I found out I'm really terrible with Strider Hiryu! But maybe not as terrible as I'd thought at first with Chun-Li--I just have to go with the flow with her, 'cause she flows different than everyone else!
In MvC, there are only two colors per character: Punch buttons (including remapped controls) select the default color, and Kick buttons select the alternate color.
(Of course, there are separate, unlockable variant characters with their own additional colors--there's Onslaught's Orange Hulk, and a Red Venom, for instance.)
You can break into the hidden women's bathing room in the "Honda's Bathhouse" stage of Marvel vs. Capcom.
I used Jin Saotome's "Saotome Crush" (hcb+K) to ram Venom into the stage's right-hand wall twice, breaking it open. This reveals a new room, extending the stage to the right: a pink tiled room of women's baths, including, at the far right, an enthusiastic young woman wearing a towel, who could be Sakura of the Street Fighter franchise, with her friend, Kei. When a round ends, the mural on the room's back wall animates, similar to the way in which the back wall of E.Honda's SFII stage animates.
I found the area by accident, breaking the wall while fighting Venom as Jin in an arcade mode run.
Supposedly, this is the same bathhouse first seen in E.Honda's stage in Street Fighter II; it is also seen--from the outside--in Street Fighter Alpha (Ryu and Guy's stages) and Street Fighter Alpha 3 (Honda's stage).
(Recorded in Origin's Training mode, and I found the game has pause screen Training Options (~4'54) you can use to set the game (set "Dummy Action" to "CPU") into what is essentially 1-round Vs. CPU mode--however, in testing later I found that the CPU doesn't put up much of a fight in this mode, even if you set the game's difficulty to the maximum.)
MvC feels rough and hard to control when compared directly against MvC2 (see entry 1383): in MvC you hardly get more than a second or two to just fight before you're interrupted by a super or something, whereas in MvC2 I feel much more in control--although that may also be helped by the MvC2 PS3 version's widescreen, whereas MvC was kept 4:3, and feels claustrophobic with all the huge sprite effects jammed into it.
