Marvel and Capcom have a rich history of collaboration dating back to The Punisher, a side-scrolling beat-’em-up in the Final Fight style that was released in arcades in 1993. The companies would quickly team up again for a pair of 2D fighting games, X-Men: Children of the Atom and Marvel Super Heroes.

Then the real crossover happened: Capcom’s fighting game royalty and the superheroes and villains of Marvel Comics went head-to-head in X-Men vs. Street Fighter, a landmark fighting game that kicked off a decades-long series of Marvel vs. Capcom crossovers.

Capcom’s recently released collection of some of those early games, Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics, reignited interest in the Marvel vs. Capcom series, which hasn’t seen a new entry since 2017’s coolly received Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite. The fourth main MvC game had its share of curious choices: Marvel vs. Capcom mainstays the X-Men didn’t appear on the roster, and the game took a step back in complexity, going from teams........

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