Capcom announced Marvel vs Capcom 3 a couple weeks ago. A list of characters was revealed and then a bunch of internet types started putting together lists of who they think should be in the game. All of them were terrible.

Dear Capcom,

I bought several of your games last week and I love you guys very much. For that reason, I am making this list that needs to be made so you have legitimate input for the production of your game. Please ignore all other lists and pay attention only to mine as it will improve the quality of your final product.

I have some criteria I am using for these lists:

1. These characters have not yet been revealed for Marvel vs Capcom 3
2. They have not appeared as playable in the Marvel vs Capcom franchise
3. Five characters are from each side to keep things even

Alright, that all sounds good. For everyone else, read and learn. I’m going to start off with the Marvel characters that should be in the game because they aren’t as important as Capcom’s.

Marvel

Daredevil: The Man Without Fear needs to be in this game badly. He has incredible agility and senses. He can counter attacks, wall leap, and quickly take out characters. He can even use his sweet custom billy club in fights! Daredevil could fill in the void if Capcom foolishly leaves out Strider Hiryu.

Iron Fist: In his own comic, Iron Fist is pretty badass. However, he seems to get lost in the shuffle when paired up with Avengers and Heroes for Hire or in any of the ridiculous crossovers that Marvel keeps pumping out to kill their own industry. In addition to being a master of martial arts, he gained his ability to harness chi by plunging his fists into the molten heart of the dragon Shou-Lao the Undying! Where Daredevil could excel as an agile martial artist, Iron Fist can focus on power.

Hawkeye: He is an expert marksman and could fire trick arrows of varying types into any direction, and quickly! He is also an acrobat who has been trained by Captain America in hand-to-hand combat and battle tactics. Yeah, he’s currently Ronin in the Marvel Universe, but nobody cares.

Thor: Thor is a Norse god who wields a badass hammer and can control elements of the storm, thus making him the manliest character in the Marvel universe.

Phoenix: One of the most powerful entities in the universe and the result of many teenage nerd hardons(including mine), Phoenix weilds the mightiest of flames and controls the sky. Some people adore her as Dark Phoenix, but I prefer her original form better. Perhaps alternate costumes or palette swaps can make for a fair compromise?

I just picked a seriously incredible list of Marvel characters to put in the game! With Capcom, things can only get better!

Capcom

Batsu Ichimonji: This seems like a copout seeing how he was just in Tatsunoko vs Capcom: Ultimate All-stars. That doesn’t make the high school brawler any less awesome. He is a a force to be reckon with and the king of the Japanese high school fighting world. While we are on the subject, I want a sequel to Rival Schools!

Nina Windia: She is one of the female leads of Breath of Fire II and possesses both offensive magical spells and black wings to help her fly. The MvC series doesn’t have enough fantasy and she can do the job well. Her Fusion form can also make for an excellent super special move.

Gene: The hero of Godhand, a game that pays great homage to Fist of the North Star. He has no problem with Pimp Slapping you and Dragon Kicking your ass to the moon! No further explanation of this choice is necessary. I will add that if you played Godhand and didn’t like it, that makes you a pussy.

Harman Smith: This is choice was made with the great assumption that Capcom owns the rights to Killer 7, another game that became underappreciated during the beginning of the fall of gaming fandom and the rise of “bro gaming.” Harman, in addition to being a badass in a wheelchair with a rocket launcher, can also manifest into the form of seven other personalities! That’s right, I want Harman to be able to transform into Dan, Kaede, Con, Garcian, Kevin, Coyote, and Mask de Smith! Let the mayhem begin!

Mike Haggar: No fucking surprises here! Any friends or fans of The M.F.K. Legend himself knew that the mighty mayor of Metro City would be on this list. Did you purchase your copy of Final Fight: Double Impact yet? If not, then you have just failed as a gamer. Money talks and the more that game sells, the more likely Mike Haggar will be in the Marvel vs Capcom 3. He not can not only piledrive a shark, but he is – without equal – the MANLIEST character to originate from a videogame.

Granted, putting Mike Haggar in any fighting game will make it more busted than a team of Storm, Sentinel, and Magento; but since that will happen anyways, why not just add an oil rig to the fire? I will say this: I am going to take a page out of the whiney KOF fanboy book and proclaim “No Mike, No Buy.” It’s not as catchy, but if he is not in the game, I’m not owning it.

And there you have it: the greatest and absolute definitive list for who should be in Marvel vs Capcom 3. Pass this on to your friends, and send it to Capcom! You want Marvel vs Capcom 3 to be an awesome game; this is the first step to making that happen!

Sincerely,

Kent Ward

Sega Dreamcast came out in the United States 10 years ago on September 9th, 1999. It had a great library of games, brought online gaming to consoles in a big way, and was considered by many to be the best gaming console ever. I disagree with the latter; the Super Nintendo holds that title. However, Sega Dreamcast had a lot of amazing games and innovations throughout its short lifespan. Production of the console ended in 2001, but games were still being made for years after. The power that Sony wielded with the Playstation branded and easy Dreamcast software piracy led to the console’s early death. Despite that, Dreamcast had many classic games in its library of over 700 and I am going to name off a bunch of them and the people who brought them out.

Contributions made by Capcom
Capcom released a lot of awesome arcade ports for the Dreamcast, mostly consisting of shmups and fighters. This massive list includes Marvel vs Capcom 1+2, Street Fighter III: Third Strike, Power Stone 1+2, Rival Schools, Capcom vs SNK 1 +2 , Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure, Street Fighter Alpha 3, Plasma Sword, Tech Romancer, Giga Wing 1+2, and sequels to some of the aforementioned games. Not only that, this was the first console to get Resident Evil: Code Veronica. The Dreamcast versions of many of these arcade ports were excellent; not only that, games like Marvel vs Capcom 2 are still played at the Evo Championship series on that console.

Contributions made by Midway
Sega Dreamcast was the last console that Midway released games for that weren’t classic arcade compilations and still worth playing. This company has fallen far from its glory days but they did release the best version of NFL Blitz with its “2000″ edition, and they also ported one of the most fun racing games ever, Hydro Thunder. Other great games they released on the Dreamcast included NBA Showtime and Ready 2 Rumble Boxing. They excelled during the Dreamcast era at making arcade sports games, but then they fumbled the ball when they couldn’t decide between making Blitz and arcade football game or a simulation like Madden.

Contributions made by Namco
Namco made Soul Calibur more awesome than its arcade counterpart by putting it on the Dreamcast. This was unprecedented and was unfortunately the beginning of the end for many arcades. I think the first Soul Calibur is still the best in the series, even with its weird physics. Some also consider it to be the best Dreamcast game ever.

Contributions made by SNK
As the Sega Dreamcast died, so did SNK. They did come back as SNK Playmore, but the Dreamcast had some of the best SNK games ever. For starters, they had The King of Fighters ‘98, ‘99, 2000, 2001, and 2002. Some of those games had extras that other versions of those games didn’t have, including characters and strikers. But SNK kicked it up a notch with Last Blade 1+2, a weapons-based 2D fighting series that does some things better than Samurai Showdown, and some things that series doesn’t do at all. But that’s not all. SNK also released their best game ever on the Sega Dreamcast, Garou: Mark of the Wolves. That game deserves its own post and some day, I am going to write it.

Sega, the leader
Sega had its work cut out for them. They had some solid support from some of the big third party publishers at the time, but were missing EA and Square, who were dominant on their respective sides of the gaming planet. Sega countered EA by making better sports games with the NFL2K, NHL2K, NBA2k, and Virtua Tennis franchises. EA later countered, not by making better games, but by buying exclusive rights to the NFL license. Not having Final Fantasy or its copycats didn’t help Sega either, but they did try things with the genre like airship battles in Skies of Arcadia and attempting to simulate a life experience in Shenmue. Speaking of simulating life, they had a game called Seaman in which you could communicate with this creature that conversed with you. Its genius seems to have been forgotten during the recent storm of Peter Molyneux’s latest hypefest, Natal.

Sega released a lot of original games and arcade ports on the console that are also noteworthy, including Chu Chu Rocket, Phantasy Star Online, Crazy Taxi, Jet Grind Radio, and Samba de Amigo. That’s a lot of amazing stuff! Sonic and his shitty friends also went 3D with Sonic Adventure 1+2, which where okay games. I thought the second of those games was more fun to play, but that’s not saying much because the first one had you play as Big the Cat, a retarded cat fisherman(or is it fishercat?) who is essentially the Jar Jar Binks of the franchise. If I were to pinpoint the exact moment that the Sonic franchise started going downhill, it would have to be the second you had to start controlling Big the Cat. In all honesty, I think Big the Cat is the real reason Dreamcast died. Okay, not really, but his presence had a negative impact on the Sonic series of games from that point on.

Dammit. I hate to end this post on a negative note, so I won’t. Sega did some awesome things during the time of the Dreamcast and a handful of publishers also put out their best work ever. A lot of the Sega Dreamcast games have some things in common; they are typically bright and colorful, simple arcade-style games that are very easy to jump into. I think that was the strength of the Dreamcast, but it’s possible that lacking games with deeper experiences didn’t help the console too much, nor did a lack of support from some key third party developers. In spite of those shortcomings, the Dreamcast is still fondly remembered for having a great collection of games and will continue to do so.

Last year at the Independent Games Festival, Fez won the Design Innovation award and the Excellence in Visual Art award and showed off how switching 2.5D perspectives could be ingeniously used for puzzle-solving. It wasn’t as polished as Super Paper Mario, but it did show a promise of depth in its gameplay. The game has since then been handled by Polytron Corporation and is slated to come out in 2009. I really hope that happens but that is not why I posted.

I was looking through Capcom Unity’s website because I wanted more Capcom-specific information from E3 this week and found a couple of gems I wanted to show:

Now that is some pretty good stuff to get my classic Mega Man fanboy blood pumping! It doesn’t really show off too much other than a remixed Metal Man’s stage and have given Mega Man more directions to travel in. I do like the affect they have on the background music when Mega Man uses Flash Man’s time-freezing weapon. This next video shows even greater potential:

The first part of the video begins to show the potential of what classic Mega Man can play like in 2.5D with little things like the perspective changes of his battle with Mecha Dragon showing off some interesting attack patterns from the boss of the ladder scene where the camera looks up to show that lasers are coming down and ready to obliterate Mega Man, letting the player know that it’s time to move!

But then a new mode for this fan game is shown when Proto Man teams up with Mega Man to travel through stages designed for cooperative play. There’s quite a few interesting things here. Protoman has to step on a switch that will lower deadly spikes so that Mega Man can get an extra life, and then later they take turns doing this so that they can advance through the level. I also like it when the view zooms in and out based on the distance between Mega Man and Proto Man, making it easy to go off in their own areas to fight enemies or solve puzzles and then return to work together when they need to. None of this is new in cooperative games; however, this combined with the elements that the 2.5D perspective brings could add something fresh to Mega Man, a franchise that has spent a good part of it’s existence being milked by Capcom.

This was a really interesting prototype that Peter Sjostrand has been working on. I really think Capcom should pick this up(and him as well) and make this into a complete game that could be downloaded various consoles and other gameplaying devices by players around the world. It was an excellent idea for Mega Man 9 and this could work really well. Whether the robot masters and stages they use are original or based on fan favorites, it can potentially be a very fun and interesting game to play with other people. Nintendo is doing somthing similar New Super Mario Bros. on the Wii, but that game is going to lack the challenege that the Mega Man series is known for.

What I do have a problem with is what games they recommend to buy for kids and why. All Star Cheer Squad and a Nancy Drew game? High School Musical 3? Seriously!? The list of recommended titles has more hits than misses and has many notable omissions. So Mr. Ward here is going to help any of you blog-reading parents out with your game holiday shopping. Hit the jump below to see my awesome list of games you should buy for your kids this holiday season.

Mega Man 9 – Wii, XBOX 360, PS3
ESRB Rating: E for Everyone
Mega Man 9 takes the platforming series back to it roots from the 8 bit era of gaming. The game is challenging as there are a lot of obstacles and traps for players to avoid. These situations, in addition to boss battles, give players the opportunity to think and form strategies of their own in order to win. This is great because kids have it way too easy these days. For some reason, designers have felt having “accessibility for all” meant making many modern games brain dead easy to complete. To compliment the old school and challenging nature of Mega Man 9, the graphics and music resemble the best of what the NES had to offer many years ago. This game is just as good as Mega Man 2 or 3, and this download-only title is a great gift for your kids so that they can see how good you had it when you were their age.

Super Street Fighter II: Turbo HD Remix – XBOX 360 and PS3
ESRB Rating: T for Teen
Ridiculously enough, MediaWise forgot to exclude Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe from their games to avoid. Normally the level of violence would be a good reason to not buy this for kids, and even though the violence and fatalities were toned down for a Teen rating, it’s still noticeable. Putting that aside, kids are going to want it because it has Batman and Superman and it. That may be nice and all, but the gameplay is actually trash; furthermore, the execution of many aspects of the fighting engine are heavily flawed. The game is ultimate crap(I will post at a later date specifically as to why) and it scares me that parents will their children their first foray into the fighting genre with this. Please don’t do that. Instead, be a good parent this holiday and download Super Street Fighter II: Turbo HD Remix for your kids so they can have one of the greatest fighting game experiences ever. I spent much of my Thanksgiving Break playing it. The graphics and sound have been redone(and you can choose to go old-school) and the game has been rebalanced for a much fairer competitive play. For a fourth of the price of MK vs DCU, you will get way deeper fighting game experience.

LittleBigPlanet – PS3
ESRB Rating: E for Everyone
This is a cool platformer in which players can use teamwork to solve puzzles. The game is very aesthetically pleasing, with excellent level design and cute sackboys to control. This game also has the ability to create detailed levels and share them on the Playstation Network. Sony has been moderating player submissions as best as they can and so far the level of user-created content available is incredible. In addition to being a great game for the kids and family, this is one of the must-own titles for the Playstation 3.

Rock Band 2 - Wii, XBOX 360, PS3, PS2
Rated T for Teen
Don’t waste your money on Guitar Hero: World Tour. Get this game instead. I don’t care either way when it comes to the Simon Says music games, but everyone who is into them has told me that RB2 is the way to go. You can download songs in addition to the ridiculous amount of songs already available and on the PS3 and XBOX 360 versions, you can convert your old Rock Band songs for a small fee. Just make sure you have your kids play the classics so their musical tastes aren’t rotted by the emo scene!

deBlob – Wii
ESRB Rating: E for Everyone
Let’s face it, Nintendo dropped the ball hardcore with the Nintendo Wii this year. You probably have a good amount of dust on your Wii because nothing very notable has been released for it during the past few months. There is at least one good game this holiday for the Wii you should try out: deBlob. The game has you control a blob that has the task of restoring color to town that has had it taken away by an evil organization. The ways you can do this are very creative and overall the game is a fun and light-hearted experience. It has the visual appeal and warm nature that you would find in a Super Mario game or a Pixar film.

World of Goo – Windows, Mac and Wii
ESRB Rating: E for Everyone
World of Goo won a couple of awards at the Independent Games Festival earlier this year. It’s a very unique physics-based puzzle game where you have to save a certain number of goos each level by manipulating them with the mouse(or Wii-mote) and using them to construct objects such as towers and bridges to get them to safe locations. One of the main strategies to win is to provide support as you extend your towers and bridges since the goos carry weight on them. This can cause for some interesting situations to happen as towers and bridges can topple and break or the goos can cling to surfaces you do not want them to. World of Goo is very addicting and the PC version has a demo you can try out and I highly recommend doing so.

Spore - Windows and Mac
ESRB Rating: E+10 for Everyone older than 10
This game was hyped for years and while many people didn’t have their expectations met(and certain gameplay features were cut from the final release), this game is still a great present for kids. It’s a very simple evolution game where you take the most basic form of life, evolve it into a customizable creature, build a civilization, and then travel and conquer the galaxy to your liking. There’s a lot more to that, but like the aforementioned LittleBigPlanet, Spore encourages players to be creative have some control as to how they play the game. There are more than several different stages of the game divided into smaller metagames that are based on existing genres like strategy games(Civilization, Age of Empires) and simulation games(Sim City). These metagames are nowhere near as complex as the full games they are inspired by, but I think that is good for younger players who made not be ready to handle games of such complexity and depth.

The winter looks good for gamers of all tastes and ages so do your best to go out and get some great games this holiday season!

Most of my break consisted of playing Street Fighter II, and also catching up with various friends and my younger brother. My favorite day of vacation was Friday when I made batter for Oatmeal Raisin cookie dough and baked those cookies with a super awesome friend! We also watched a Jet Li and Morgan Freeman in Unleashed and went Ice Skating!

So I loved my Vacation break, how was yours?

I finally made it into the next/current generation of console gaming with my purchase of the XBox 360 pro today. Good times! I set up a Gold Account and many of my friends have added me and you should too! I currently have Call of Duty 4, Soul Calibur IV, and the game that helped me get into the next generation of gaming…

Mega Man 9!!!

That’s right! Nothing like jumping into a new generation of hardware than with a 8-bit game leading the charge! I LOVE this game! The challenge is great, but it encourages you to think how to do with the various obstacles you deal with when going through levels and boss battles. It is important that the brain is challenged when playing a game and Mega Man 9 gets the job done. There are many challenges in this game, lots of frustrating battles, and plenty of traps in the game for you to respond to quickly. Capcom has put some serious thought into how the levels and boss battles are designed, how the weapons powers are useful to the player, and making the game an overall experience.

Some people find this game brutally hard on its normal difficulty but I haven’t had too much trouble yet. I find myself to use different weapons when going through the levels in creative ways to help me succeed. If enemies are shooting at me from places I can’t reach, I take them out with Black Hole Bomb or Tornado Blow. If I want to cross lava pits, I can use Concrete Shot. The problem with some of the later Mega Man games in the original series, particularly the fifth and sixth enrties, is that a lot of the powers you received from bosses were useless and you might as well just beat those games using just the Mega Buster. In Mega Man 9, unless you want to be a true gangster, the levels and obstacles in them will most have you use a few of Mega Man’s acquired powers in order to progress to their completion.

Mega Man 9 is more than just a revival; it is also a reminder of what the essence of games should be: fun and challenging. I’m not talking batshit Ninja Gaiden II difficult, I am referring to offering the player a means to use the various abilities they have in the game to succeed in interesting and creative ways, regardless of what is thrown at them. I plan to talk more about this game in the future, but I hope to see Mega Man 9 get some accolades when the year is over. I don’t see why this game can’t win awards from the press. The game is brilliant.

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