Greetings, and welcome to the second chapter of our look at the fighters of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3! Joining me once again is my esteemed colleague, screenwriter of the popular-by-indie-video-game-parody-standards films Press Start and Press Start 2, man behind the monthly internet series Press Start Adventures, and guy I know because I went to elementary school with his cousin, Kevin Folliard.
In the groundbreaking inaugural edition of this feature, we delved into pressing issues like the suffocating omnipresence of Akuma, Albert Wesker’s deep emotional issues and unfortunate musical tastes, horrible 1990s comic book crossovers that may or may not have actually existed, and what the hell the deal with Tron Bonne being in the game is. Join us as we delve once more into the characters of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, beginning with perhaps the most colorful and flamboyant character of them all:
Yes, I know this isn't Sentinel. Tron Bonne's power to insert herself into places where the presence of someone else would make more sense is so mighty it extends beyond the games themselves.
John: Mindless drone or not, at least he’s still got more personality than Ryu. There, I said it. “Fighter in a fighting game who fights a lot because he’s really into fighting” is not a personality, Capcom, even by fighting game standards.
Kevin: Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is a game we’ll all remember fondly, but for literally a decade, gamers were playing Sentinel Vs. Sentinel and taking it waytoo seriously. As such the Sentinel and his rocket punches got a free pass onto the roster of MvC3.
John: Plus, unlike Marvel vs. Capcom 3, in the previous game you could have multiple palette-swapped iterations of the same character on your team, so a three-on-three all-Sentinel battle was entirely possible. The game, helpfully, actually was prepared with enough Sentinel palette swaps for this contingency, so you could have giant robots in a wide array of colors duking it out together. It was like watching a Mobile Suit Gundam spinoff series sponsored entirely by Skittles or a really violent, mechanized United Colors of Benetton ad.
Kevin: I do give Capcom some credit. He’s not as obscenely godly a character as he once was, and he’s a fun oddball fighter in a decently balanced game. I look forward to playing as “Dark Sentinel,” a totally separate and even more overpowered addition to be featured in UMvC3: Arcade Edition!
John: Oh, I do hope Capcom doesn’t stop with “Ultimate” and brings back the tradition of releasing tweaked versions of the same game with ever-larger mounds of adjectives piled on them. Ten years from now, I want to be able to do a revamped version of this article to celebrate the release of Xtreme Maximally Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3: The Fate of Two Worlds: Super Transcendent Lorentz-Contracted Hyperspeed Special Platinum Edition when it comes out.
Finally pushed too far after years of ridicule and ostracism by his coworkers at Santa's workshop, Herbie the Misfit Elf turns to the dark side.
Super-Skrull
Kevin: While the Fantastic Four themselves remain ever the glaring omission from Capcom’s Marvel fighters, at least their powers made it into this game. While I’d rather have the courageous quartet themselves, Super-Skrull is pretty darned cool with his grabs, slams, pummels, and flames. I only wish I could understand what he’s saying. Prior to his Inferno special attack I’m absolutely convinced he exclaims “He Loves Me!” Perhaps on the Skrull world it is customary to burn those who love you to a nova crisp as a sign of dominance.
John: Super-Skrull clearly has a deep fear of intimacy, most likely as the result of self-esteem issues that cause him to feel unworthy of being loved and afraid that any close emotional relationship with another person will inevitably end in betrayal and abandonment, that drives him to repel people who try to get close to him. This is all too common, sadly, though Super-Skrull’s particular symptomology is somewhat atypical- most people suffering from fear of intimacy deal with it through avoidant or self-sabotaging behaviors intended to prevent the formation of close emotional ties with others, rather than by joining an interdimensional combat tournament and setting people on fire.
Frank West during his award-winning reporting from the Siege of Sevastopol, 1854. He's covered wars, you know.
Frank West
Kevin: Photojournalist Frank West is the protagonist of the popular Dead Rising, in which he fends off hordes of zombies with shopping carts, baseball bats, and Serve-bot Helmets. He actually first appeared as a fighting game character inTatsunoko Vs. Capcom, where he uses his merchandise-inspired weaponry to fell the likes of everyone’s favorite anime characters Yatterman II and Gold Lightan.
John: I feel obliged to point out that, unlike Marvel vs. Capcom 3, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom managed to incorporate Zero into the roster- and Mega Man’s distaff counterpart Roll, for that matter- and still find space for Mega Man. They didn’t feel the need to shoehorn a fourth-string character like Tron Bonne into things, heedless of who might have to pay the price for their folly, and her absence didn’t make the sky fall.
Just thought I’d throw that out there.
Kevin: Frank was actually cut from the original MvC3 late in development, but he makes his Ultimate debut in the upgrade sequel. What this means is that now, not only can we deliver the final blow to the game’s boss, the omnipotent Galactus, with a steel pipe as Mike Haggar… we can now use Frank to crack him in his cosmic groin with a Louisville Slugger. Somewhere the Silver Surfer is shedding a glinting gray tear, running down his aloof visage. It never used to be this easy, eh Norrin?
John: Actually, what most people outside the sporting goods manufacturing industry don’t realize is that all Louisville Sluggers have been imbued with the Power Cosmic since 1905, when their inventor Bud Hillerich secretly agreed to become a Herald of Galactus as part of his company’s endorsement deal with Honus Wagner. The Hillerich & Bradsby company doesn’t really talk about it much in their promotional materials, though.
With the undead in hot pursuit, Frank West must call upon his extensive running training at the Lupin the 3rd Track and Field Academy to make his escape.
Dante
Kevin: Dante, the red-coated protagonist from the Devil May Cry games has long been requested by Capcom fighter fans to make it into a crossover fighter. Fun fact: Dante has more special moves than any other character in any fighting game ever at a whopping forty-plus distinct special attacks! Those of us who have been playing the game are mostly familiar with Dante teleporting up over our heads, slamming us with his sword, levitating us into the air with gunfire and entering into a cycle of incredibly repetitive and obnoxious attacks that may or may not end with him performing his hypercombo twice in a row.
John: So he basically subjects you to the last century of the Chicago Cubs condensed into a few seconds, then.
Kevin: What many do not realize is that in spite of his show of bravado and arrogance, Dante is actually deeply insecure. Frequently seeking validation with that nagging question “I’m good, aren’t I?!? I’m good, aren’t I?!? I’m good, aren’t I?!?” It is thought that much of Dante’s insecurity derives from his being the only fighting game character to wear a “bro,” or “mansierre” if you will. But this is highly speculative.
John: Your lack of insight into the human heart continues to disappoint me, Kevin. Or half-human half-demon heart, or whatever.
The damage continues to mount as Dante's hypercombo enters its third hour.
Dante’s parents died when he was very young- his mother when he was 8, and his father even earlier. Clearly, he’s desperately reaching out for the love and approval that he was deprived of as a child. He had no strong adult male role model to provide him with encouragement and instill self-confidence as he grew up.
This lack of paternal validation as he came of age, combined with the effects of hegemonic mainstream gender narratives identifying manhood with aggression and violence- which, in the absence of personal experiences with protective or nurturing male figures in his own life, he is unable to imagine any alternative to- has left him with a deeply insecure sense of his own masculinity that he tries to compensate for by constantly seeking reassurance from others about his fighting prowess.
Duh.
That band he’s got wrapped around his chest underneath his jacket is sort of weird-looking, though. I have no idea what the deal with that thing is. If I hadn’t already reached my Saturday Night Live reference quota in my comments about Albert Wesker last time and the sketch was less than three decades old, I’d be tempted to make some sort of joke about Dan Akroyd and his “elaborate network of trusses.”
Flames with the power to consume whole worlds rage as the power of the Dark Phoenix...DAMN IT! Forget it, I'm not finding and uploading ANOTHER damned JPEG file. I doubt anybody will even notice.
Kevin: The fiery Jean Grey is one of my all-time favorite superheroes, so I was stoked when I first heard she was going to make the cut of MVC3. My excitement has since cooled a bit as I learned that she essentially dies in three hits.
John: I figured they were just trying to be true to her characterization in the X-Men comics.
Kevin: Granted, this is a balancing technique to counter her ultra-powerful Dark Phoenix form which is activated when she gets K.O.ed at combo level 5. Unfortunately, it turns her into something of a gimmick. A back pocket character, who is never on point and tends to just sort of sit in reserve until you’re ready to send her off to slaughter. But nevertheless she can be quite a force to be reckoned with. Personally, I like to use her when I’m pissed off at the game’s aptly named “Very Hard” Mode. As sophisticated as the game’s AI is, it does not understand the term “Dodge this!” Even if Dark Phoenix says it forty-five times in a row as she pins poor souls in the corner with double fireballs until they’re dead.
John: This seems like as good a time as any to bring up one of my complaints with the game. Like many fighting games, characters have some word or phrase that they’ll shout when they unleash their projectile attack. The problem is that in Marvel vs. Capcom 3 many characters can do their projectile attacks in quite rapid succession, and in many situations it can be a good idea to do just that, in which case your character will call out his single stock phrase for that move every single time, endlessly. It get’s very repetitive after a while- if a projectile-focused character takes the field, the fight can end up sounding like a skipping CD or a really Urkel-heavy episode of Family Matters.
Forget the unimaginably advanced super-technology in Dr. Doom’s armor, or the literally godly might of Thor, or the power of the Dark Phoenix to incinerate entire worlds- the most astonishing superhuman power on display here is the sheer lung capacity some of these characters have.
Thus ends this episode. Join us again next time as we dig-still deeper into Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3! Will we somehow unravel the mystery of forgettable Lovecraft pastiche Shuma-Gorath’s repeated appearances in this series without resorting to lazy Japanese stereotypes about tentacles? Will anything be able to slake my thirst for vengeance against Tron Bonne? Will we finally overcome our insecurity in the face of Mike Haggar’s overwhelming masculinity and actually finish the entry for him that we previously implied would be included this this time? There’s only one way to find out!
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