Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics - Co-op Review

This collection features The Punisher, a co-op beat 'em up, plus a bunch of great fighting games.

After defining/redefining the fighting game genre with Street Fighter II and its many iterations and sequels, Capcom also spent much of the 1990s creating beloved fighters based on Marvel properties. This fisticuff-laden Marvel series started with X-Men: Children of the Atom in 1994 and reached a pinnacle with Marvel vs. Capcom 2 in 2000. Following the success of the Capcom Fighting Collection and Capcom Beat ‘Em Up Bundle, Capcom has finally bundled all of their Marvel fighters onto modern platforms as Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics. And what’s more, the 1994 co-op beat ‘em up The Punisher is included as well. It’s a collection that every Marvel fighting game fan will want to take for a ride.

The interface is identical to that of Capcom Fighting Collection, which means it’s functional but unintuitive in places. The main menu options include Offline Play, Online Play, Museum, Fighter Awards, and Options. The Museum offers both an art gallery and a music player with content from all seven games, plus the collection’s handful of newly created pieces of art and music. These games all feature fantastic artwork, and some of them have great music, so the museum is a terrific feature. You can even browse the museum while waiting for online matches. As for the Fighter Awards, it’s an in-game Achievement browser. Each game has some Achievements/Trophies of its own, and the Fighter Awards offers convenient hints about how to unlock some of them.

Options are where things get a little convoluted. Some of the collection’s options are found in the Options menu. Others are found in the game-select menu prior to launching a game. Still more must be accessed from within the games themselves. There are a lot of options in total, so it mostly makes sense not to house them all under one menu. Still, graphical options like visual filters should really be selectable from other places besides the in-game menu. It took me a while to find them so that I could turn off scanlines, which are on by default, and must be disabled/adjusted for each game individually. Also, emulation-wise, players only get a single quick save slot to use between all 7 games on the collection. That's stingy. On the plus side, each game has a few widescreen border options, which is cool.

This collection includes the following competitive fighting games:

Several of these games have never received perfect home ports before, and some of the best ports were only released on the Sega Saturn in Japan. The Xbox 360 era did see good ports of Marvel vs. Capcom 1 and 2, but not the older titles. It’s a real blessing to get perfect ports of all six of these licensed fighting games, complete with online play and high-quality netcode. Players can choose from the American or Japanese versions of each title (the Japanese version of Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter has an extra character, pictured above) and enable easy selection of secret characters like Cyber Akuma.

While the online multiplayer menus are pretty clunky, the actual matchmaking options are impressive. Players can choose which games to matchmake for, so you can look for a match in just a single game or make yourself available for any combination of the included titles. Players can also choose between waiting on a matchmaking screen, playing single-player, or browsing the museum while waiting for matches. The matchmaking feature for the Steam version was semi-broken at launch, but it has since been fixed.

The odd game out in this collection is The Punisher, a 1994 beat ‘em up with 2-player local and online co-op. Co-Optimus alum Marc Allie looked at the game in our Co-op Classics column a while back, and now it’s time for a fresh look.

The introduction depicts the murder of Frank Castle’s family in a park, a crime that leads Castle to become the murderous antihero, the Punisher. As for the game’s premise, Punisher and Nick Fury (the somewhat less morally gray head of SHIELD) team up to take down a crime syndicate that is led by Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin. Between levels, the two protagonists have brief text-based conversations in which Fury chastises Castle for his overly brutal methods. These simple cinematics lend the game some personality, but the way the text is displayed can make it hard to tell who’s talking.

On an actual arcade cabinet, the first player controls the Punisher and the second player controls Nick Fury. Things work the same way here, so if a solo player wants to be Nick Fury, they have to set the "Player" option to P2 in the game settings before launching the game. In an online game, the host has to be Punisher and the guest has to be Nick Fury. The addition of a character select screen (which has been added to the arcade games in Konami’s TMNT: The Cowabunga Collection) would’ve been nice. It’s not a major issue, however, since both characters play identically.

Combat closely resembles that of Capcom’s Final Fight, which debuted in 1989. Our heroes have a basic array of punches, grabs, health-draining special moves, and jumping maneuvers that inspire fast, simple play. The Punisher features a wider variety of weapons, though, including swords, knives, flame throwers, and even a Ghosts N’ Goblins-style lance. Additionally, whenever a gun-wielding enemy joins the fight, the heroes get to fight with pistols for a limited time. These shooting sections offer a fun change of pace to the standard brawling. The heroes also have a limited number of grenades that can be thrown by pressing Attack plus Jump or the newly added special move button while in the air.

While The Punisher looks great for its era and plays well, it doesn’t feel as authentic and/or larger-than-life as the other Marvel games in this collection. The only recognizable Punisher villains are Bruno Costa (who appears as a gangster but not in his later demonic form), Bushwacker, and Kingpin, the final boss. Jigsaw is nowhere to be seen, nor are heroic allies like Daredevil and Black Widow. Punisher's pal, Microchip, only shows up on the continue screen. Besides regular gangsters and ninjas, the enemies also consist of robots and the cybernetic Reavers – goofy characters who are more commonly pitted against the X-Men. Overall, it seems like Capcom’s designers understood the Punisher’s brutality but not his limited rogues’ gallery or place in the Marvel universe.

Like most beat 'em ups, the best way to enjoy The Punisher is in co-op. Local co-op is simple enough, but online co-op has an unexpected wrinkle. Only the fighting games in this collection have matchmaking. To play The Punisher online, players must select Custom Match and then use room codes or the console or PC's invite system to join up with another player. The lack of matchmaking for The Punisher is disappointing, especially given that the collection already has a matchmaking system for every other title.

Despite its scarce Marvel connections, The Punisher is still a cult classic beat ‘em up that enjoys a loyal following. The game was ported to the Sega Genesis, but the arcade version has only ever been offered at home on an Arcade1Up cabinet. The Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection marks the first time that the arcade Punisher has been legally available on consoles and PC. With online play, the choice of US or Japanese versions, and an impressive gallery of artwork and music, Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics is a fantastic way to experience Frank Castle and Nick Fury’s team-up beat ‘em up. Gamers will most likely buy the collection for its amazing lineup of fighting games, but The Punisher can offer a welcome co-op diversion between the bouts of competitive fighting.

Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics sells for $49.99 on PlayStation, Switch, and Steam. It will be released on Xbox in 2025. The Steam version is Steam Deck compatible.

A Steam download code was provided by the publisher for this review.