I've been a big fan of the Street Fighter series since its outset. And to be quite honest, playing Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter only reminds me of how great the series used to be. Sure, the game is mildly entertaining, but without the true tag team gameplay that the arcade version of the game had, it comes off as just another Street Fighter game with Marvel characters.
The character roster totals out at 17, with nine from the Street Fighter universe and eight from Marvel. There are five modes of play including battle, versus, training, hero battle, and crossover. Battle and versus are your typical one- and two-player fighting game modes. Hero Battle is an endurance mode that separates the groups to see which has the stronger stable of fighters. Nothing special here. Crossover mode, however, is at least somewhat interesting. You see, in the original version of MSH vs. SF you could pick two fighters whom you could switch between at any time during the fight. This tag team style of fighting was first featured in the arcade version of X-Men vs. Street Fighter but couldn't make it into the PlayStation port due to the technical limitations of the PlayStation. Sadly, the tag team aspect of MSH vs. SF was also excluded for the same reason. Sure, you can still pick two characters, but you can only play as one of them. The second character only comes into play when you execute a team combo or team counter. Crossover mode tries to bring the game's main selling point home. This mode allows you to pick two characters, then the computer uses the same characters you picked. This limits the amount of information the PlayStation has to handle to two characters instead of four. If you are victorious in this battle, the computer swaps one of the characters each of you have for another. This is done so that you aren't playing with and against the same two characters each fight. It gives you the tag team experience of the arcade, but having to deal with the rotating character thing and having to fight mirror images of yourself is extremely weak.
Visually, MSH vs. SF looks good. But when you compare it with its arcade counterpart, it simply fails. The colors aren't nearly as vibrant, and the game suffers from quite a bit of slowdown. It still comes across better than the PlayStation version of X-Men vs. Street Fighter, though, because not nearly as much animation was cut out. This is a major plus, since frames of animation not only affect the game's appearance but timing and gameplay as well.
On the gameplay side, Street Fighter fans will definitely feel the typical Street Fighter gameplay. But in the end, it's all a question of how starved you are for another Street Fighter game. Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter is all about the tag team mode, and with the overall exclusion of this mode, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter is just another Street Fighter game.
