Marvel vs. Capcom 2

I wanna take you for a ride...

Marvel vs. Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes (2000) is arguably the most popular game (as of yet) in the Capcom Vs series.

The final 2D entry in the Marvel vs. Capcom series, it sandwiches every playable character from X Men Children of the Atom all the way up to the orignal Marvel vs. Capcom. The only absences are the Vs Boss characters, the palette swaps, and most helpers from the previous game.

To make things easy for you, that is a whopping 56 individual characters, placing the game among those with the most numerous cast.

If that wasn't enough, the game bumped the teams up to three fighters per team, allowing you to select different sets of assist attacks and Double (and Triple, of course) Supers. The game also allowed you to chain supers together for absurdly long and painful combos, or just safe, if costly, switching between characters.

Eventually, Capcom lost the Marvel license, and both companies would follow separate routes until 2008. After massive fan demand (and the success of Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix), MvC2 was rereleased for Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network with online play. This reignited the Marvel and Capcom relationship, and in 2010, the companies announced that the game would get a true sequel in the form of Marvel vs. Capcom 3.

Marvel

• Returning: Blackheart, Captain America, Colossus, Cyclops, Dr. Doom, Gambit, Iceman, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Juggernaut, Magneto, Omega Red, Psylocke, Rogue, Sabretooth, Sentinel, Shuma-Gorath, Silver Samurai, Spider-Man, Spiral, Storm, Thanos, Venom, War Machine and Wolverine.
• Newcomers: Cable, Marrow and Wolverine.

Capcom

• Returning: Akuma, Captain Commando, Cammy, Charlie, Chun-Li, Dan, Dhalsim, Jin Saotome, Ken, M. Bison, Mega Man, Morrigan, Roll, Ryu, Sakura, Strider Hiryu, and Zangief.
• Newcomers: Anakaris, B.B. Hood, Felicia, Guile, Hayato Kanzaki, Jill Valentine, Servbot and Tron Bonne.

Brand-new characters (representing the Capcom side):

• Amingo: a cactus-man.
• Sonson: the granddaughter of the hero of a classic Capcom game of the same name (based off of Journey to the West)
• Ruby Heart: a Pirate Girl who is (ostensibly) the main protagonist of the game.
• Abyss: The game's Final Boss. A being whose awakening is spreading a wave that's killing off all life on land.

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Tropes:

• A Winner Is You: Unlike the first game, there's no separate endings for the characters. You get a little uncolored slideshow of the characters mingling on Ruby's ship after the Abyss battle and that's pretty much it.
• Ambidextrous Sprite: Cable's bionic arm.
• Anchors Away: Ruby Heart can use a small anchor to either capture her opponent or reel them in and blast them with a cannon from point-blank range.
• Animated Armor: Abyss's first form.
• Ascended Extra:
  • Roll was a secret character in the first Marvel vs. Capcom, and then made the jump to the main roster in this game.
  • In Mega Man Legends, the Servbots were Tron's assistants, but here, they made the jump towards the main roster along with their mistress.
  • If we don't count both X Men Children of the Atom and Marvel Super Heroes, we have also Colossus, Iceman, Psylocke and Sentinel, whose only appearances in the crossover series were as Assist Characters in the previous game. Especially Sentinel, since in it's source media it's not even the Master Mold, but one of a huge line of Humongous Mechas.
• Assist Character: Several, including Mega Man (Rush), Jin (Blodia), Tron Bonne (Servbot), Captain Commando (his Commando Team), Jill Valentine (zombies, crows, dogs and Tyrant) and Sabertooth (Birdie).
• Attack Its Weak Point: The black sphere that serves as Abyss' core. Only in the third form it can be attacked, thought.
• Audible Sharpness: One of the many reasons Strider Hiryu became so popular. SCHWING!
• Badass Arm-Fold: Doctor Doom has this as his Idle Animation. While it looks cool, it's not exactly the most practical position to have your arms in while fighting. Of course, it's Doom we're talking about.
• Badass Adorable: Roll, Servbot and Felicia.
• Badass Biker: Hayato, of Star Gladiator fame, whose intro consists of him jumping off of his tricked-out ride and activating his lightsaber plasma blade with a Kiai.
• Badass Normal: Captain America, Iron Man, and War Machine in the Marvel side, and Zangief, Strider Hiryu, Jin Saotome, Hayato Kanzaki, Captain Commando, Jill Valentine and Tron Bonne in the Capcom side. With the exception of Zangief, all of them use Powered Armors, Humongous Mechas and/or weapons, anyway.
• Bare Your Midriff: Marrow.
• BFG: Iron Man's/War Machine's PROTON CANNON!, Morrigan's SOUL ERASER!. B.B. Hood's goons guns in Cool Hunting and Cable's HYPER VIPER BEAM
• Beam Spam: Abyss's second form. SO FREAKING MUCH.

"Hahaha!!"

• Big Bad: Abyss.
• Big Eater: Sonson, who can turn her opponents into fruit and eat them.
• Blob Monster: Abyss is revealed to be a massive being of liquid/goo in his 2nd form, and apparently switches to red goo (blood?) in his 3rd form.
• Blow You Away: Storm uses wind attacks as a few of her specials, and combines it with An Ice Person for one of her Supers.
• A Boy and His X: Mega Man and Rush.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: One of Marrow's Victory Poses is her looking at the "camera" and throwing a bone, literally breaking the fourth wall.
• Calling Your Attacks: You'd expect this with the Fighting Game characters, naturally. But it even extends to the Marvel Superheroes, among others.
  • BEHOLD! OPTIC BLAST!
  • FINAL JUSTICE!
  • HYPER... VIPER BEAM!
  • TORUNADO HOLDO!
  • GAMMA CRUSH!
  • CAPTAIN COLLIDER CORRIDOR!
  • WEB SWING!
  • OMEGA DESTROYER DESTVOYAIR!
• Character Roster Global Warming: 56 playable characters and only six (Zangief, Anakaris, Colossus, Sentinel, Hulk, Juggernaut) are of the slow-and-strong type.
• Combat Tentacles: The only plausible explanation as to how Shuma-Gorath made the cut over his antagonist, Doctor Strange.
  • Also, Omega Red.
• Combination Attack: Double and Triple Supers.
• Composite Character: Zangief and Sakura may qualify, since they have the ability to transform into Mecha Zangief and Dark Sakura during battle, who were technically separate characters in Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter.
• Cool Ship/Cool Airship: Ruby Heart, being a trans-dimensional, world-traveling Pirate, is in possession of one. It also is the cast's main form of transportation, one of the fighting stages of the game AND one of her Super Combos.
• Cool Versus Awesome: The whole reason the game exists.
• Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Two assist buttons are added, but both medium attack buttons have been dropped. Some medium attacks have been retained as launching command attacks, while others can only be done by pressing a weak attack button twice within close range.
• Death From Above:
  • Blackheart's Armageddon summons a meteor storm to the battlefield.
  • The Hulk jumps into space, and essentially pulls a passing meteor from space to drop it on his opponent.
  • War Machine's War Destroyer Hyper sends a shower of missiles down his opponent. Smart Bombs also do, except in a less powerful way.
  • Abyss's first form has a shower of energy spears as a Super.
• Desperation Attack: If Jin Saotome is left as the last man standing on his team, he'll start glowing gold and will gain a strength boost plus Super Armor (needs two hits to enter the stun animation).
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Almost literally, with Shuma-Gorath.
• Dishing Out Dirt: Felicia's Sand Splash attack.
• Divergent Character Evolution: War Machine in MvC was exactly like Iron Man in the earlier games. In MvC 2, he gets Gold War Machine's special moves, replacing Iron Man's beam attacks with guns and missiles (which is closer to how he's portrayed in the comics).
• Dream Match Game: For the entire Marvel vs. Capcom series, including the Marvel-only X Men Children of the Atom and Marvel Super Heroes.
• Dynamic Entry: Most of the tag-ins.
• Enemy Mine: Jill Valentine is "aided" by zombies in battle.
• Enemy Summoner: Blackheart's strong attacks summon minor demons which cling onto the opponent to slow him/her down.
• Excuse Plot: Well there isn't really one, but the ending suggest that Ruby called everyone together to fight Abyss.
• Everything's Better with Spinning: Zangief, Cammy, Jin Saotome.
  • Hurricane Kick: Ryu, Ken, Akuma and Sakura.
  • This Is a Drill: One of Mega Man's specials has Rush becoming a Drill Tank controllable by the player. Tron Bonne's Gustaff also comes equipped with a drill. Also Jin second kick attacks.
• Fire, Ice, Lightning: Silver Samurai can switch between the three elements, having special effects and one unique Super for each.
• Flash Step: Strider Hiryu makes use of this in several of his techniques. Also Akuma and Dark/Sunburned Sakura's Ashura Senkuu.
• Flight: Iron Man, War Machine, Magneto, Storm, Sentinel and M.Bison all have a special move that allows them to fly for a limited time.
• Fragile Speedster: Strider Hiryu is the best example, having a very low health/defense stat in exchange for great speed.
• Game Mod: Before the Xbox Live Arcade version was announced, people were making custom Dreamcast ISOs with custom soundtracks, (due to its heavy Soundtrack Dissonance) and custom colours. There wouldn't be "Mango Sentinal", "Sicily in the middle of Italy" nor "Bitch blue like candy" without this, for Yipes' sake!
• Genius Bruiser: The Hulk, where he's in the guise of the Merged Hulk/Professor persona. (remember, The Green Scar from Planet Hulk and World War Hulk had yet to be created at the time)
• Getting Crap Past the Radar: Roll's lv1 Super turns her into a Mazinger Z's expy where she fires lots of different ammo... including round missles from her chest.
• Glass Cannon: A few, considering there are Loads and Loads of Characters, but taken Up to Eleven with the team Strider/Doctor Doom/Sentinel, known as "Team Clockwork" after the player who pioneered it. Strider is not only a Glass Cannon himself, but if he or Doom dies, the team often falls apart. Notice in the first match in this video where Clockwork is holding a nice lead and momentum until Strider dies, and then it falls apart.
• Gratuitous French: Ruby Heart, although it's hard to tell.
• Henshin Hero: Captain Commando is one according to his intro.

"Henshin, Commando!"

• Heroic Mime: For some reason, Storm doesn't have any dialogue aside of grunting.
• Hot-Blooded: Jin Saotome, oh so very much.
• Humongous Mecha: Sentinel. For non-playable mecha, we've got Jin's Blodia, who is used in some of his attacks.
• I Am Legion:

Venom: "We are Venom!"

• An Ice Person: Iceman.
  • Also Storm in some of her attacks, and Silver Samurai while in Ice Sword mode.
• Improbable Weapon User: Servbot. He uses things like potato peelers, for crying out loud!
• Joke Character: Dan (natch), Roll, and Servbot.
• Kamehame Hadoken: The second part of the trope's name comes from the version of the Shinkuu Hadouken, which is the best known of many, MANY, MANY instances.
• Katanas Are Just Better: Several characters either have the real deal (i.e. Jin Saotome in one of his Victory Poses, Silver Samurai, etc.) or a slight variation of it.
• Kick Chick: Chun-Li and Cammy.
• Kiss of Death: Morrigan's Eternal Slumber secret move.
• Laser Blade: Strider Hiryu's Cypher, Hayato's plasma sword. The former leans more toward Hot Blade.
• Legacy Character: SonSon is the granddaughter of SonSon, the eponymous protagonist of an early Capcom game of the same name, which was based off the Journey to the West story.
• Life Drain: Omega Red's specialty.
• Lightning Bruiser: Sentinel, especially when flying.
• Loads and Loads of Characters: The game included pretty much every playable Marvel and Capcom character inside of Capcom's Marvel games that was featured in the series up to that point, to a grand total of 56 (counting both of Wolvie's forms, and not counting the boss).
• Macross Missile Massacre: War Machine's Proton Cannon and War Destroyer.
• Made of Iron: Colossus and (Mecha) Zangief for the literal example. Both even have Super Armor (Colossus as a Super move).
• Making a Splash: Ruby Heart can create pillars of water for an attack.
• Megaton Punch: Jin's entire fighting style, especially the Blodia Punch, which is a Megaton Punch by a Humongous Mecha.
• Mini-Mecha: Tron Bonne rides one to fight.
• More Dakka:
  • B.B. Hood's special has her summoning her two mercenaries and firing at will
  • Mega Man's and Roll's Lv1 super has them becoming Mazinger Z's expies firing many types of projectiles at will.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: Tron Bonne as a taunt.
• Original Generation: Amingo, Ruby Heart and Abyss.
• Pirate Girl: Ruby Heart. To a much lesser extent, Tron Bonne.
• Playing with Fire: Blackheart, Silver Samurai (Fire Sword Mode), Captain Commando (along electric attacks), Dhalsim, Ken and Zangief (in his Mecha form) among others.
  • Cammy and Bison use a Psycho Power-fueled variation.
• Powered Armor: Iron Man (natch), War Machine, Captain Commando and Abyss.
• Power Creep, Power Seep:
  • How the (mostly) Badass Normal characters from the Street Fighter-verse can last more than five seconds against powerhouses like Magneto.
  • Seeing how a fairly obscure character like Marrow can beat A-listers like Magneto, or Wolverine, makes the game even more fun to play.
  • Heck, even a circuit-and-metal SERVBOT can beat MAGNETO, a SENTINEL or the JUGGERNAUT (bitch)!!!
  • The fact that any of these characters can go toe-to-toe with Shuma-Gorath, the resident Eldritch Abomination, is proof enough.
  • Somewhat averted in competitive matches, as the top ranked characters are all big-name Marvel characters (except Sentinel and Psylocke) with a few exceptions (Strider and Captain Commando).
• Rocket Punch: Sentinel. It even says those two words.
• Rubber Man: Dhalsim and Spiral.
• Rule of Funny: SonSon crushes a watermelon on an enemy's head then eats it.
• Ryu and Ken: All 5 types: Ryu, Ken, Sakura, Akuma and Dan, all of them Shotoclones. And for examples not involving those two street fighters, there're two Wolverines (Adamantium and Bone claws); Iron Man and War Machine; Mega Man and Roll; and Guile and Charlie
• Serious Business: The game holds the record for the biggest money match in fighting game history, with a $40,000 prize.
• Shock and Awe: Storm's primary form of offense. Many other characters have at least one shock/stun move.
  • Captain Commando's power gloves use both electricity and fire as attacks.
• Shotoclone: Aside from the 5 examples of Ryu and Ken above, Spider-Man, Captain America, Morrigan and Cyclops.
• Shout-Out: Check the page.
• Small Girl, Big Gun: Jill uses a rocket launcher so big that despite being a badass extrodanaire the recoil knocks her over.
• SNK Boss: Abyss, if you use a melee-only team.
  • Just to clarify, Abyss' first form isn't hard to take down melee, but the second form pretty much requires liberal projectile usage. The third can be taken down in either fashion, but leans towards aerial attacks.
• Soundtrack Dissonance: The infamous original soundtrack, consisting of jazzy music. The entry on that page likens the dissonance to using zydeco music in Silent Hill.

Gonna take you for a riiiide!

• Sprite Polygon Mix: The game has sprite-based characters and 3D backgrounds.
• Stripperific: In the ladies' side, we have Psylocke, Cammy, Felicia, and Morrigan. The latter two technically don't even wear clothes. And in the men's side, Hulk, Zangief, Dhalsim and, if one is feeling crazy, Colossus.
• Super Mode: Mecha Zangief and Dark Sakura, which were Secret Characters in previous games, are now Lv.3 Super Forms accessible to them.
• Super-Powered Evil Side: One technique has Hayato turning into Black Hayato.
• Suspiciously Similar Substitute: War Machine was included in the original Marvel vs. Capcom when they couldn't use Iron Man due to licensing issues. Both were included in this game, leading to Divergent Character Evolution.
• Tag Team
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill:

"HYPER COMBO FINISH!"

• Third Option Adaptation: Ruby Heart was created as a mediator between the Capcom and Marvel sides, acting as a neutral protagonist.
• Transforming Mecha: Rush Drill and Beat Plane. Both controllable by the player.
• The Unexpected: Shuma-Gorath, Jin and Marrow.
• Updated Rerelease: If you are really (and we mean really) technical, the 2009 port could count as this with its additions of online play, fixed glitches, custom soundtracks and sprite filters. No more, no less.
• V-Formation Team Shot: Captain Commando and his team does this after his Captain Storm super move.
• Victory Fakeout: Happens twice with Abyss. Each time you defeat its first two forms, the usual YOU WIN! message appears, and your onscreen character even does his victory pose. Sadly, your health is not restored.
• Voluntary Shapeshifter: Amingo and Venom make extensive use of this in their movelist. Then there's Shuma-Gorath (who can change shapes into mouths, spikes or even stone), Spiral (has one Super in which she turns into everyone on Marvel's side of the cast), Morrigan (can shape her batwings into several forms), Felicia (can turn into a small kitten) and Anakaris (can shape into various pyramid-shaped forms)
• Wave Motion Gun: Iron Man's PROTON CANNON, Cable's HYPER VIPER BEAM and Morrigan's SOUL ERASER
• Wolverine Claws: Wolverine, d'oh.

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"IT'S MAHVEL BAYBEE!"