June 11, 1998 - What happens when you take an innovative arcade fighter, remove its most clever aspect, and put it on PlayStation? You get X-Men vs. Street Fighter, a game that delivers half the impact of its coin-op counterpart, yet isn't as horrible as you may be lead to believe.
Here's what you get. All of the fighters from the coin-op version (Ryu, Gambit, Ken, and the lot), all of the stages, and all of the moves. What you don't get - and here's the stinger - is the innovative tag-team fighting mode which made the arcade original so unique. Instead of being able to switch between characters on the fly, your second fighter comes into play only during special attacks. D'oh!
For the sake of fairness, it must be said that Capcom has included a code in the game that lets to play a pseudo tag-team match. The only drawback is that both players must select the same team of two characters (ie: Ryu and Ken). But it's just not the same experience as a true tag-team match.
Other gripes include some serious slowdown when larger characters execute the earlier-mentioned tag-team combos. There are also the expected number of missing animation frames - but after all, it's the PlayStation's RAM limitations bringing us this drawback. And it's not a major one when you look at the overall picture.
Beyond the glaring omission of the tag-team play, and a few frames of animation, the game is still a solid and entertaining fighter. It's just not that much different from any other Capcom fighter in its watered-down state.
If you like the characters a lot, or simply must have every single Capcom fighter that's put out, I'd recommend this game. But if you're expecting a gameplay experience equal to what you remember in the arcades, you're unfortunately out of luck.
Saturn players will want to look into an import copy of the game, which, with its 4MB RAM cart, perfectly reproduces the arcade experience. PlayStation fans should hold out for Darkstalkers 3 if faithfulness is your game.
--Randy Nelson
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| out of 10 | click here for ratings guide |
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| 6.0 |
OVERALL (out of 10 / not an average) |
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