Some very interesting news came from FGC veteran Jay “Viscant” Snyder on his Twitter the other day, and it creates a pretty wild Marvel vs. Capcom 2 “what if” story. You can find the initial tweet in a string below, but we will break it down for you here.
https://twitter.com/JayViscant/status/1080271913476186112
So in 2004, back when the word “esports” was nary a whisper on Mike Ross’ lips, MLG (Major League Gaming) was looking to add some fighting games to its lineup. This was right when they had added Super Smash Bros. Melee, and they were most likely looking into establishing a foothold in the FGC.
Viscant was approached by a representative from MLG about adding Marvel vs. Capcom 2, arguably the biggest and most exciting fighting game around at the time, to their lineup since Viscant was (and still is) a big figure in the Marvel scene. According to Viscant, the first words out of MLG’s mouth were asking which characters they should ban. Now, for anyone who has been in the FGC, especially in games like MvC2, the word “ban” is about the dirtiest word one can utter.
Viscant explained how, outside of literally game-breaking glitches, nothing in these games is banned. The MLG rep responded by asking what characters should be banned, the first name coming up being Cable. For those in the know, of the top four characters in MvC2 Cable is easily at the bottom, but he is the most notorious. After telling the rep this, his response was to just ban all four. It was here that Viscant was, understandably, wondering if he was getting trolled.
In Viscant’s own words, he says, “So I tried to explain that the way MvC2 works, if you ban top tier, 2nd tier just wrecks the cast harder than top tier wrecks 2nd, etc. Like without gods, Spiral DESTROYS lives, Blackheart ruins like 45 characters for free, etc.”
The MLG rep was clearly disappointed, stating that he wasn’t sure if his team would be interested in running a game with Cable in it. (I can’t be the only one that finds that hilarious.) So at the rep’s request, Viscant directed him towards the Cannon brothers, Mr. Wizard, and the EVO staff for help with running tournaments.
So in an alternate timeline, we could have had Marvel vs. Capcom 2 blow up pretty early, but with all the good characters banned, and wack teams playing for big money. Viscant doesn’t think it would have been worth it, and I am inclined to agree with him.
