How A Passionate Community Got Disney To Look At Bringing Back Marvel Vs Capcom 2 With #FreeMvC2

This week, fans were excited to learn that Disney had taken notice of a campaign to bring back Marvel Vs Capcom 2 – largely considered the peak of Marvel and Capcom’s tag fighter series.

The game had previously reveived a port on the Xbox 360 and PS3 developed by Digital Eclipse- but thanks to the expiry of a contract between Capcom and Marvel, the games were delisted, and to this day there isn’t a legal way to purchase a new copy of the games.

#FreeMvC2 was a movement started by YouTuber Maximilian, where he rallied fans to get a modern re-release of the iconic fighting game.

“Free MvC2 from its imprisonment that it’s been stuck in for the past 7 years”, he says, referencing when the game was delisted.

His requests from the community were simple- he wanted to get #FreeMvC2 “trending in some way”. What he got was a huge outpouring of support from the community, all eager for an opportunity to get the game back in the public eye. In fact, one such fan decided Wrestling was the best place to be heard, showing up on All Elite Wrestling.

Of course, it’s not just Maximilian- since his call to arms, professional players have also been playing Marvel Vs Capcom 2, such as professional FGC icons Justin Wong and Roundhouse, who earlier this month competed in a USD 10,000 money match in the game to raise awareness for the title. Meanwhile, all three of them have been streaming the game on Twitch, letting more new fans see just what the hype is about.

In a recent interview with GamerHubTV, Digital Eclipse head Mike Mika mentioned that both Disney and Capcom had been approached, and that now the ball was in their court to decide what happens next.

The Challenges Of Bringing Back Marvel Vs Capcom 2

The main hurdles to bring back the game would be its licensing- something anyone who’s played a crossover fighter should be familiar with. Fans of the Marvel Vs Capcom series would remember what happened with Infinite, the latest entry that saw Disney controlling the roster picks in favor of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, even going so far as to make sure there were no X-Men (who Disney didn’t have rights to the movies for at the time) and making sure that Marvel characters were never shown to be losing to Capcom ones.

The other problem would be what to do with the game. As much as a straight 1:1 port would be great, there’s been a lot more quality of life features in fighting games that, if implemented in MvC 2, could be great for its longevity.

Titles like Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid and Fantasy Strike have shown that cross-play is great for games, letting more players play regardless of what console they’re on.

Similarly, the 2009 release for MvC 2 had something many fighting games are only just starting to adopt- Rollback netcode, allowing for smoother matches over longer distances. While Digital Eclipse’s previous release of the game has shown they’re happy to include it, it’s still important to keep mentioning that it’s one of the key features fans would want to keep them still playing the game.

Still, between a passionate developer and strong opinion leaders backing up the project, it looks like there’s a strong case that we could see MvC2 freed, possibly even showing up at events like EVO again. If nothing else, it’s a good case study in the power of streamers, who not only inject life into games- they also apparently have the power to bring them back from the dead.

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