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Fav Vids: #2 - MvC2: NEC3 Team Tournament finals

Categories: [blog]
Tags: [fighting games]

Game: Marvel vs Capcom 2
Date: December 2002
Location: University Pinball, Philadelphia
Players: Ricky Ortiz, Xecutioner, Justin Wong vs Bryheem, Josh Wong, Sanford
Source: NEC3 DVD

Have a think how long ago this was, how early it is in MvC2’s lifespan. This is back when off-axis (tape!) camera positioning and scrolling black bars were the norm in match vids. When having the atmosphere and in-arcade commentary captured was unusual (although just as NSFW as you’d expect!). When successfully mashing out of hypergrav-tempest was worthy of note. Storm air combo, Lightning Storm DHC into Hyper Sentinel Force etc wasn’t discovered yet. Justin Wong was only just the king of the heap but evidently very beatable, not yet the dominator of MvC2 that he became.

Clearly the top tiers of MvC2 were already well developed by this time however – Sent, Cable, Commando, Magneto, Storm, Psylocke, and Doom are the only chars to appear. Oh all right, there’s Blackheart in there too. MvC2 definitely continued evolving after this vid, but the sheer entertainment displayed here is hard to beat. Bryheem’s outbursts in particular are hilarious.

I also love the gameplay. The simplicity (but effectiveness) of Ricky Ortiz’s Storm combos. The first time I really saw Sentinel fast fly combos in a match. The aforementioned mashing out of hypergrav tempest. Sure there are mistakes and dropped combos, but take into account the age of the video. Magneto’s five fierce combo hadn’t even been discovered yet. No-one had Sentinel-only infinites. Even with the mistakes, back in the day the stuff in this video was godlike. This was one of those videos that forced me into training mode to try and emulate various plays within it.

Highlights:

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