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In these modern videogaming times, it seems as though there are two types of gamers; those who love Capcom fighting games and their various incarnations, and those who could care less. Those who will buy anything with the Street Fighter name on it, and those who won't. And although I can count myself among the former (I'm probably the only guy in the universe who preordered SSF2/SNES!), I can't count Capcom's X-Men vs. Street Fighter EX for PlayStation (import) among the company's better efforts.
The arcade version of X-Men/SF is absolutely brilliant, combining the best characters from two great universes (Capcom and Marvel) to produce an awesome, visually thrilling bash-'em-up. A Sega Saturn version is available (as an import), which is pretty much arcade perfect.
Let me start the review by saying this; the PlayStation version is not exactly a port of the arcade game of the same name. Why not? Because the tag-team feature of the arcade version is missing (the PSX' small amount of RAM is the reason). You still choose two characters to do battle with, but your second character only jumps in for ACs, as far as I can tell. This means one of the coolest features of the arcade game is not in the PSX version.
That being said, let's look at the graphics. Pretty much standard Capcom here (i.e. awesome), except for the tons of missing frames. Sad, but true. Smaller characters like Wolvie are decently animated, but check out poor Sabretooth! One of my all-time faves (I'll admit-I bought this game just to see Sabretooth vs. Ken!), he just moves so choppy. I'd be almost willing to accept this, except I know Capcom could've done better, they did better with Marvel Super Heroes. Kinda smacks of a rush job to me.
And the sound? Just like the arcade, far as I can tell. Next...
Gameplay. Here's the good news. At least Capcom managed to keep the gameplay intact (except for the aforementioned missing tag-team feature). All those cool air combos from the arcade are here, and you can super cancel ala SFEX@, something you couldn't do even in the arcade. But in the end, the gameplay isn't really anything who haven't seen before, just imagine mixing SFA2 and MSH in a blender and you've got it.
To compensate for the PSX' 2-D inadequacies, Capcom threw in a few new features (hence the EX title). There's Survival and Training Modes, and as I said before, you can super cancel Super Moves, which can lead to some truly insane combos (80+ hits). Another (unwanted) feature exclusive to the PSX version is cruddy loading time, which seems about the same as the original SFA for PSX.
Seeing as I'm reviewing the import, I'll mention that absolutely no Japanese is required to play X-Men/SF EX. The game options are in English, and there's barely a trace of Japanese text to be found here.
If it sounds like I'm giving X-Men/SF EX a bad review, that's not entirely the case. I guess what I'm saying is that it's really just your basic Capcom fighting game, and how much you'll enjoy it depends on how much you like these types of games. I'll play it for a while, until I start jonesing for something better (like Samurai Spirits IV Special).
Graphics 7
Music 8
Gameplay 8
Overall 7
P.S. Did I mention the loading time sucks?