Earlier today, I wrote a speculation piece on the upcoming Arcade1UP cabinets that announced would be revealed today during IGN’s Summer of Gaming. While I wasn’t completely correct, I did have a hunch that we’d see the X-Men vs. Street Fighter cabinet that was shown earlier this year. I’m guessing that whatever deal Arcade1Up had to through with Capcom, and Disney, finally happened as they officially announced the X-Men vs. Street Fighter cabinet.
This cab will also include X-Men: Children of the Atom, X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom, and Marvel Heroes in War of the Gems. For those keeping counts, that’s three fighting games and two brawlers.
While there’s no price, if you head over to the Arcade1Up website, you can sign up to be notified as soon as it becomes available for pre-order/order.
As for the reveal, well I was bouncing off the walls as I had been hoping this would eventually get released. Now here it is. That said, I do have a few questions/concerns about this cabinet.
Such as the emulation that will be used. Are we going to see a Saturn port of the fighting games, or arcade ROMs? Why it may seem trivial, it’s quite important to find out. Since we didn’t get to see any gameplay, one has to wonder about this. Especially since there’s a PlayStation version of X-Men vs. Street Fighter and it wasn’t very good.
While the arcade and Sega Saturn versions were fully animated, the PlayStation version had many animated frames cut due to memory constraints. The PlayStation version also lacked the ability to tag-team your partner (unless you entered in special code and used the same to characters). Needless to say, either the Arcade or Saturn versions hopefully are being added. As for the other games, there are also differences between the various ports. So I’m curious as to what ports are going to be used for these games. I’ve reached out to Arcade1Up and hopefully, they’ll be able to shed some light on this.
That said, if this is using the arcade from or the Sega Saturn, I’m all in. Like, there’s nothing in this world (well almost) that can stop me.
Along with this announcement were several other game cabinets such as Mrs. Pacman cabinet, which includes PAC-Man Plus, Pac-Mania, and Galaxian. Buck Hunter Pro which includes Big Buck Hunter Pro Open Season, Big Buck Safari, and Big Buck Safari Outback. As well as a virtual pinball machine featuring Marvel characters, Marvel Digital Pinball. I originally was excited about this as I thought it would be an actual pinball game, but I suppose a virtual one is just as cool.
All in all, this is exciting news for those who were on the fence about diving into the world of home arcade cabinets or were waiting for the X-Men vs. Street Fighter cab, like myself.