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Marvel vs Capcom Infinite originally had twice as many characters

Marvel vs Capcom Infinite seems to have originally had a more diverse roster, but it was forced to cut it down.

With all eyes on next year’s Marvel’s Avengers game, potentially the biggest Marvel team-up title on PC – if they expand the roster a bit, of course – it’s easy to forget the last major Marvel game on PC with a big cast of playable characters: beat-em-up crossover Marvel vs Capcom Infinite.

Marvel vs Capcom Infinite came out in September 2017, almost exactly two years ago – and while it was praised for its fighting mechanics, it was also criticized for its art direction and character roster. While the game boasted 30 characters at launch from around the Marvel and Capcom universes – with an additional five added as DLC – that paled in comparison to previous game Ultimate Marvel vs Capcom 3’s 48 fighters.

According to popular Marvel vs Capcom player The Filipino Champ – also known as Ryan Ramirez – this number was originally much higher. Ramirez recently streamed an early devkit version of Marvel vs Capcom Infinite, where he discovered that the developers had originally planned to have over 60 characters in the game – but were forced to cut many, possibly due to budget concerns.

You can see the relevant section of the stream below, via EventHubs – or check out Ramirez’ full stream here. We’re not sure how he got his hands on an development kit for Infinite, but he shows off the various code for the game and even turn on hitboxes.

Then he gets to the relevant part, where he shows that the game’s code has slots for a total of 61 characters – almost twice the number that were actually in the final game. While we can only speculate as to the reason so many fighters were cut – budget problems or the unavailability or the X-Men and Fantastic Four for example – it’s definitely a shame, especially when the smaller roster was one of the biggest criticisms of Infinite.

Hopefully if Capcom ever revisits the MvC series, it will do so taking all the wonderful characters in both its games and the Marvel universe into account. As for Marvel’s Avengers, it’ll be out next year – and while only the core Avengers team and Ant-Man have been revealed, more will be added for free as the game goes on. If only Capcom had thought of that.