X-Men vs. Street Fighter

X-Men VS Street Fighter
X-Men vs. Street Fighter's title screen.
Publisher	DVS Electronic Co (possibly) (SNES) X Boy? (Mega Drive)
Console	SNES Mega Drive
Date	1998 or later (SNES) 2001 (English version)
Engine	SNES Fighting Engine
Sound engine	Capcom (Street Fighter II) (SNES) High Seas Havoc (Mega Drive)
Alternate names/hacks	Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, X MEN對 街霸 街機版 (Chinese Name)

X-Men vs. Street Fighter is an unlicensed one-on-one fighting game for the SNES developed by an unknown company. Although it uses the name of the arcade title, it does not have a tag feature and has some characters that were not used in the original game.

Overview

This game presents eight characters, also featuring non-animated version of some stages from the original game. The menu screen presents the options for the arcade game mode, versus mode, and the options menu (where you can change the difficulty, time, and the number of rounds). The music comes from the SNES version of Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, with the exception of the title screen music, which is an original track recycled from Soul Edge VS Samurai Spirits. Unlike the original game, you only have one punch attack and one kick attack. There are special moves from each character and 1 super move once the super meter below the life bar is full. As a common limitation of the engine, there are no throws and the game is notorious for being difficult.

The arcade game mode has you fight through the whole roster including a mirror match with your character. The ending is a simple congratulation (misspelled as "CONGRATULATIION") message with your character making their victory taunt and the Street Fighter II Ryu ending theme song.

Roster

The roster consists of:

From Street Fighter:

• Ryu
• Ken
• Chun Li
• Charlie/Nash

From X-Men:

• Cyclops
• Psylocke (From X-Men: Children of the Atom)
• Wolverine
• Ice Man (From X-Men: Children of the Atom)

Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter

A title screen variant of this game is known to have been released, titled Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter, with the title screen using a logo directly based on the one used in the official Capcom game of the same name. Everything else remains the same in this variant despite the original Capcom games not having the same character roster.

Emulation

Original copies of both X-Men vs. Street Fighter and Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter use copy protection as a measure against the production of pirate copies. While the cartridges can be dumped, raw dumps will not emulate as is in most SNES emulators. Raw dumps of both games are available on the Internet, which are 2 MB in size. X-Men vs. Street Fighter would not be able to be emulated in standard SNES emulators until 2010, when SNES programmer D4S documented the copy protection and released a version of the game's ROM with the protection hacked out. A cracked version of the dump for Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter would also be released at some point, which also works in most SNES emulators.

Aftermarket releases

After the unprotected ROM of X-Men vs. Street Fighter by D4S was in circulation, aftermarket reproduction copies of the game containing this ROM would be released on newly produced cartridges by an unknown manufacturer. They are manufactured in new Japanese Super Famicom-style shells with a cartridge label that closely resembles that of a legitimate release.

Mega Drive version

A Mega Drive/Genesis version of X-Men vs. Street Fighter is known to exist. It's extremely rare and is currently undumped, with very few confirmed sightings of this version of the game in the wild being recorded. It differs from the SNES version in that the Mega Drive/Genesis version appears to use the Mega Drive Fighting Engine, the High Seas Havoc sound engine commonly associated with games using said engine, and features a Chinese title screen. A video of what is supposedly gameplay from this version was available on YouTube for some time, but the original upload has since been made private. This video has since been archived on the Wayback Machine, which can be viewed here. Going by this video, the music used for the title screen is directly reused from Barver Battle Saga, which originally used the music for the castle area. Another release of the Mega Drive/Genesis version with an English title screen is also touted to exist, known as "Super 2001 X-Men Vs. Street Fighter". If it exists, then it is also undumped.

Trivia / Connections

• Much of the HUD is reused in other SNES fighters, and the text font is reused in the Mega Drive/Genesis version of Soul Edge VS Samurai Spirits.
• The background of the options screen uses the "X-Men vs. Street Fighter EX" title screen shot, which is the name of the Japanese Sony PlayStation version of the arcade game. This may indicate that some of the sprites were ripped using the PlayStation version specifically.
• The Cyclops character sprite used in this game would also appear in the related bootleg games The King of Fighters '99 (Mega Drive/Genesis), Top Fighter 2000 (Mega Drive/Genesis), and The King of Fighters 2000 (SNES).

Gallery

Original first-run South American print

Reprint cartridge using cracked ROM, SFC shell, and new "legit" label

Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter title screen

SNES cartridge of the Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter title screen hack

Box and cartridge