If you've ever wondered what went into selecting the characters for the first Marvel vs. Capcom title Marvel vs. Capcom Clash of Super Heroes, then you're in luck.
That's because, recently, a fighting game YouTuber called TheSeventhForce recently rediscovered a secret Capcom website from the late '90s, containing some remarkable insights into the making of the legendary title. We came across the story thanks to the fighting game publication EventHubs, who has been busy translating a bunch of material from the site across several news articles after the discovery came to light.
This website, according to TheSeventhForce and Eventhubs, was originally only accessible through a link that came with the Marvel vs. Capcom soundtrack and was password protected, but has since been preserved on the Internet Archive for anyone to access. It features downloadable music, comments from the development team, and most notably, a series of essays from the producer Kenji Kataoka, which gives some explanations as to why certain characters ended up appearing in the game, while others were missing.
For instance, Kataoka in 1998 explained (as translated by EventHubs' Nicholas "MajinTenshinhan" Taylor), "When we were starting the development of Marvel vs. Capcom, the contract stated that the four representative characters for Marvel had to be Captain America, Spider-Man, Wolverine and Hulk (meaning that these characters were essentially the faces of Marvel and were not to be excluded under any circumstance), and the contract then also included Gambit, Psylocke, The Mighty Thor, Dr. Doom, Juggernaut, Magneto and Thanos (at this time, the game was still meant to be Marvel Super Heroes 2)."
He also went on to outline in the same essay that Beast, Deathlok, Iron Fist, Quasar, Sub-Mariner, Sasquatch, Machine Man, Elektra, Speedball, Spider Woman, and Medusa were also permitted by Marvel to be used, alongside some villains like Fin Fang Foom, Super-Skrull, The Wizard, Ultron, Diablo, Scorpion, and Dr. Octopus.
As you might well know, the finished list of Marvel characters that ended up featuring in the game included Captain America, Gambit, Hulk, Spider-Man, Venom, War Machine, and Wolverine, but there were some others that Kataoka wanted to include as part of the roster but couldn't due to Marvel. These included Iron Man, Thor, Psylocke, Jubilee, Mr. Fantastic, Ghost Rider, and Howard the Duck. Thor, Psylocke, and Jubilee would eventually end up being included as assist characters in the finished game, while the others meanwhile had to be put aside.
As for the final boss, Kataoka originally wanted the Fantastic Four villain Galactus instead of Onslaught but the idea was eventually dropped as the team decided American fans would be shocked if he was included as a boss and could be beaten easily. Galactus would eventually appear as the final boss of Marvel vs. Capcom 3 and as a playable character in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3's 'Galactus Mode'.
You can read more of Kataoka's reflections in the Eventhubs article available here or view TheSeventhForce's video on the subject here.