X-Men vs. Street Fighter

The tag-team heart of Marvel vs. Capcom began here.

Capcom brought the two casts together in arcades in 1996. Its earlier Marvel fighters had already embraced super jumps and aerial combos; X-Men vs. Street Fighter added two-character teams and free mid-fight switching.

A battered fighter could retreat off-screen and recover some health while a partner took over. Tags could extend combos or change the rhythm of a match, and two levels of meter unleashed a combined super attack.

That structure became the foundation for Capcom’s subsequent crossover fighters, eventually developing into the Marvel vs. Capcom series. Capcom later described X-Men vs. Street Fighter as the archetype for that series.

Later entries added assists and larger teams, but the series' central idea of building strategy around multiple fighters was established here.