Posted in: Arcade, Games, Retro Games, Review, Video Games | Tagged: capcom, Marcade1Up, marvel super heroes, The Punisher, x-men

We Review Arcade1Up's Marvel Super Heroes Arcade Cabinet

A while ago we received an arcade cabinet from Arcade1Up featuring a few Marvel games made by Capcom. We thought we'd revisit it. We originally gave a short review of the cabinet around Christmas, as we got it late in 2019 and had only a short time to play it as the holidays slammed us with dozens of products to review. So this time around we thought we'd take our time and dig into it a little more. Because hey, why not? It's Marvel and Capcom in an arcade cabinet. Let's have some fun with it while we were wishing we were at arcades right now.

So the main name for this unit is the Marvel Super Heroes Arcade Cabinet, designed to look as close to the original as possible. With the exception of the obvious branding from the company and the lower half of the cabinet showing all the games included. Like all cabinets made by the company, it stands four feet tall with an LCD monitor and a modest sound system. The change from the original to this one is that the controls are not at an angle, they're completely flat. The speakers, while in their original position, are a change for A1U as they're put into the marquee as opposed to below the monitor. We were shipped a full unit to build ourselves, which took about 30 minutes with instructions, as well as a 1 one foot riser to make the cabinet five feet tall so we weren't hunched over it when playing.

The unit comes with three classic Capcom arcade titles: Marvel Super Heroes from 1995, X-Men: Children Of The Atom from 1994, and The Punisher from 1993. The main thing that links all three of them together is that they are for 1-2 players, which is a big deal since many of Marvel's non-fighting titles were either single-player of had a four-player cabinet. Marvel Super Heroes is one of the big fighting games from the '90s before Capcom started mixing their peanut butter into Marvel's chocolate, as you got to play as multiple heroes from the Marvel universe for the first time in a fighting game. You get a small mix of heroes trying to stop Thanos from obtaining the Infinity Stones, like you always do, with every character having their own end story. It still holds up and can be a major challenge for those who never experienced it before. X-Men: Children Of The Atom is also a fighting game, but not as well known to many fans as it didn't receive the hype it probably should have since Capcom poured more marketing into Alien Vs. Predator and Street Fighter II: Turbo that year. Which is a shame because the game focuses on the "Fatal Attractions" story from the comics, which had happened the year prior as part of X-Men's 30th anniversary. An awesome note since games usually didn't tie themselves to storylines in other mediums like this too often.

The last one on the list, The Punisher, is probably the oddest one in the group. Its a side-scrolling adventure game where you play as either The Punisher or Nick Fury. As Punisher, you're making your way through a fleet of men to get to your family's killers and then eventually the Kingpin. Or you can take on Fury who is tracking down leads to find Punisher to try and stop him, but you eventually end up helping him take down Kingpin. Both men use the same moves but have two different specials, and you end up at the same last stage with the plot, just with different stories to get you there. The game didn't do that well in arcades when it launched, but it now has a cult following with people obsessed with collecting the original cabinets.

Overall, we thought the Marvel Super Heroes Arcade Cabinet was pretty awesome. It gives you three titles that while slightly similar, each come with their own feeling and visits a ton of properties in the process. It makes for a good piece of arcade nostalgia, especially for Marvel fans. That being said, we also believe there was a huge missed opportunity here. If you're going to make it a fighting game cabinet, why not add the first Marvel Vs. Capcom? Or at the very least, X-Men Vs. Street Fighter or Marvel Super Heroes Vs. Street Fighter. Most of these A1U cabinets come with four games, but this one only has three, and we know the total storage of these three games isn't that large. In fact, we've seen people hack these cabinets and load entire libraries to them. So either something got cut or wasn't approved in time. This is a huge bummer because adding one more to the mix with any of those three would have made this perfect. However, it doesn't take away from the nostalgia of the three that are here. The cabinet sells for $400 on the company's website and through retailers like FYE and Walmart.

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