Street Fighter Legends - Page 9
To 3D or not to 3D?
However, the Street Fighter star was well and truly losing its shine and less and less people cared. Capcom was well aware of this and decided to try and tap into the market that Virtua Fighter and Tekken had created. Street Fighter went 3D and with it heralded the arrival of Street Fighter EX. Unfortunately for Capcom, the Arika-developed game was just the same game in 3D clothing and many people knew it. 
It was by no means a bad game, but if people wanted to play a one-on-one fighting game with polygons, SF EX wasnt the game they played. As a testament to Capcoms persistence, SF EX spawned sequels with Street Fighter EX +, Street Fighter EX 2 and Street Fighter EX 3, along with the console version Street Fighter EX + Alpha on Sony PlayStation (yes that was the name it was given!) and SF EX 3 on PS2. Each contained the usual Capcom enhancements, more characters, more game modes, more moves, and more flashy graphics and effects. And yet they all werent as playable as the proper 2D Street Fighters.
Many "marvel" at the brief rise of the star.
As a brief rise in the Street Fighter star, Capcom had hit upon an innovative use of the Street Fighter universe. Capcom, through their agreement with Marvel comics to use the Marvel characters, decided to use the X-Men brand in their new vs game.
The result was X-Men vs. Street Fighter, a game that drew huge crowds in arcades and was responsible for a surge in interest in Street Fighter. The star was shining once again.
X-Men vs. Street Fighter (or XSF for short) was a revelation for Street Fighter fans. The gameplay was unheard of. Mid-air combos, switching between two characters, combined mega-special moves, and the extreme coolness of the X-Men brand all helped to create a very special game. How cool was it to have Cyclops and Ryu on the one team, fighting against Akuma and Magneto? Or two X-Men vs two Street Fighters? Or competing X-Men vs. competing Street Fighters? The possibilities were endless.
The demanding nature of the XSF engine created problems for the obligatory console conversion that Capcom was planning. The PlayStation and Saturn didnt have enough RAM to hold a non-playing character, and the Nintendo 64s cartridge format was too costly to be a consideration for Capcom. The PlayStation also had weak 2D capabilities, and therefore the definitive home console version of X-Men vs. Street Fighter resides on the Sega Saturn with the 4MB Ram Cartridge included. The PlayStation version was a travesty to XSF fans.
As was the now tradition for Capcom, they milked the vs. formula to the hilt, with Marvel vs. Street Fighter, Marvel vs. Capcom, Marvel vs. Capcom 2, and then Capcom vs. SNK, Capcom vs. SNK Millennium Fight, Capcom vs. SNK 2, and finally Capcom vs. SNK EO. These all contained new characters, new moves, new combos, and various console conversions on Saturn, PlayStation, Dreamcast, PlayStation 2, Xbox, and even GameCube.