Tag-Team Fighters Make a Comeback: How Marvel vs. Capcom’s Absence Sparked a Genre Revival

If you love tag-based fighting games, you’ve probably noticed something wild: the biggest tag-fighter of all time, Marvel vs. Capcom, is missing in action, but the genre it helped create is suddenly booming. With Capcom out of the picture, a new wave of tag-fighters is rolling in, and it’s making the fighting game scene more exciting than ever.

• Why tag-fighters are exploding now, even without Capcom
• Which new games are making waves in 2024
• How fans and fresh studios are stepping up
• What the future holds for the tag-fighter genre

The Tag-Fighter Void — and the New Era

It’s been almost 30 years since Capcom set the tag-fighter standard with X-Men vs. Street Fighter. Since then, fans have been hungry for more, especially after Marvel vs. Capcom Infinite dropped in 2017 and quickly fizzled out. Capcom never followed up with a true Marvel vs. Capcom 4, and that left a huge gap. Fast forward to 2024, and suddenly, there’s a tag-fighter revival happening without Capcom leading the way!

Just this month, two big new tag-based fighters were revealed: Marvel Tokon: Fighting Spirit from Arc System Works (the team behind Guilty Gear), and Invincible VS from Quarter Up. These are joining a growing list of tag-fighters like Dragon Ball FighterZ, Hunter x Hunter: Nen Impact, and the Capcom Fighting Collection games. Looks like we’re entering a whole new era!

Fans Take Charge When Studios Won’t

The fighting game community has been starving for a real Marvel vs. Capcom sequel since 2017. Infinite just didn’t deliver, thanks to its lack of X-Men, weak comic book vibes, and not-so-great visuals. So, fans took matters into their own hands. Creators like Maximillion Dood helped launch the #FreeMvC2 campaign in 2021, catching Disney and Capcom’s attention and reminding them that the franchise is still gold.

That led to the Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection, but people wanted more. Max didn’t stop there — he started work on Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite & Beyond, a fan-modded version that fixed a ton of issues from the original Infinite. As Max put it, “If anything, I’d like to think so.” The positive feedback gave Capcom and Marvel some confidence, but all we got was a compilation, not the big new game fans craved. This opened the door for other devs to swoop in and shake up the tag-fighter scene.

New Studios, New Tag-Fighter Hopes

Building a hit tag-fighter isn’t easy. Quarter Up and Max both discovered just how massive these projects can get, especially with so many people working across art, audio, and gameplay. As Max said, “At several points, we realized the scope of the project would become much too large, so we pulled back and focused hard on a 2024 release.”

Quarter Up’s Invincible VS has a unique advantage: it’s starting from scratch, not weighed down by past games. Bau Bautista, lead combat designer, explained, “We weren’t shackled by having to adhere to any previous titles… That freedom allowed us to hone in on a direction and rapidly iterate.” Capcom didn’t have that luxury when making Infinite, and even Mortal Kombat 1’s Kameo system didn’t quite fill the tag-fighter gap.

What Makes Tag-Fighters Special?

“Tag-fighting is also an interesting hook conceptually,” Max said. “Allowing for more general gameplay and character interaction than the typical 1v1 game. I feel that developers like to be challenged. And the tag-fighter sub-genre has mostly been stuck to the concepts that Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 created all the way back to the year 2000.” Capcom seems to have moved on to safer bets like Street Fighter 6, leaving the tag-fighter playground wide open for new ideas.

But innovating in this space isn’t easy either. As Bautista put it, “With a team-based, 3v3 tag fighter, based on a long-standing and beloved IP, it adds so many more factors to the formula that it gets downright daunting at times… innovation and evolving a genre will always be one of the biggest challenges involved in the process.”

ArcSys, Anime, and a Fresh Tag-Fighter Boom

Arc System Works already proved themselves with Dragon Ball FighterZ, so it’s no surprise Marvel tapped them for Marvel Tokon. Meanwhile, Invincible VS is jumping in with its own superhero spin. Anime fans are also getting in on the action — Nen Impact shows that people want more than just arena fighters.

Both ArcSys and Quarter Up saw the opportunity. Now, the big question is: will Marvel Tōkon: Fighting Spirit and Invincible VS become the next tag-fighter legends? As Max put it, “Several of the games coming in the near future are trying something unique in this space. It’s exciting. But the bigger question remains…is 4v4 fighting going to push the barrier and create a bright future? Or is it going to be too much for the masses to comprehend? I can’t wait to find out.”