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Dissecting a rumor: Do we know the full MvC3 roster already?

by: Jeremy -
More On: Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds
Ah yes, more Marvel vs. Capcom 3 discussion! This time around though, we don’t have any real “news” for you, but rather a little bit of discussion. About a month ago, around June 17, there was a posting made over at Hadoken.net that supposedly outed the full roster for MvC3. According to the post, all of the information was taken from within the Flash Code of the game’s official website, which has since been deleted. There wasn’t a lot of weight put into this rumor as I don’t recall a single media site repeating the information. Surely that posting and the information presented in it were destined to fade into Internet obscurity. After the character announcements that have come from Comic-con, perhaps Hadoken.net was onto something.

Let’s look into it...

According to the information Hadoken.net posted, the final roster would clock in at 38 characters; mind you, this does not include any potential hidden or special characters. This number falls right in line with the amount that both Ryota Niitsuma and Seth Killian alluded to at Captivate 2010. In my personal discussions with Seth at the event, I was told on numerous occasions that 40-ish would be a pretty “good guess” at what was planned. Here is the rumored character roster:

Capcom Marvel
Akuma Captain America
Albert Wesker Deadpool
Amaterasu Dr. Doom
Arthur Elektra
Chris Redfield Emma Frost
Chuck Greene Hulk
Chun-Li Iron Man
Dante Juggernaut
Felicia Magneto
Frank West Mr. Fantastic
Hsien-Ko She-Hulk
Nathan Spencer Shuma-Gorath
Mike Haggar Spider-Man
Morrigan Super-Skrull
Ryu Taskmaster
Trish Thor
Tron Bonne War Machine
Viewtiful Joe Wolverine
Zero X-23

Since that posting was released, 6 characters have officially been announced for the roster and all 6 appear on the rumored list. One of those characters happens to be Amaterasu from Okami, who is a character that I couldn’t imagine anyone “guessing” for the game. The wolf’s inclusion in the game may be the biggest surprise on the roster and the one name that I think adds some serious validation to Hadoken.net’s list. On the other hand, the inclusion of Mr. Fantastic is a little suspicious. In an interview with AusGamers.com, Ryota said explicitly that they were unable to get any of the Fantastic Four into the game due to various licensing reasons. That interview was given back in April, so it is entirely possible that he may have already been designed and implemented into the game but won’t be included in the final release.

I love the diversity of characters on this list and would be completely satisfied with this as the final roster. Nearly half of the roster (18/38) are making their fighting game debut, which is a very nice change of pace; a lot of times developers rehash a lot of older characters when making a game like this. Hopefully we will see a few more character announcements stemming from the Comic-con panel later this week, which will either add support to this list or perhaps discredit it entirely. Until then, I want to personal say “kudos” to Strugler over at Hadoken.net for releasing this information... nice find!