Marvel Vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics is a monumental compilation of the original collaborative titles from these iconic companies. Although Marvel Vs Capcom 2 is the entry everyone’s most wanted, we do get to see the magic from prior games in the series. And a majority of them feature secret characters! We’ve got the details on how to find them all.
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Some of the secret characters here are palette swaps, with just a few differences from the character they’re based on. Others can be entirely different fighters, such as bosses or even guest characters. I’ll be going over how to play as every one of these hidden fighters in this guide, in addition to providing a small breakdown of what makes each one unique.
This may come as a surprise, but the necessary steps to play as nearly every secret character are available in the game. They’re just a little bit buried within some menus.
Head to the main menu, and then select Fighter Awards. You’ll then need to press the button labeled Toggle Player Progress Page in the bottom right corner. This will take you to the specific awards for each game, which are simply to complete a run with each character. Scroll through and you’ll notice some awards with “???” on them—these are the secret fighters. Press the How to Use button to find specific directions for unlocking them.
As helpful as it is to have these hints readily available, you can only access them from the main menu. Feel free to return to this guide if you need a quick refresher while you’re choosing your characters!
Whether you’ve looked at the instructions on the Player Progress Page, or went straight to the Game Settings to tinker around, you likely noticed that most six games have a setting called Secret Characters. They’re all set to Easy Select by default, which is what this guide will be assuming you’ve left enabled. However, you might be a little confused about what that or the other options mean.
Easy Select means that you can choose secret characters without needing to use any complicated inputs. There might still be some extra-simple inputs, but you’ll usually just need to move off the character select portraits.
Original Select means that it functions similarly to later releases, or a different setting back on the arcade version. Only some secret characters might be selectable, and even then it will likely require a complicated input.
Disabled is the last of the common options, and it means there are no additional fighters available to choose from. You’ll be limited simply to what’s available on the character select.
The first and earliest game in this compilation is X-Men: Children of the Atom. Its three secret characters include two bosses and a guest from the Street Fighter series.
Next on the list is Marvel Super Heroes. Just like the previous title, this game’s hidden characters include two bosses and one character from a Capcom series.
There’s only one hidden character in X-Men vs Street Fighter and it’s someone from a previous game in this compilation. There’s no Easy Select option for this title, but that’s fine because it’s easy to play this elusive fighter.
Marvel Super Heroes vs Street Fighter has the highest number of secret fighters, although most are palette swaps. A couple of them don’t change anything gameplay-wise, but the rest offer unique properties.
Every secret character in Marvel vs Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes except for one is a palette swap. Even then, that one outlier still shares moves with someone else on the roster.
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The original arcade release of Marvel vs Capcom 2: New Age of Heroes required characters to be unlocked through an experience system. While that isn’t replicated within this collection, settings to unlock them through groups are. That is what the Secret Characters setting changes for this title. The default setting is “All groups enabled” and I recommend leaving it at that.
That covers every secret character in Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics. There unfortunately aren’t any secret characters in The Punisher, but you should still play that anyway.