It's been particularly pleasing to see Capcom and Marvel hook up again in recent years, as I was a massive fan of the many superb one-on-one fighters the pair collaborated on in the '90s.
So much so that any little piece of trivia relating to these games is like catnip to me – so I must thank the always-excellent vgdensetsu for unearthing this fact about Marvel vs. Capcom, one of my personal favourites.
I always wondered why Capcom decided to replace Iron Man (who was present in Marvel Super Heroes) with War Machine, a relatively minor character from the comics who would ultimately use the same sprite design. Why remove such a famous face only to replace him with the same sprite, but in black and grey?
According to former Capcom staffer Atsushi Tomita (also known as Tomichin), this was done because Capcom briefly lost the video game rights to the Iron Man character to Acclaim, which released the critically panned Iron Man / X-O Manowar in Heavy Metal in 1996.
"The reason we couldn't include Iron Man in Marvel vs. Capcom was because we couldn't get the rights (Acclaim had the exclusive rights at the time)," says Tomita on social media (translated by Google). "We wanted to include a character with the same abilities we created in Marvel Super Heroes, so we named him War Machine and got permission from Marvel."
Tomita also acknowledges that the palette swap created some inconsistencies with how the War Machine character appeared in the Marvel comics. "At the time, in the original comics, War Machine never wore armor with that design, but Marvel had become more tolerant by this time and was understanding. In the victory demo and other illustrations, Bengus drew the original design, which is completely different from the one in the game, but no one criticized it."
War Machine plays almost exactly like Iron Man in Marvel vs. Capcom, bar some animation changes. However, by the time Marvel vs. Capcom 2 came around in 2000, Capcom was able to reintroduce Iron Man and, therefore, make War Machine a little more individual.