After initial doubts, Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection confirms inclusion of weirdest joke character and secret fighters

After a decade (or much longer in some cases), the classic Marvel vs. Capcom titles are about to return to modern consoles and PC with almost every feature you could ask for.

There were some concerns, however, that the Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics would be cutting the franchise’s strangest guest character, but he’ll apparently be in the party after all.

If you paid attention to the initial release date trailer during yesterday’s Nintendo Direct for the new collection, you may have already seen him.

Norimaro will indeed be playable in Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter despite him being absent from all previous material they’d revealed so far.

The odd joke fighter is even featured on the official MvC Collection website now though he’s not alone in the update.

Norimaro was created by Japanese comedian Noritake Kinashi as a stereotypical cowardly nerd character, who former Capcom Producer Yoshiki Okamoto promised they’d put into the next Street Fighter release back in the ’90s.

Although Okamoto himself wasn’t reportedly enthusiastic about the “mind-bogglingly uncool” character, legendary artist Akiman really liked him and helped make Norimaro a reality.

He only ever appeared in the Japanese version of MSHvSF as a hidden character, but work was at least started to bring him into the English release of the fighting game too.

In the official press release, Capcom confirms Norimaro will only be available in the Japanese ROM of the game, which you can freely switch between in the collection.

His prior absence made it seem likely Norimaro was cut due to potential license issues or discussions that Capcom may have not felt was worth exploring, but that either wasn’t the case after all or they went through and figured it out before the game’s release.

On top of that as mentioned above, the MvC website has updated to include the other secret characters in Marvel vs. Street Fighter with Mech Zangief, Dark Sakura and Shadow now included on the Capcom roster — though they only show art instead of official art like the others.

U.S. Agent, Armor Spider-Man and Mephisto are also included on the Marvel side, and that goes for other games too.

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Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes now has Shadow Lady, Morrigan (Lilith), Orange Hulk, Hyper Armor War Machine and High Speed Venom as well.

We previously knew that former boss-only characters like Magneto and Juggernaut in X-Men: Children of the Atom would be playable through new menu options, but these secret fighters will seemingly need to be unlocked the old fashioned arcade way.

The Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection is scheduled to release on September 12 digitally and November 22 physically.