Galactus mode might be a silly excuse to smash the crap out of the cast of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3, but did you know its origins came to be from an old arcade hack? When talking to Capcom’s Seth Killian about the mode and the fact that it was cool to finally be able to play as a boss — without the need for a hack a la Master Hand in Super Smash Bros. Melee — he shared with us the inception of this idea.
“I was trying to think of things we could add into the game without messing up the dev [development] schedule,” Killian said. “Well, one of the things I remembered was there was an arcade board hack to play X-men Vs. Street Fighter, where you could play as Apocalypse.”
“I remembered my arcade had it,” Killian continues. “It wasn’t like I was sitting there after school everyday ‘I have to play as Apocalypse’, but I would fool around with it and I had a good time. So I thought, that had to be easy because the character is already in there. So we did and it all started with an arcade hack.”
It’s pretty neat to think that a fun throwaway mode’s roots come all the way from someone tinkering with an arcade board back in the late ’90s. So the next time you’re modifying a game, just remember, you too may be inspiring the minds of future game developers around the world.
