Why are there 2 Wolverines in MvC2? An Investigation.

Today we're investigating the differences between adamantium and bone wolverine in Marvel vs Capcom 2!! Yes, these are different characters with somewhat different super and special moves! Plus at the end we've got some online matches where you can see Logan in action!

Check out the mvc2 director interview here:

Here's some classic Joe Zaza gameplay:

And here's my full stream VOD if you wanna see all the matches I played that day:

[MikeJr]

I find it hilarious that Wolverine, a character who is known for having a healing factor in the comics, has the lowest overall HP in MvC2.

[PatriciaCross]

In the 90s, Wolverine lost his adamantium for a bit. Magneto ripped it out if his body. This actually caused him to mutate further, since his healing factor is constantly trying to heal away the adamantium. It went into overdrive, and made him more feral and bestial.

I think this would have worked better if they went a little farther to differentiate them visually. Edit his head so he isn't wearing his mask and instead has wild hair and the bandana style mask he wore around that time, possibly the fangs he was often portrayed with at the time.

[sukmykrok]

When wolverine got his adamantium ripped out by Magneto it severely weakened his healing factor to the point where it was almost non-existent. So having Boneclaw with weaker defenses and smaller health is canonically accurate.

[Zetact_]

Marvel players: "It's weird that there are two versions of Wolverine in MvC2."
Dragon Ball players:

[beauleidig]

While I do appreciate them including Bone Claw Wolverine, I do wish they had gone the extra mile and given him a different costume. They could have had him run without the mask on at the very least, which was common for Wolverine during the bone claw days.

[Skullcaptain]

The “giant energy x, was in reference to when Wolverine fought the hulk in the comic book and slashed a hole through him. The pose is the same and all just the energy x was an added touch by the game.”

[TheKasinO]

The big reason Marvel pushed the adamantium Wolverine was bc the game was set to release early 2000. They knew at the end of 1999 they were going back to adamantium Wolverine in the comics, restoring his adamantium skeleton. At the time Marvel already had multiple deals in the works including the 2000 X-men movie (with adamantium) and there was a big push at Marvel for uniformity especially with toys and video game merchandise (they filed chapter 11 Bankruptcy in 1996 and were trying to make more profit toward the decline of comics). There were slight disagreements with Capcom but Marvel was fine as long as they tried to get comic sales back up (same reason Marrow is in the game.)

[I-ONLY-BUILD-MECHS-AND-DUSTERS]

It's very interesting that bone wolverine just randomly has the only low hitting assist and makes me wonder what other unique gems might be hidden in other underused characters. Maybe you could have a whole series exploring each mvc2 character and pointing out such unique hidden properties.

[LOL-gnoh]

I love how Wolverine's claws look kinda "loose", not totally rigid, in his idle animation.

[evilkeima]

I recall as a kid Bone Wolverine's Berserker barrage can be mashed to do multiple hits even if you miss the first hit, where Adamantium Wolvie's must hit (even if blocked) to be able to mash Berserker Barrage.

[SpaceSPR]

For the HP, every character actually has 144 HP, the damage they take though is character dependant (defense value).
In training mode it shows 143 but the truth is the game is preventing the character from being KOed by dropping all damage to 0. So if your combo shows doing 143 damage, its techincally doing more.

[_Prismadoll]

I'm pretty sure Doug Walker (yes, that one) is a double Wolverine player. There's an old video of him at a convention playing Wolverine / Morrigan / Bonerine and being "the guy at the setup nobody could beat"

Take that how you will, I just remembered that video from years ago after seeing "double Wolverine" mentioned lmao

[MrPlow-jccr]

Let's be honest, there's 2 Wolverine's because he was hands down the most popular character Marvel had at the time

[mitchmediak]

That's pretty wild that bonerine has the ONLY low hitting assist, considering how many different assists are in this game

[vxtqt]

It's awesome that they loved the comics so much they knew Bone Claw Logan and Adamantium Logan are 2 distinctly different people. Both are insanely iconic to the X-Men and Marvel mythos in the comics. One of my favorite aspects of the pre-MvC3 Marvel games were tons of nods to comic material without explaining it at nauseum which fans of course understood, but also encouraged fans of the game but not deep into comics to look into it with the mystery aspect.

True "Fan Service" in games like this are one of the nostalgic things I love about them.

[Wolfedge]

IIRC "regular" Wolverine is lifted from MvC1, and Bone Wolvie is derived from his MSH/XvSF iteration. One Logan has a vertical divekick while the other has a diagonal one, but other than that I can't tell the difference other than Bone's lack of moves.

[LeroyPatterson]

Another difference:
Bone Claw Wolverine will pay you back on Thursday of the same week he borrowed money from you, the other takes a week or two to pay you back because "something came up".

[raymondjames]

One is the normal wolverine with adamantium skeleton and hits harder but is a little bit slower because of the weight. The other is Wolverine after the incident with Magneto and has no adamantium skeleton and is a little faster because of not having the extra weight.

[megamix]

I'm surprised they didn't add two Ryus lol

but yeah, I do believe Marvel may have had a say in it. They have expressed disdain against Capcom's decisions time and time again like how Norimaro was cut from the US version of MSHvSF and adding Shuma in UMvC3.

[SixFingersXi]

Imagine if his real life healing abilities applied in here, over time his bar goes up slowly. Godlike.