Iron Man ended up being a playable character in Marvel Super Heroes, a fighting game developed and released by Capcom back in 1995. One might’ve thought that a character like Iron Man, a founding member of the Avengers, would have a place in Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes. In fact, this was intended by Capcom, but Marvel didn’t allow it.
Earlier this year, Atsushi Tomita, designer for Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes, talked about how Capcom was refused usage of Iron Man, but, through a simple palette swap, were effectively able to get War Machine instead. Though it wasn’t ideal to lose out on Iron Man, Tomita felt as though Marvel was being very generous with the approval of War Machine as a replacement.
“At the time, Iron Man’s video game rights were tied to another company so we weren’t allowed to use him, but we changed the color on him and said it was War Machine and when Marvel allowed that I really felt how generous they were being to us,” said Tomita on that subject.
“We had wanted to include that character with the performance we created in Marvel Super Heroes, so we got permission from Marvel by making it War Machine.” — Atsushi Tomita
Back then, Tomita didn’t specifically detail why Capcom was being barred access to Iron Man, but we suspected that it was due to Iron Man’s video game rights being controlled by Acclaim Entertainment at the time. Around then, Iron Man and X-O Manowar in Heavy Metal was released for the PlayStation, Sega Saturn, Game Boy, Game Gear and MS-DOS.
As Iron Man and X-O Manowar in Heavy Metal was released in 1996, these video game rights weren’t in conflict when Iron Man was added to Marvel Super Heroes back when it was released in 1995. Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes was released in 1998, which seemingly implied that Acclaim Entertainment controlled the video game rights for Iron Man for some time after the release of Iron Man and X-O Manowar in Heavy Metal.
Tomita recently spoke again about this subject. According to X’s translation function, he has seemingly confirmed that Acclaim Entertainment held the video game rights to Iron at the time.
“The reason we couldn’t include Iron Man in Marvel vs. Capcom was because we couldn’t obtain the copyright permission. At the time, it seems Acclaim had an exclusive copyright contract,” stated Tomita.
“In the illustrations for the victory demo screen and such, Mr. Bengus drew it in the original design, which was completely different in shape from what was in the game, but we weren’t particularly questioned about it.” — Atsushi Tomita
“We had wanted to include that character with the performance we created in Marvel Super Heroes, so we got permission from Marvel by making it War Machine.”
Back then, the differences between Iron Man and War Machine in the comics were more nuanced than just palette changes. However, Capcom was able to make it work anyhow and got Marvel’s approvement to do so.
Of course, it’s interesting to note that War Machine looks quite a bit more bulkier in certain depictions within Marvel vs. Capcom: Clash of Super Heroes compared to his in-game sprite.
“At that time, in the original comic, War Machine had never worn armor with that design, or so it seemed, but Marvel was quite lenient around this period and we got their understanding,” continued Tomita.
“In the illustrations for the victory demo screen and such, Mr. Bengus drew it in the original design, which was completely different in shape from what was in the game, but we weren’t particularly questioned about it.”