Delayed Hyper Combo.

Try to cancel a Hyper into another Hyper in arcade Marvel vs. Capcom.

You can't. It never worked. The PlayStation version let you chain one Super into the next, but the CPS-2 board — the one in the cabinets, the one on Fightcade — never did. For twenty-eight years that was just how it was.

So I changed it. And then I made your partner able to come in and finish the combo, the way MvC2 does it.

V11: more colors, a clearer report

Eighteen choices, using the same buttons

The existing nine choices stay: LP, MP, HP, LK, MK, HK, plus LP+LK, MP+MK and HP+HK. Hold Start while choosing one of those nine inputs for colors 10–18. The short paired-button buffer stays; you can hold the first button and add its matching partner within three frames. Start is a bank modifier, not a nineteenth color. Reveal a secret fighter with its normal code before choosing its color.

Both DHC rulesets use the expanded bank. ARCADE retains its original P/K choices. The slideshow now shows all eighteen native War Machine selections from the current V11 release. The original six-color clip remains labeled history. These samples do not certify every character, form or palette consumer.

The packing approach comes from the XMvsSF palette work in FBNeo PR #2798: store palette differences, share repeated records and cache the native decoder's result. MVC1 uses its own ROM allocation and cache, with no new emulator extension required. Brightness and transparency words belong to the palette too; decoding must reproduce every original word exactly. MVC1's measured saving will be published with its own receipt, rather than borrowing XMvsSF's result.

The current 66-case native consumer matrix records 63 semantic passes, two Captain Commando taunt observations and one preserved P2-assist strict snapshot failure. The assist snapshot occurs inside cleanup; a separate actual return clears its maps and restores registers/SR. Universal IRQ reader authority remains unverified. Secret/form/super/victory samples are current, while all eighteen colors across every consumer are not claimed.

Palette work builds on PalMod and its contributors. Existing per-palette author credits stay with their source records, and new sources need the same attribution. N41 helped identify the correct DHC naming and provided technical explanations, including the separate Armored Spider-Man protection behavior; that armor change is not the combo breaker's protection rule.

Six pages with room for the information

The report now follows the organization of SF3 V4.3's implementation: compact spotlight cards, small native lettering, aligned fighter rows and restrained team-colored bands. Gold identifies the normal winner and key totals; cyan borders enclose black panels filled to their edges.

Damage Leader describes damage, not an overall MVP or a second match winner. Team combos are credited to the team. Ties stay ties; N/A means there is no valid basis for a value, and + means a counter reached its cap. The game does not identify controller macros or autofire from inputs that are indistinguishable from manual play. No invented skill rating replaces the normal result. Either human can use Start to skip the report.

The Happy Birthday damage repair from -09 is retained: damage is accumulated as it lands instead of wrapping a partner's negative value into a huge total. Fresh current-build independent damage is 58 = ledger 58. The earlier quoted 65,422-to-55 comparison remains history, not a recovered raw receipt.

Keep the routes legal, keep the cleanup separate

V11 removes the custom 20-hit DHC restriction. A legitimate long combo should not lose its handoff solely because it crossed that count. Beam lifetime and ownership, stale-input rejection, meter checks and the one-handoff-per-chain protections remain separate.

Broader cases remain limited, including Gamma Charge contact/hitstop/recovery for Normal and Orange Hulk on both sides; selected partner Hypers; Gamma Wave into Captain Storm; Hulk's rocks and captured targets; Mega Man/Roll ownership, portraits and audio; and Gambit's card into grounded LP/LK pressure. Breaker checks include corners, repeated same-facing escapes, separation and attack or block control after protection expires. This list is test scope, not a claim that every older report has reproduced or been fixed.

The comeback rules stay recognizable

DHC Classic keeps route repairs with three bars and no X-Factor, resurrection or combo breaker. DHC REMIX retains manual, once-per-team, last-character X-Factor; Red Venom/Gold War Machine exclusions; Jin stacking; and resurrection for Morrigan, Lilith, Orange Hulk and Roll only.

X-Factor's current presentation uses warm orange/fruit-punch accents; resurrection uses blue-teal. Both use the native animated super background with their own tint, readable portraits and a color change only on the affected fighter's health fill. Recoverable health stays flat red. The native TIME-style XFACTOR timer stays. The visual and performance checks include movement and attacks, then complete restoration at expiry and into the next match in the recorded native scenarios. Current clips below use this V11 release; archived v9.3.2/v9.3.3 clips retain their version labels.

Resurrection is automatic at a qualifying lethal hit with three whole bars. It restores starting life once per eligible fighter slot, raises damage to 130% and drains life over 1,500 eligible active-fighter ticks, stopping at 1 HP. Bench time and X-Factor pause that drain; X-Factor does not become available again. These deliberately adapted MVC1 rules differ from a timed, manually activated X-Factor boost and do not copy Phoenix's entire Ultimate MVC3 moveset.

Current native V11 recordings

These are recorded V11 game frames at native playback speed, with declared initial fixtures and physical mapped inputs. Original native PCM is retained in individual clips; audio acceptance is digital fidelity only, with subjective listening still pending. The comparison and palette reel are intentionally muted. The full 180-second presentation trailer remains separate.

• Gambit corner escape, P1, P2, and Wolverine pressure.
• X-Factor activation, combo and expiry, resurrection and X-Factor, and the side-by-side comparison.
• Soul Eraser→selected Ryu DHC and the eighteen-color native reel.

Archive: changes introduced in v9.3.4

A breaker should leave both fighters able to continue the round. The attacker now enters the game's own recoil state with zero damage, rather than continuing the normal that triggered the escape. When the attacker is on the ground, the breaker uses a 96-pixel pushback stream and gives them 24 eligible recovery ticks. Stage edges can clamp the displacement. The defender keeps the short native escape hop and its 40 eligible ticks of protection.

Each accepted hop begins with fresh flight permissions. This repairs the stale state that could make a later breaker in the same facing leave the defender unable to attack or block normally. The input remains exactly LK+MP, with a fresh press during normal-contact hitstun and one whole bar available. Hypers, captures, Duo, a pending handoff, pause and super freeze still reject the request before spending meter. The native opening, flash, announcement and sound remain from v9.3.3.

Eleven bounded local MAME 0.287 CPS-2/QSound HLE diagnostics passed on this candidate: eight positive runs with 24 paid breaker cycles, plus three no-spend controls. The positive runs cover repeated same-facing airborne HP and original-hop guard on both sides, plus Wolverine and Gold War Machine ordinary-normal corner pressure. Gold War Machine receives a narrow exception for its ordinary permanent-armor normals; true Hypers, captures and its separate X-Factor exclusion remain.

The 12 native air-guard witnesses occurred against live normal pressure with 14–16 protection ticks remaining. They establish guard eligibility during the protected escape, not damage blocking after immunity expires. The checks use declared initial meter/spacing fixtures and emulator input fields, with no post-setup guest-state writes. Physical controllers, Windows, Fightcade rollback, facing reversals/cross-ups, wider roster coverage and host performance remain unverified.

Archive: rules documented for v10

The update uses one package. Pick DHC on STYLE, then choose the RULES screen:

• DHC Classic: DHC cancel and partner-route repairs, three bars, no combo breaker, X-Factor or resurrection.
• DHC REMIX: the same repairs plus the manual combo breaker, last-fighter X-Factor and four low-tier revivals described below.

Both use three bars and retain nine colors and Roll's added moves. The LEVEL 3/5 choice is removed. ARCADE remains on the first STYLE screen for the original gameplay rules and P/K colors. The revised life and power artwork stays in every style.

Combo breaker: spend one bar to escape

While a normal attack has you in hitstun, press exactly LK+MP with a fresh press of either button. An accepted input spends one whole bar and starts a short native escape hop with 40 eligible game-clock ticks of protection. It is manual and separate from the six-button X-Factor activation; it does not spend that allowance. Adding another attack button refuses the breaker request.

This deliberately supports normal-contact hitstun. Hypers, captured states, Duo, a pending partner handoff, pause and super freeze refuse the request before meter or input is consumed. The protection belongs to that fighter and ends on expiry, KO, a role change or leaving REMIX. Native hitstop pauses its timer.

The input, cost, escape state, Hyper refusal and finite protection have bounded machine checks and native diagnostics using ordinary controller inputs and actual normal contacts on both sides. Physical controller coverage remains open. A lingering projectile hitting while its owner performs a normal still needs native ownership testing. This borrows the idea from the XCOTA work.

In v9.3.3, an accepted breaker starts an 18-tick native animated super opening and flash. COMBO BREAKER appears where AIR COMBO normally lives, using the game's existing letters. The stock Tech Hit cue is requested once. Life, power and portraits remain visible; the message and effects clear afterward. The three-scenario reel preserves native gameplay timing and capture audio.

X-Factor: one last-fighter boost

Press LP+MP+HP+LK+MK+HK together. If you use macros, press PPP and KKK together; either macro on its own is not the activation. Only your last living teammate can activate it, once per team per match, for 1,200 eligible game-clock ticks. Red Venom and Gold War Machine are excluded, including when they tag into a team whose X-Factor has already started.

X-Factor uses the character's damage and speed profile, recovers red health within the existing recoverable limit and prevents chip damage while active. Normal Hulk and Orange Hulk now get 30% faster eligible normal/ordinary animations and grounded walking. Other profiles stay in place, and Jin's native boost can stack with X-Factor. This is an MVC1 adaptation: the speed change does not reproduce every Ultimate MVC3 special or its air physics. Game-clock ticks are not a promise of a fixed number of real-time seconds.

The opening uses the fighter's native portrait, flash and animated super background with a red tint for 30 ticks. Then the stage returns. A stronger crimson highlight pulse remains during movement and attacks, and only the active fighter's life fill turns purple. It adds no following fighter copies.

Resurrection: a second life with a cost

Choose DHC REMIX. A qualifying lethal hit at all three whole bars, with no fractional meter, automatically spends those bars and restores the fighter's native starting life. Only Morrigan, Lilith, Orange Hulk and Roll qualify, once per fighter slot per match. There is no activation command and no second X-Factor use.

The revived fighter deals 130% damage, but that life drains over 1,500 unfrozen eligible ticks while they are the active fighter, stopping at 1 HP. Time on the bench pauses the drain. X-Factor also pauses it; after X-Factor expires, the saved drain resumes. The drain cannot cause the final KO, but an opponent's hit still can.

The 60-tick opening keeps the native animated super pattern and gives it a blue/teal tint. The costume cycles through teal highlights and the active life fill turns cyan. That is visibly different from X-Factor's crimson and purple. Reserve fills stay warm, recoverable health is flat red, and the power bars keep their native animated colors.

The showcase panel preserves three historical v9.3.3 combo breaker scenarios. They do not demonstrate the v9.3.4 recovery fix. The X-Factor and resurrection feature cards retain their labeled v9.3.2 archive videos so you can compare the two modes. Their five matched pairs include 63 measured phases and 28 sustained checks against the same three-bar rules with the older visuals. Those v9.3.2 checks passed within discrete clock-counting resolution. The records keep each ratio, resolution and capture setup. These measure emulated game clocks; they do not establish v9.3.3 Windows/Fightcade FPS or every super and matchup.

New in v9.3.1

The v9.3.1 update focuses on work repeated while X-Factor is active. It keeps the activation rules, portrait openings and subtle red/fire-gold highlight cycles introduced in v9.3. The warm gold and amber life fills, red recoverable health, native animated power colors, tiny X-Factor indicator and nine costume choices stay in place. No artwork or historical video is replaced.

The life-bar helper previously received ordinary fighter and effect sprites as well as life fills. Those unrelated records now take their original copy path directly; eligible life fills keep the same guarded amber/orange pulse. A comparison against the released v9.3 code passed 7,788 bounded machine cases, including queue holes, all five copy paths, native and private state, and activation flags changing between entries.

The animation and walking checks also avoid full helper work for an inactive opponent or a speed-neutral profile. The costume cycle skips unused palette rows and uses a fixed brightness lookup. Damage, speed profiles, timers, once-use rules and the emitted RGB444 colors stay the same. This adds no extra sprites, palette uploads or saved-color cache.

Separate old/new comparisons cover 21,542 controller cases and 13,044 highlight groups, with 380,032 selected output words and 1,280 fixtures using current native palette data. These are bounded comparisons of the checked paths, not a full-roster native gameplay verdict.

In one queue shaped like the sampled idle-active sprite count, the helper calls fall from 145 to 36 and this HUD path executes 7.1% fewer instructions. That is a code-path comparison, not an overall FPS measurement or a claim that every reported slowdown is resolved.

Matched native v9.3/v9.3.1 input schedules produced more guest-clock updates in the sampled busy windows on both sides. One late 180-screen-frame window recorded 168→184 ticks on P1 and 150→162 on P2. These read-only observers also add host work, and earlier updates affect later collision and timer state. This is a bounded diagnostic comparison, not Fightcade FPS or a universal speedup. Player comparisons on the same core and settings remain open.

Four fresh native diagnostic runs on the packaged v9.3.1 candidate observed the sampled resurrection, X-Factor pause, expiry and refused repeat activation on both sides, with ARCADE controls. Each used eleven declared setup writes and no later state writes. The Windows installer and portable package use this exact candidate. The v9.3 chapter below keeps its original captures and scope.

New in v9.3

Activation uses the native super portrait, opening flash and animated super background. The portrait reads the fighter's own costume colors. Resurrection opens with a native super backdrop with a light red tint for 60 ticks; X-Factor uses its native opening for 30 ticks. The stage background returns after that finite sequence. The effect adds no following fighter copies. Captain America's blue afterimages, Jin's gold glow and Mega Man's charge-glow paths remain in place.

The body effect is a 40-tick highlight cycle inspired by Jin's native glow. It reads the current native palette each upload, so native color changes feed the effect directly. It cycles the fighter's primary color row and Wolverine's claw row; other weapon and effect rows keep their native colors. Only bright pens use at most a 15% red blend for X-Factor or 10% amber blend for resurrection, rounded to native RGB444. The first two strengths are exactly original, covering 12 of the 40 ticks. Black outlines, shadows, midtones, native brightness and the transparent final pen stay intact.

X-Factor and its sources

Capcom's Ultimate MVC3 manual describes a once-per-match boost usable on the ground or in the air, with a stronger effect as the team shrinks and a red body aura. The official character guides give different damage and speed boosts for Ryu and Wolverine. Those references inform the available profiles here; other fighters have explicit MVC1 settings. This adapts the mechanic to a two-fighter team without claiming all of Ultimate's moves, movement or physics.

In REMIX, press LP+MP+HP+LK+MK+HK together. Each team gets one activation per match, lasting 900 eligible game-clock ticks with both fighters alive or 1,200 ticks for its last fighter. Tagging or revival does not renew it. Eligible normal, guard and specifically checked special/Hyper states can activate; hitstun, captured fighters and unverified committed states refuse. Pause and native super freeze do not spend the timer.

If another super portrait is still active, X-Factor refuses the request without spending the team's boost. Release all six buttons, then press them again after the portrait clears. Holding the rejected chord does not queue a new activation.

A second life for a selected roster

Choose REMIX / LEVEL 5. A qualifying lethal hit with exactly five whole bars and no fractional meter spends those bars and restores starting life once per fighter slot per match. The eligible roster is Captain America, Zangief/Mech Zangief, base Ryu, Shadow Lady, Captain Commando, Venom, Jin, Mega Man, Morrigan, Lilith, Orange Hulk and Roll. Other fighters and Ryu's Ken/Akuma forms are excluded; Zangief's forms share one revival allowance.

After the finite portrait/flash sequence, the revived point deals 130% damage and drains its starting life over 1,500 eligible point ticks, stopping at one HP. Bench time does not drain life. These roster and numeric choices are deliberate MVC1 adaptations, not Phoenix-specific Ultimate values. The fire-gold highlights do not grant permanent invulnerability. X-Factor takes over the highlights and pauses the drain; on expiry, fire gold and the saved drain resume. Fire gold is a Phoenix-inspired design choice, not RGB sampled from an Ultimate transformation or a claim of numerical drain parity. The lightly red-tinted native resurrection backdrop is a separate opening effect.

What the checks establish

The highlight helper passed 13,044 bounded machine groups, checking 380,032 selected RGB words; 74,064 words actually changed at the native palette latch. The checks cover both palette-upload sources, all 40 cycle ticks, the color and brightness boundaries, point-slot roles and positive and negative owner cases. Stored palettes, actors, HUD and CPU state return exactly. These are captured upload words, not a full-roster native visual verdict. Four fresh native runs on the current candidate observed Captain America on both sides against Ryu, with living Venom reserves, in REMIX and ARCADE. They used ordinary inputs after eleven declared health, meter and spacing setup writes, with no later state writes. The REMIX samples show the native portrait, animated backdrop and drain–X-Factor–resumed-drain sequence; the ARCADE controls keep the stock lethal KO. Earlier diagnostics keep their own candidate pins and scope.

Across 189 stored palettes and 3,780 paired code cases, the new highlight helper executes 46.319–95.747% fewer 68000 instructions, averaging 67.116% fewer, than the earlier monochrome helper. Inactive uploads keep their native path. This measures only palette-helper instructions, not native FPS, total super cost or a resolution of the reported super lag. The v8 footage and older release chapters below keep their original scope; use these v9.3 rules for the current X-Factor and resurrection behavior.

New in v9.2.2

The earlier Orange Hulk fix reached his large SELECT face. His super, team and victory portraits had separate color banks, and those still kept orange skin. Red Venom's red body and Gold War Machine's gold armor hit the same problem: the conversion treated those colors as human skin. Their added portrait colors now follow the selected costume. Their two original colors stay, and Shadow Lady, Lilith, regular portraits and the small selection-grid icons remain.

I also found work running on ordinary effect animations and every queued sprite when neither team had activated X-Factor. Supers create a lot of those objects. The inactive paths now skip that work and use the game's original sprite copy and palette upload. Active X-Factor's red pulse, warm bars and checked gameplay behavior remain.

The final file passed 1,280 fresh paired code-check groups and 1,800 fresh art-reader executions, alongside separately bound earlier component checks. The CPU paths do less work; that is not an overall FPS measurement. A native comparison during supers is still open. The qualification records the exact scope. The v8 videos, color slideshow and page design stay.

New in v9.2.1

Orange Hulk's added pink, blue and other costume choices could leave his large SELECT face orange. The palette derivation treated his orange skin like human skin and preserved it. This update changes that rule only for his seven added large faces; his two original faces, body colors and other artwork stay intact.

The shared menu guard also rejects invalid stored owner bytes. Only the native committed owners 0x80 and 0x81 are retained; other values reacquire an owner through the game's original path. This is a compatibility guard, not proof that the reported Fightcade left/right problem was caused or fixed by it.

The exact final ZIP passed 32,768 corrected-candidate selector executions and 32,768 baseline executions: 65,536 comparative executions, plus 1,800 corrected-candidate art-upload fixtures across five secrets, nine colors and four slots. These are machine/data checks, not fresh native gameplay. The focused qualification keeps those distinctions. The earlier v9.2 observations below retain their own candidate pins and are not a rerun of every route on v9.2.1.

New in v9.2

The controls below are in the current community release. Their qualification is tied to the exact v9.2 candidate and package. The source-bound controls have limited scope; the open tests remain listed.

Choose REMIX on STYLE to play the new mechanics. For resurrection, also choose LEVEL 5 on SUPER. ARCADE retains native gameplay rules, three meter levels and the two original P/K colors. The shared life-bar art appears in both.

X-Factor: one boost per team

Press all six attack buttons together: LP+MP+HP+LK+MK+HK. Each team gets one activation per match. Use it while neutral or during an eligible normal, including ordinary air recovery. Release the buttons before another command. Block reactions, specials, Hypers and forced air recovery refuse activation.

Eligible attack-animation countdowns run faster. Red health recovers up to its existing ceiling, and active X-Factor prevents chip damage. These use the game's own clock and health rules, so the durations describe game ticks rather than wall-clock seconds through pauses and super freezes.

Resurrection: save five bars

At LEVEL 5, a qualifying lethal hit automatically spends exactly five whole bars and restores the fighter's native starting life and red-health values. Each fighter can return once per match. There is no extra input. With less than five bars, the normal KO happens.

I ported these mechanics from the MVC2 eight-button project and adapted them to MvC1's two-fighter teams, clock, meter and health routines. Native-input controls cover XF2 and a naturally reached last-fighter XF3, including its 1,200 ticks, scaled damage and native healing. Separate resurrection runs earned five bars through gameplay on both teams before taking a real lethal beam hit, paying five bars and restoring life once. Those runs made no gameplay-state writes. This is bounded coverage: legal air follow-ups, every fighter and lethal path, trades, forms, match transitions and the remaining platform tests still need playtesting.

Route, beam, color and HUD corrections

• Orange Hulk's horizontal Gamma Charge: his source-table row was missing. Light Charge into his own Gamma Wave now works after a live hit on either side, spending one bar. Whiff, block, expired contact and zero meter refuse. Normal Hulk keeps the earlier repair. Anti-air Charge and wider destinations remain separate native tests.
• Akuma's beam: matched native Team Hyper controls confirmed that an earlier emitter could inherit a freshly reset owner timer when a Hyper restarted. The old emitter now retires through native cleanup before that reset. Selected Akuma → Morrigan was already clean in the measured baseline; this repair does not establish the cause of the whole community clip or qualify every partner, defender or stacking case. Ryu and War Machine keep their separate beam repairs.
• Captain Sword: Sword → selected Ryu Shinkuu works on both sides and already worked in v9.1. Gamma Wave → Captain Storm works at the tested normal motion timing. Very early, short direction samples refuse without spending meter or transferring the team. The report where Hulk chooses Quake remains open.
• Paired colors: hold the first button and add its matching partner within three frames. LP+LK, MP+MK and HP+HK choose colors seven, eight and nine. A single button confirms at the end of the window or earlier on release. Fighting inputs and pushblock keep their native behavior. For a secret fighter, enter its ordinary unlock code, move onto its revealed portrait, then select the color. The original two colors and distinct extras remain.
• HUD and power visuals: warm gold and amber gradients appear across all four life bars, with darker reserve fills and shaded red recoverable health. The power bars retain their native animated colors with a thin white highlight and gray shadow. The same artwork appears in both styles.

The tint-only design

X-Factor adds a readable dark-red body tint, smoothly cycling light → dark → very dark → dark over 128 game-clock ticks. It adds no trailing copies or contours. Captain America's native blue afterimages and other native effects stay unchanged. The powered team's life bars use the warm amber/orange treatment, with no added R or XF letter badges.

A fresh ordinary-input native control on the final tint-only build observed XF2 on both teams, an actual P1 tag and all sixteen sampled pulse positions. It made no gameplay-state writes. Native GPU palette comparisons cover the captured uploads, including stock white flashes; temporary CPU color words restored exactly, and source colors returned after both measured expiries. This accepts those observations, not every fighter, tag state or match transition. Native ARCADE-negative checks and separate declared HUD display fixtures for red recoverable health, LEVEL 5 and MAX are complete within their measured scope. The display fixtures use declared setup writes and are separate from ordinary-input gameplay proof. Five captures at moving bitmap boundaries receive no HUD pixel credit in that original record. A later actual-buffer check reproduced two archived images and explained their seventeen gap pixels as native front shimmer and a moving red edge. Other unobserved captures remain uncredited; the additive record leaves the original qualification and release hashes unchanged. The native tint checks and HUD checks retain the source pins and separate fixture declarations. The uncredited captures are retained for follow-up; they do not establish an every-frame verdict or a visual root cause.

The power-bar work preserves the game's own hue animation rather than painting fixed-color strips across the fill. LEVEL and MAX retain their native lettering. An earlier explanation confused the tile at 0x16AB5 with a yellow level-4 fill. That tile is the LEVEL 1 numeral, not a power-fill graphic. The qualified artwork and measured checks are documented with the release. The animated meter above is an explanatory illustration, not a native capture of this new artwork.

The previous Roll, Hulk, meter/menu and selected Captain Storm changes remain. Heroes Reborn's character changes and a new assist-selection menu are separate work. The stock Commando/Zangief grabs retain their original behavior.

Retained from v9.1

REMIX has nine color choices per fighter in v9.1. Three paired presses add choices alongside the six single attack buttons:

The color feature above keeps the slanted, glowing stripe design and now shows all nine choices. Its slideshow fades through nine in-game War Machine palettes; select a color band to choose a palette. The original six-color gameplay stays available through the Original video control. ARCADE keeps its native palette choices. The existing opponent duplicate rule can advance a chosen color when the opposing fighter already uses it.

The v9.1 secret-palette revision restores the two original colors for Gold War Machine, Orange Hulk, Red Venom, Shadow Lady and Lilith, then replaces their four added single-button colors and five paired choices that needed work. I used unused indexed variants from Discord and PalMod, checked all 45 secret choices against 216 regular-character and form references, and reviewed the visible outfits. None is an exact regular-character costume match. The other fighters' colors stay unchanged; the original secret colors remain intact. Secret palette sources and credits record each import and the visual review limits.

The new colors use indexed palette sources from PalMod's gallery and the palette community, with source and contributor credits included in the package. I also reviewed all 7,110 loadable Discord photos, including super effects. Those effect sheets remain leads for separately mapped imports; the nine-color display illustrates the selection choices.

That v9.1 release also included these bounded gameplay changes:

• Horizontal Gamma Charge can cancel into Hulk's own Hyper through the existing live-hit and meter gates. LK into Gamma Wave works on both sides; anti-air Charge, Orange Hulk and wider destinations remain open.
• Captain Storm's accepted P1 startup survives the native screen boundary check. The separate report where Hulk chooses Gamma Quake remains unreproduced.
• Incoming Roll teleport after Berserker Barrage X is refused before bench state changes, extra meter or handoff. Psycho restores the complete selected color in the new REMIX palette bank.
• Gamma Crush has a grounded initial body-contact window for native Team Hyper. Selected-partner and actual blocked-contact positive tests remain open.

Download the current DHC v9.2.2. The test scope and remaining reports are available alongside the download. The v8 trailer and hero footage keep their original labels.

Repairs carried forward from v9 r2

The replacement package uses the candidate described in its receipt. Several bounded repairs have diagnostic evidence behind them; broader release acceptance remains incomplete. Roll's added half-circle and Shoryuken-style commands now give every intermediate direction 18 native command updates, instead of a varying 12–17, while keeping the native final button window. Ordinary-input checks on both sides include returning to her normals afterward. A slow rejection of her original QCF + LK command also occurs in the stock comparison and is kept separate from the added-move fix.

A local ladder-transition diagnostic reproduced LEVEL 5 changing after a CPU team KO and the next match on the withdrawn build. The setup used declared opponent-health and spacing fixtures to reach that transition. A fresh check on the exact v9.1 candidate keeps LEVEL 5 into the next match after a native CPU team KO. This checks the reported first-match reset; full ladders, Fightcade training and rematches still need broader testing.

An isolated check with the installed Fightcade core and trainer accepts Left/Right on STYLE and SUPER for either chooser on both builds, after the page settles. Opening the trainer overlay blocks directions and buttons before the ROM; closing it restores selection. This verifies overlay interception; the historical report's exact cause remains unconfirmed. The controls use turbo mode and do not accept live client launches, physical controllers, normal-speed audio or rollback.

The selected-partner request and commit path now rechecks the active fighter and captured-target state at both boundaries. Isolated machine-code controls pass. The shared source bridge and Hyper chain tracker now also refuse seeded Hulk grab states that retain a stale Hyper action, clearing the old chain in those machine fixtures. This extends the guard beyond the selected-partner path; it does not reproduce the natural Gamma Quake clip or settle legal post-release behavior.

A separate native Team control reproduces an old Gamma Crush rock remaining after Hulk begins a new Gamma Wave. The narrow guard detects that change of owner action and retires the old rock root through the game's existing cleanup path. Native controls on both sides preserve the sampled pre-Team rock payments, meter spending and matched source-only behavior. The guard keeps native fragment handlers and adds no grounded-only cancel restriction. These controls do not prove repeated rock damage after Team, distinguish a new Crush from an earlier Crush, or qualify natural Orange Hulk behavior.

Separate native Team controls reproduced earlier beams from normal Ryu's Shinkuu Hadouken and ordinary War Machine's Proton Cannon staying active when a restarted super reset the same owner's state. Ryu's emitter reads the fighter's timer; Proton's roots and segments read completion flags. The diagnostic repair sends the older beams through their respective native exit states before initializing the new attack. Native controls on both sides verify this bounded lifetime repair, with meter spending unchanged. Broader partner/defender, pause, hit frequency, ownership and damage scaling acceptance remains incomplete; Proton's reported stacking difference is a separate question.

A native-input diagnostic also reproduced Hulk's QCF + punch special into Gamma Wave selecting the partner's Proton Cannon on the withdrawn v9. The repaired path keeps Hulk active and spends one meter level for his own Hyper in that same case. Fresh v9.1 controls also keep Hulk active for special-hit into Gamma Wave with PPP and Gamma Quake with KKK, on both sides, with one meter level spent and the partner idle. These check the button combinations a macro sends; physical controller bindings remain a separate test. A selected handoff is admitted from a Hyper, while the same-fighter bridge handles an eligible special cancel.

A separate native-input matrix reaches Soul Eraser and the selected incoming Hyper in 64 of 65 tested combinations. A supplementary input with enough native charge reaches the remaining Shadow Lady Hyper; earlier rejects are retained as insufficient-charge controls. Captain Sword into Ryu's Hyper and Ragnarok into Berserker Barrage X have observations on both sides. Cajun Explosion accepts tested legal timings; one later motion completes but is refused by the unchanged native opponent-camera check. These are bounded route observations, not acceptance of every delay or partner combination.

Isolated controls exposed invalid owner-pointer access and stale palette restoration in Roll's frozen Psycho Shot handler. Its repair limits owner pointers to the four fighter slots and checks that the owner is still Roll before attack or palette work. This is a bounded corruption repair; it does not establish the cause of the reported sound problems or every natural animation failure. Audio quality, the wider beam acceptance and the other reports remain open. These bounded results do not establish complete release acceptance.

Remaining reports and acceptance work

Player reports are reproduction leads. Their symptoms, proposed workarounds and possible causes are kept separate. These reports do not establish that the withdrawn v9 UI problems also occur in stable v8.

The Captain Commando kick-throw and Zangief standing-MP-grab report describes a stock glitch. It is a separate compatibility proposal: compare a normal jump with and without an aerial normal, then subsequent super-jump states and the available follow-up combos. Original behavior stays the comparison. A change would be named explicitly in REMIX; the report does not establish a connection to Hulk.

A stock corner diagnostic now reproduces the jump-history consequence against Spider-Man: buffered Captain Sword after Commando's kick throw is blocked after an empty normal jump, but connects after an aerial normal. Zangief's standing MP throw shows the same history-dependent guard behavior with an aerial follow-up. Subsequent super jumps match the reported history classes. Native read/write traces link the difference to retained air-guard eligibility. A separate, optional compatibility prototype allows those follow-ups in all history classes tested in REMIX while matching the ARCADE and other-throw comparisons. Forty native runs on the retained earlier parent cover twelve paired comparisons for the two targeted throws and eight pairs for ARCADE and other throws; 960 isolated machine controls check target ownership and register behavior. Eight further native controls on the latest composed parent cover only empty normal jumps, with and without the optional change, for both throws on both sides. The earlier history matrix has not been repeated in full on that parent. The prototype remains outside the main repair and has not been accepted for release; the main v9 r2 package, archived v8 and the original stock comparison retain their stock behavior for these throws.

Report references: Ryu beam clip, Gamma Quake grab clip, old stream crash lead at 2:01:19, and stock grab reproduction.

Cross Fever is a separate project with preview downloads; its results do not certify DHC.

The earlier engineering story

The sections below retain the v8 design and release history. Their fixtures, receipts and footage belong to those named builds; they do not certify the v9 r2 replacement or close its remaining reports.

Why do this to the arcade version?

The project started with one idea: take the PlayStation cancel and put it in the CPS-2 version. Once that worked I added Special-into-Super routes, with rules, and a bunch of visual stuff. The game calls these Supers Hyper Combos, so that's the word I use.

v8 is the partner handoff. Your Hyper hands the combo to the incoming fighter, who comes in doing their own team Super. That sits on top of the same-fighter cancels that were already there. REMIX and ARCADE are in one installer, and REMIX is on by default. It came out on 2026-09-11. The installer's above, and the release receipt says exactly which checks ran on this build and how far each one went. The v7 files are still in the archive, and their parity/roster names still mean what they meant when they shipped.

Historical v8 release: the partner background and meter

Two fixes went on top of the r4 candidate. Both are in mvc.10, and together they're fifty bytes. The handoff post goes through each one.

The partner's Hyper draws its background now. In the test builds it didn't. The cross route hands the incoming fighter a Hyper but never sets up its animation state. A Hyper's script waits at its second step for an event the animation driver writes into $003C(a6) when a frame timer runs out — and that timer was never started, so the event never came, the script never moved, and the game never got to the background load at $0983F4. The fix is six bytes inside the v8 author's own post-commit hook. Three of its reserved nops, at a point where a6 is already the incoming fighter and the REMIX check has already passed, write the event the animation would've written. I confirmed it in play on 2026-09-10, after four tries I threw out. 1,501 log lines, zero differences from the base, on a 125-second normal-play scenario.

Level 4 fills yellow. The game picks the meter's fill colour by tile, not by palette. $7020 draws with pen 8 (yellow) and $7030 with pen 9 (red). The REMIX HUD routine puts the bar tile in d4 and the level in d5 before it jumps to the base draw, so both jumps now go through a stub that swaps d4 to $7020 when d5 is 4. That's forty-four bytes. No palette row gets written, and levels 1, 2, 3 and 5 are byte-for-byte stock. I ran forty frames of back-to-back Supers with both meters going through all five levels and diffed every frame against stock. Every pixel that's different is inside the meter strip.

Here's what the receipt doesn't say: that the full pinned lane table ran on this exact build. It ran on the r4 candidate underneath. The two fixes were checked on a headless fixture and by hand. The Windows installer was rebuilt byte-for-byte on two machines and pushed through twelve broken-archive cases with the Python patcher, but the PowerShell path on this exact file still hasn't run. Every line in the receipt has its own status, and that's on purpose.

What counted as a real handoff in v8

Pressing the button is just the start. The move you're canceling from has to be one that's allowed, the hit has to belong to the right fighter and the right move, and your partner has to be available. Meter, your position, and the game's own Duo state all get checked before the handoff can go through. If you want to hand off again, you need a fresh, legal request from the move you're doing now. An old projectile doesn't get to trigger something unrelated.

That's why the tests include inputs that are supposed to fail. You need both — a handoff that works and one that's correctly refused — or you don't actually understand the mechanic. Starting a Super later, after the first move already ended, isn't a cancel. It's just two moves.

What MvC2 taught me

I dug out my old MvC2 measuring rig, put it back in MAME, and replayed its controller inputs. That let me see when the incoming fighter shows up, when the native team Super commits, when the meter gets spent, and when the partner actually becomes the point character. Those are four different moments, even though on screen it looks like one.

That order is what the MvC1 version follows: a request, then the game commits to it, then the point fighter actually changes. The MvC1 tests measure those same moments in MvC1's own engine, and they include a second handoff and a projectile that's still flying through the swap. I'm not claiming the timing matches MvC2 frame for frame.

Three different things people call "handoff"

One word, three mechanics across these games, and the differences are the whole design problem. Two things decide it: who acts next, and who picks what they do.

The arcade original does none of the three. That's where I started.

‹›

MVC, PlayStationv8 candidate, CPS-2

That last bit is the one thing v8 doesn't do. Its handoff destination comes from the incoming fighter's own data, not from what you typed. Closing that gap isn't a new system, it's one located change. The route already finds the partner, already checks the hit and the generation, and already writes the request the engine reads. It just doesn't read the destination that the input path has already stored for it. I left that out of v8 on purpose. The v9 r2 replacement uses that selected destination, with the request and commit guards described above.

Earlier route checks

Captain Storm into Captain Sword, Shield Slash into Final Justice, and Captain Corridor into Sword are all in the regression set. I run each one with normal inputs on both sides, through the first move's hit and into the next Super. The Hulk grab report gets a clean-control comparison too, including the grabbed character's release and recovery after the cancel.

In those reports "arcade" means the CPS-2 version. In v8's selector, ARCADE means the original mechanics. The cancels and partner handoffs live in REMIX. Worth keeping straight if you're testing a route someone reported.

Why a leftover beam needs an owner

A cancelled move can leave a beam or a helper on screen. You can't just delete everything that looks like it, because a new move might've already reused that object slot, and a different projectile might be supposed to keep going.

So the v8 cleanup checks who owns the object, what move made it, and which allocation generation it belongs to before it follows the game's own free path. I watch the object pools through allocation and release, reused slots included. A fireball can retain its native lifetime through a handoff. That survivor case does not establish that a persistent Hyper beam is behaving correctly; the Ryu and Proton Cannon reports need their own contact and freeze traces.

What complete release acceptance still has to show

The combined candidate has to pass repeated regressions on both sides, with the controller inputs, the real move entry, the hit and the meter changes all kept in the raw trace. Palette checks follow all four team positions through the screens that matter. STYLE checks cover a second player joining, rounds, rematches and a fresh selection.

Counter-boundary tests are labelled as exactly that. A seeded display shadow and then a real hit can test 99, 100 or 999 and the held digits. It isn't a naturally played 999-hit combo, and the footage says so. The reports about Magnetic Shockwave, Mega Man/Roll and Gold War Machine are part of this work, and I keep a reproduced problem, a fix I've verified, and a report I haven't resolved as three separate things. A green build and a few good clips don't mean every requested fix is done.

What you get is a stock-size, patch-only release. The installer checks the clean parent, writes a separate output, and refuses wrong revisions, duplicate or missing files, modified inputs and an output path that already exists — The historical v8 receipt contains twelve such cases and binds its installer and trailer to candidate 63cfd090…. The v9 r2 receipt separately identifies the replacement candidate and its installer checks; no new-candidate trailer is claimed.

Earlier versions

v7 grew the special-source table and added a posture check on the destination. Its two editions follow different route rules: parity sticks to the PlayStation cancel rules, roster keeps the documented extras. v6 folded in the earlier cancelled-Super cleanup. Their files, checksums, change logs and the v6 reel are all in the archive above.

More reading: six color choices, the bigger hit counter, and five Hyper levels. The archived article and receipts keep the older record. They don't certify v8.

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Delayed Hyper Combo v9 · installer r2 for arcade Marvel vs. Capcom: repairs with partial validation, Hyper into Hyper cancels and selectable partner Hypers on the CPS-2 ROM. Remaining reports are listed alongside the patch. morphus56k.com/downloads/dhc

Work note

I designed the changes and decided what had to pass. I reverse-engineered the game's command and object systems, and I confirmed the partner-background fix by hand before it shipped. AI agents helped with disassembly, implementation, the harness, release checks and the trailer. A diagnostic run stays a diagnostic run: the receipt names each check's tier, and the lanes that haven't run on this build say "not run," not "passed."

This is an unaffiliated fan modification. Marvel vs. Capcom and its characters belong to their owners. The download is patch data. You bring your own legal game dump.