Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter

English restoration · Everything the Japanese board has

Game

Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter (Japan 970707)

Hardware

Capcom CPS-2

MAME set

mshvsfj

Version

rc1

Updated

2026-09-17

Screenshots

US board

English Restoration

About this patch

Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter wasn't the same game everywhere. The Japanese board has Norimaro on the select screen with his own ending, real endings for Mech-Zangief, Shadow and Dark Sakura, and sixteen win quotes per fighter. The US board dropped Norimaro entirely, gave the secret fighters a generic ending, and cut the win quotes to eight.

The English Restoration is the Japanese game, in English. Norimaro is back, with his ending. The secret fighters get their own endings and art. All sixteen win quotes per fighter and all seventeen standard endings are translated fresh from the Japanese.

Nothing else changes. The title, the secret-character codes, the team rules and the bosses are exactly as they were, and the fighting is untouched. If you want more, like playable bosses, any team you like, extra colors and eight speeds, that's EX, which includes everything here.

There are two builds. The USA build is the English one. The Japan build keeps its Japanese text and gets the few fixes that apply to it. Both run in MAME, HBMAME and on MiSTer.

This is a release candidate. Both builds boot and have been checked in MAME; longer play testing and a MiSTer hardware pass are still to come.

What's changed

• Norimaro is back, on the select screen and as a computer opponent
• Norimaro's own ending, in English
• Mech-Zangief, Shadow and Dark Sakura get their own endings and art, instead of the generic one
• Sixteen win quotes per fighter, translated from the Japanese (the US board has eight)
• All seventeen standard endings, translated from the Japanese
• Pick a secret fighter and the select screen shows their name (Mech-Zangief, not Zangief)
• Japan build: the same fixes, with the Japanese text kept
• Title, codes, team rules, bosses and gameplay untouched

Compared with the boards

How the English Restoration compares with the Japanese and US boards, and with EX.

Spot a difference we missed?

A restoration is only as complete as its list of differences. If the Japanese version does something this one still doesn't, whether a line of text, a scene, a screen or a small detail, please let us know. Anything you find goes into the next release.

Downloads

Tools updated 2026-09-20. Game version unchanged.

You need your own dump of Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter (Japan 970707) as the MAME set mshvsfj.zip. Every build is made from that one set. Each zip includes a readme.txt with full instructions.

Merged, split and complete sets work, including nested or renamed ROMs. Use --rompath /path/to/roms to search a collection (repeatable), and --check to check inputs before building. ZIPs and extracted folders need no extra software; 7z archives require 7-Zip. QSound can stay in your emulator's ROM path; valid firmware already embedded in a source set is kept in complete outputs.

The builds

How to apply

unzip mshvsf-restoration-rc1-ips.zip -d mshvsfj-patch
cd mshvsfj-patch
python3 apply.py /path/to/mshvsfj.zip --out-dir out

The script checks every file against the checksums below, applies the patches, checks the result, and writes the files for every platform in one go: (add --variant usa to make just one build)

USA (English):
  out/mame/usa/mshvsfj.zip
  out/hbmame/mshvsfru.zip
  out/mister/_Arcade/_Arcade Patches/_Restorations/Marvel Super Heroes Vs. Street Fighter (USA) [English Restoration].mra
Japan (Japanese):
  out/mame/japan/mshvsfj.zip
  out/hbmame/mshvsfrj.zip
  out/mister/_Arcade/_Arcade Patches/_Restorations/_Japan/Marvel Super Heroes Vs. Street Fighter (Japan) [Restoration].mra

MAME and original hardware. Put the zip from out/mame/ ahead of the stock set in your MAME rompath (it keeps the name mshvsfj.zip, so use one build at a time), or burn its ROM files. MAME reports checksum warnings for the patched ROMs. That's expected, and the game runs normally.

HBMAME. Put the zip from out/hbmame/ in HBMAME's roms/ folder next to your stock mshvsfj.zip. It loads with no checksum warnings. The HBMAME set definition (mshvsfru, mshvsfrj) is generated with the restoration; an upstream submission is pending, so for now you add it to your own HBMAME build.

MiSTer. Copy the _Arcade folder from out/mister/ to the root of your SD card, and keep the stock, unmodified romset at games/mame/mshvsfj.zip (split MAME sets also need qsound.zip). You need Jotego's jtcps2 core, which update_all installs. The MRA applies the restoration in memory as the game loads, so nothing on your card is modified, and each build keeps its own settings and saves under its own setname. The MiSTer-only download holds the same MRAs, ready to copy.

Any IPS patcher. Apply each file in ips/<variant>/ (Flips, Lunar IPS, …) to the ROM file of the same name and re-zip the set yourself.

Changed ROMs

Shared by every build:

mvsj.03i (512 KB, original CRC32 d8cbb691) differs per build:

Related projects

• Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter EX, everything here, plus playable bosses, free teams, extra colors and eight speeds
• RQ87: Norimaro, the Norimaro localization inventory this project credits

Notes

• MAME shows checksum warnings for the four patched files. That's expected; the game plays normally. HBMAME with the matching set definitions loads them without them.
• Fan work, unaffiliated with Capcom or Marvel. The patch contains no ROM data; you need your own dump of the Japanese set.