About two years ago, Atsushi Tomita, designer for X-Men vs. Street Fighter, revealed the interesting decision to make final boss Apocalypse gigantic for the purpose of addressing a technical limitation of the time. Instead of making him human-sized, he explodes in size, but the fight itself is kept minimalistic due to Apocalypse’s lack of animations.
Of course, Tomita also mentioned how the team wanted to “shock” fans with the fight. It felt like they were able to achieve both goals in one go.
“The reason we made Apocalypse so big was partly because we wanted to shock people, but also because of memory management,” said Tomita.
“We planned to make the final boss Apocalypse in X-Men vs. Street Fighter human-sized, but creating even one fighting-game character takes a huge amount of effort and memory capacity, so we felt the cost-effectiveness was poor (and Thanos from the previous game wasn’t popular either).” — Atsushi Tomita
“The CPS2 (Capcom Play System 2 arcade system board used since Super Street Fighter 2) had a lot of memory for characters on the ROM, but we were already quite filled up with what we had, so rather than make him a regular fighting game character, we figured that we could make him a huge character who didn’t move at all in order to preserve on memory. We used that limitation to turn it into a special effect like that instead.”
Just recently, Tomita left new comments that returned to the subject of Apocalypse in X-Men vs. Street Fighter. Once again, he mentions the initial plan of making the final boss against a normal-sized opponent, but the team felt it wasn’t worth it due to the lackluster reaction to Thanos as a boss in a previous game.
“We planned to make the final boss Apocalypse in X-Men vs. Street Fighter human-sized, but creating even one fighting-game character takes a huge amount of effort and memory capacity, so we felt the cost-effectiveness was poor (and Thanos from the previous game wasn’t popular either),” said Tomita.
Since the effort and memory capacity that would’ve been used on a more standard fight against Apocalypse was no longer being consumed, the development team was able to transfer focus onto other elements. The way that Cammy was portrayed in X-Men vs. Street Fighter was a direct result of this decision.
“In games, giant bosses have appeal just from being big, and they’re forgiven even if they barely move — which also saves on capacity.” — Atsushi Tomita
“We therefore made him a mostly stationary giant boss and redirected the freed-up capacity to Cammy and flashy effects.”
Within this boss fight, players were tasked with attacking Apocalypse’s head and hand. The rest of his body was effectively just a background element.
“In the previous game Marvel Super Heroes, Thanos had flashy abilities but wasn’t popular at all. Apocalypse’s abilities are rather plain, so if we made him normally he’d probably fall short of even that. But he has the power to grow giant, so we thought ‘this’ll work!’ continued Tomita.
“In games, giant bosses have appeal just from being big, and they’re forgiven even if they barely move — which also saves on capacity.”
X-MEN VS. ストリートファイター
ラスボスのアポカリプスを人間サイズで作る予定でしたが
格闘ゲームのキャラ1体作るのは労力も容量もかなり重くて
費用対効果が悪いと思って
（前作のサノスが人気がなかったし）
あまり動かない巨大ボスにして
浮いた容量をキャミイや派手なエフェクトに回しました https://t.co/FPUQSzFXVa— トミー朕 (@tommy_tin) October 18, 2026
