What SEGA vs. Capcom Can Learn from 2XKO

2XKO came out strong with a very large player base. It isn't just a fighting game. It is a very special tag-based fighting game that became a huge success, even in Season 1 where Caitlyn was introduced and she is kawaii and savage.

This means that if any developer can take a crack at developing a tag fighting game, they must use 2XKO as a masterclass of a successful free-to-play fighting game. That includes one developer that is behind their fan game being Madxruler and their fan game, SEGA vs. Capcom: The Next Level. It is essentially a fan made vs. Capcom fighting game with characters from SEGA and Capcom's IPs. Tag team battles, Exceed feature and all that. It pretty much lives up to the Sonic vs. Mega Man thing. It is arguably one of the great fan games that is seemingly getting a Season 1 in July according to the short trailer.

I realized why the game became ghosted before I go to a match. It's because I didn't had enough RAM that the game is memory-intensive. But I was able to upgrade my gaming computer to a 32GB RAM. 16GB RAM is okay for it, but 32GB is ideal while 64GB is overkill for pure modern gaming. 

The Modern Setting

Many modern fighting games weren't hated because they have innovations. 2XKO is an innovative tag-team fighting game with multiple rounds, characters having their own super gauge, you get the picture. Currently, SEGA vs. Capcom takes place in the setting where it involves pressing any button to choose a character. But we can modernize that so that they can pick a character with the button that chooses a character, go back with the button that takes them back to the previous section and can change their controls. If they pick a character, they would be prompted to choose a palette. I believe that this can be done in the form of Invincible VS.

But this just the first thing, so in this post, we're gonna go over the following things that 2XKO did that SEGA vs. Capcom: The Next Level can learn from.

Duo Play

2XKO introduced Duo Play, a feature that allows each player on their team to control their character. Solo is when a player controls both characters. When you go on a lobby, you would find someone to duo up with because there isn't a feature that allows players to randomly duo up with someone through matchmaking. The survey has that and I put that on top of the list of potential features because duos are way more fun than solos and we want to duo up with a random player through matchmaking, especially when we're grinding the First Steps missions.

And if we go to Shaun for a second on the post that just recently came out that has a paragraph about Duo Play...

"You've told us that playing as a duo offers an experience that's really unique and fun when you and a friend can team up and take on the world, and we agree--we're going to be investing in duo play much more: making duos easier to find and form, and making it more rewarding to play together."

While there is no mentioning of online, what Shaun meant is that we will be able to duo up with a random player through matchmaking on Casual and Ranked lobbies. This also applies to lifting restrictions from Ranked so that duos would be easier to find and we don't have to duo with a player through partner invites. This is something we've been asking for and with Shaun announcing that they're gonna make duos easier to find and form, our wish is being fulfilled.

While SEGA vs. Capcom has four players on the Cross Fever game mode, I believe that this can be cranked up to eleven that it can have up to four players across multiplayer game modes, training mode and online play, have duo co-op on Arcade Mode and follow 2XKO's footsteps so that each player can set up their controls and one player would choose Sonic as the point character and the other on the same team would choose X as the assist character and vice versa. This requires the role select screen to take place before choosing our characters in offline game modes.

Competitive Scene

Riot knocked it out of the park with their First Impact program that brings offline and online tournaments dedicated to 2XKO into the spotlight. The program became a hit and the game has unleashed its full potential on the competitive scene that it became a core backbone of the FGC. And now, Riot is set to offering direct support to existing local tournaments dedicated to 2XKO through the announced official yearly Competitve Series with monetary support, promotion on official Riot channels, buffs to prize pools and a format of having five major events and 15 challenger events, with Frosty Faustings XVIII being the first major event to kick things off and Battle Coliseum to be the "Super Bowl" of the 2XKO Competitive Series, making it a total of 20 events independently from 2XKO's ingame seasons.

And now that 2XKO is available on consoles, TOs will have to bring PS5s into venues where offline tournaments take place at going forward, starting with Frosty Faustings XVIII to kick off the Competitive Series. And it won't just alleviate the technical issues when it comes to setting up controls, but make it so that the console versions would automatically be on offline mode when there is no Internet connection, also easier than launching the game on offline mode through the separate executable, especially since we can't launch the game on offline mode through the Riot Client while there is no Internet connection. With 2XKO chosen to be in the main lineup for Evo 2026, Evo Japan 2026 and Evo France 2026 as major events for the Competitive Series, 2026 is gonna be one heck of a year for 2XKO with esports action.

SEGA vs. Capcom was showcased at Combo Breaker 2025 as part of the Mystery Tournament, which is my favorite kind because it don't have to be limited to fighting games, but games with multiplayer as well. The part where SEGA vs. Capcom was showcased at Combo Breaker was met with widespread praise that it driven a lot of people to try this game out. And this can be amped up a bit so that the game can have its own tournament like others and can be showcased in multiple events. But since it's a fanmade game, it won't use the Competitive Series format that has 20 events divided by five seasons to have four events or have their own league. Instead, TOs can set up offline tournaments for this game if it's chosen.

Rollback Netcode and Lobbies

Rollback is a type of netcode that offers buttery smooth online play and predicts the inputs instead of waiting for the signal to hit it before a character's action. 2XKO offers rich rollback netcode and lobbies. Riot did online servers before having offline game modes in Closed Beta and they're looking to improve netplay in Early Access and beyond with new features, including the ones I saw on the survey. SEGA vs. Capcom already has netplay available and it can be amped up significantly so that it can have rollback netcode and casual and ranked lobbies that use dedicated servers so that there wouldn't be disconnects and Duo Play across online game modes. This gives players a smoother online experience and they can simply enjoy netplay without any problems and offers an amped up experience.

Attention to Detail

There is a LOT of attention that 2XKO has. When Alpha Lab 1 has concluded, they missed this game. When Alpha Lab 2 launched, a lot of people didn't get invited, including myself because it was a disappointingly small playtest. Closed Beta opened the gates to being a final invite-only play window that those who participated in Alpha Lab 1 or 2 will automatically gain access to the game, including console players, who would automatically gain access to the game on the Riot Client on PC.

SEGA vs. Capcom also has attention, but not as much as 2XKO. Deen and Noid played this game for their Father and Son Beatdown and it was showcased at Combo Breaker. My favorite part is the characters being locked out. Where it stands, Vyse and Morrigan are finished and the teaser trailer shows how finished they are, so go watch it. I know it's a fangame, but this game deserves a lot of attention when it was showcased at any offline tournament.

Character Archetypes

Fighting games in particular have characters that are unique by archetypes. The characters in 2XKO come with unique archetypes of some characters in 2XKO having the same playstyle as characters in other fighting games, like Teemo's rolling dash to indicate that Teemo is the Sonic in 2XKO with it and it serves as an innovative approach.

But remember that I said in the last post that there is one of the planned characters in SEGA vs. Capcom is going to have the same playstyle as Yasuo in 2XKO? Well, one of the planned characters in SEGA vs. Capcom is most likely to hypothetically have the same playstyle as Yasuo is Sakura Shinguji from Sakura Wars. But how would Sakura play similarly to Yasuo when she is finished? Well, she is a samurai of the cherry blossom and she is likely to be a mid range character and this is the dopamine rush the game needs. But we won't know if it's true or not until Vyse and Morrigan are finished. But we do know one thing for sure. Sakura is likely to come out in 2026 alongside Linn Kurosawa, whose development time takes the longest due to her being multiple characters in one and none of the characters in League of Legends are faithful to her performance when they debut to 2XKO.

But here's another thing. The 11th and 12th characters have been already confirmed to be in development. If they ask who do we think the 11th and 12th character would be, I have two characters that I think can do well.

First off, for the SEGA side, I say Gilius from Golden Axe. Now, Gilius is the main protagonist in the Golden Axe series on the successive SEGA Genesis. If our axe wielding warrior is confirmed, I think he'll likely to have the same playstyle as Darius. There's no other axe swinging character in 2XKO.

Now let's go on to the next character that is a Capcom character, Jon Talbain from Darkstalkers. Why Jon Talbain, the wolf in Darkstalkers, would be a great addition? Well, there is one obvious reason. Warwick. Vander became a wolf to be called Warwick. He became a decent and less annoying character to play against than Teemo. There is a fresh concept that if Jon comes to SEGA vs. Capcom, he'll be able to do well and come close to how well Warwick performed in 2XKO.

And since we got Caitlyn in 2XKO, I wonder if any of the SEGA or Capcom characters that are not in the game can have the same playstyle as her if they make it into the fan game? 

If we look at the old character select screen, the game started out with six characters when the game had its first at home playtest. These characters are available by default and newcomers have to grind enough Credits to unlock future characters beyond the first six characters. And when the game launches on console...

The roster has been doubled to 12 characters. That's a decent amount of characters in a tag fighter. The roster containing a dozen characters is even, but not for long because the 13th character is coming.

However, since 2XKO is moving from having five seasons to having three seasons as Riot learned how we play in Early Access, the second character of the year will fall within Season 1 with Caitlyn while the third and fourth characters of the year will fall within Season 2, following MultiVersus' footsteps, and the final character of the year will launch at the start of Season 3, indicating that the five characters per year release cadence is still in play

Since Frosty Faustings is almost upon us, maybe they can reveal the second character of the year before Top 8. That or reveal the 2026 character roadmap since they already have Caitlyn and future Champions locked in and planned well for quite some time as Shaun said.

Instead of me telling you, let's take a look at what will happen to the placement of the character select screen if we get a 17th character in 2XKO. I went to MS Paint to draw the placement and my work has unfolded well. Let's get to the reenactment.

Now, if the 17th character launches in 2027, the portraits can be shrunk a bit to pave the way for more characters after the 16th character and have a third row. This makes it 36 characters, which will be the roster for 2030. This is what the placement of the character select screen should look like when the 17th character launches. You would notice that the placement resembles Tekken Tag Tournament 2's, but has an angle to match the rest of the character select screen.

For fanciness, I colored the slots on the left side blue for SEGA and the slots on the right side yellow for Capcom. Now, this is important to remember that the fan game will have more characters.

Combo Trials

2XKO has introduced Combo Trials in Early Access. The game mode helps you learn combos for each character. They earn you credits and they are rewarding depending on the difficulty. I think SEGA vs. Capcom needs to have Combo Trials to help them learn combos. It's something that players must do. Learn combos.

Peripherals

There are a lot of peripherals 2XKO uses, like controllers and arcade sticks across most brands. That unlocked endless possibilities for players that prefer to use a controller or use a stick. SEGA vs. Capcom allows controllers, but this can be amped up a bit so that the game wouldn't be only playable on controllers that it can also allow the use of arcade sticks across most brands.

These are the things that SEGA vs. Capcom: The Next Level can learn from 2XKO so that it can be a phenomenonal game. This is more important than you think. Madxruler is an independent developer. They can develop their fangame however they wish and want. They don't have the burden of a big company and be riddled with the shareholding shackles of a AAA company. If Madxruler pours their hearts into this game, then I believe it can have much of a guaranteed chance to be featured as a core backbone of the FGC and have the same treatment as 2XKO.

Now, why is this important to talk about? That's a good question. After I condensed the positive critic reviews on Metacritic, 2XKO became a critically acclaimed League of Legends fighting game. It became so phenomenal that it became universally liked, by both the players and the pros. Everything in Season 1 ranging from Caitlyn to balance changes for the whole cast to get everything prepared for Frosty Faustings and training while waiting for an opponent in Ranked ensured a strong growth the game has deserved so that it wouldn't have a lackluster launch and the developer of SEGA vs. Capcom can follow Riot's footsteps. Same with other companies, indie or AAA.

WB Games has had a small chip on their shoulder on what happened with MultiVersus and why it had to be shut down early. Now, what happened with MultiVersus, you ask? WB Games dishonored the Open Beta with exploitative monetization mechanics from replacing the free currency with new currencies that can't be used to obtain low in rarity skins or earned through finishing matches and grinding daily and weekly missions. This led to shutting down the game. The leadership at Riot is avoiding this practice so that 2XKO would be a commercially successful free-to-play tag fighter and can change everything.

If you want to know more about how 2XKO changed everything and how it became a critically acclaimed and commercially successful game, you can click the link to the post that covers it all.

https://rpggameroom.blogspot.com/2026/01/2xko-has-changed-everything.html