Sega vs. Capcom: The Next Level fan game out now

Here’s a hot new fangame to file under “Awesome games that Sega won’t dare make themselves, for some reason.”

The highly anticipated fanmade crossover fighter “Sega vs. Capcom: The Next Level” has been released in its initial form on August 7th, 2026, but an update with more bugfixes was recently released the week after. One-man developer MadxRuler has released what they refer to as Season 1 of the game for free on the website of their studio, 4Cyde Studios, for PC and Mac. They’ll continue development in their spare time, doing balancing and bugfix updates, a Linux native port, and new characters and other content, but for now, the game features 10 characters, five from Sega and five from Capcom. The game takes elements from some of Capcom’s most beloved arcade fighting games of the past, including Marvel vs. Capcom, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, Capcom vs. SNK 2, and Street Fighter III: Third Strike, while adding in unique mechanics of its own. Guess that means “Welcome To The Next Level.”

Wanna jump into the action? The answer lies in the heart of the article, which is right past the break here.

In its current form, Sega vs. Capcom features the usual trappings of a fighting game. There’s an Arcade mode, a Local Versus mode, an Online Versus mode with rollback netcode, and a Practice mode. A Story mode is planned for the future, but currently inaccessible. The following characters are available to play, as of this writing:

1. Sonic (Sonic the Hedgehog)
2. Ryu (Street Fighter)
3. Vyse (Skies of Arcadia)
4. X (Mega Man X)
5. Sakura Shinguji (Sakura Wars)
6. Lynn Kurosawa (Alien vs. Predator Arcade)
7. Axle Stone (Streets of Rage)
8. Batsu (Rival Schools)
9. Beat (Jet Set Radio)
10. Morrigan (Darkstalkers)

A few other characters have already been teased to make future roster additions, including Shadow the Hedgehog and Akira Yuki (Virtua Fighter). The latter was originally meant to be part of Season 1, but was replaced with Beat after the decision was made to completely rework him.

The game is a tag fighter, with players selecting a team of any two characters. The game features a control style much like Marvel vs. Capcom 2, with two punch buttons, two kick buttons, a tag button, and an “Exceed” button, a first for any Capcom fighting game, fanmade or otherwise. All characters have a few extra powerful attacks called Exceed attacks, where by pressing Exceed along with a direction will activate one of these attacks at the cost of some of your power meter. Some characters have a unique Exceed action to use with special attacks that doesn’t cost any meter, such as Lynn Kurosawa reloading her pistol after using all six bullets or X charging his Buster Cannon to power up his next shot. All characters also have ultra powerful Hyper Combo attacks that also use your meter and are great combo finishers when timed right.

There are many other special maneuvers you can take the time to figure out and master, such as tag assists, air juggles, “Revenge Parrying”, and Street Fighter III style parries. One of the biggest and hardest to master will be V-Cross, where players can control both characters on their team for a few seconds.

The game also fostered a community that contributes certain assets to the game. The voices of all characters and announcers are provided by amateur vocal talent. There’s even the special guest announcer Infinite, the Canadian rapper who performed the vocal themes for Street Fighter III: Third Strike and also served as that game’s announcer. The game itself is built off of Ikemen GO, an independently developed and maintained game engine for 2D fighting games.

The game also features a mostly drum & bass soundtrack by independent composer FaRe ‘N’ HiTe. All the songs made for the game so far are also for sale on his Bandcamp page for you to purchase to stream or download. (Sega music fans will notice a bunch of familiar vocal samples in some of the songs.)

You can download the game for free right now from 4Cyde Studio’s website after making a free account with them, presumably for online multiplayer. After you do, tell us what you think of it in the comments below. How do you think it compares to Capcom’s best fighters? What characters are you hoping to see in future updates?

Be sure to check out the Sega vs. Capcom Q&A livestreams to hear more about what to expect from the game and how it’s being developed.