Gambit’s official Power Rating from The Marvel Encyclopedia books. I’m not hating, I actually like Gambit. Just pointing this out so you can see where I stand when I say Oro > Gambit. The highest you can get in any rating is a 7.
GAMBIT
INTELLIGENCE: 2 - Normal.
STRENGTH: 2 - Normal.
SPEED: 2 - Normal.
DURABILITY: 2 - Normal.
ENERGY PROJECTION: 2 - Ability to discharge energy on contact.
FIGHTING SKILLS: 3 - Some training.
He has the lowest Power Rating of any Marvel Character in MVC2. Psylocke and Silver Samurai are fairly low too, but not this low. “Mon ami, Marvel don’t like da cajun no more.” Blackheart has the highest rating. Thanos with the Infinity Gems like he has in the game however would own everybody, but the Rating doesn’t reflect the Gems.
This Link I explain the ratings, the next few pages on the Link and beyond every Marvel Character that has been playable, or a helper, or a bad swap in a Capcom game that Marvel has made a rating for in any of their encyclopedia books is there. The only one missing is Shuma Gorath, but it’s reasonable since he has less than a dozen appearances. But I still wish Marvel would rate him.
Actually, even thought they haven’t used the angle in a long time, just by virtue of being born with the x-gene, mutants are above normal humans in base attribute potential. So mutants are naturally inclined to better than humans. Plus (another thing writers don’t use anymore) Gambit can charge himself to increase his speed, strength, agility, etc.
New Son Gambit is Gambit at his fulll potential. Gambit always feared his power so he had Sinister block 80% of it (by planting a chip in his head) so that he would never become as powerful as he feared. Eventually, Gambit had the chip removed and met an alternate verion of himself owho never had the chip and they fought. Some of the things he did are:
Charge himself with pure energy (to the point where his physical form was just energy)
he could charge any object (with or without touching, organic or not)
He could affect objects as if he had telekenisis (he latched onto his alternate slef and slung his body from new york to paris in less than a second. )
ANd these are just random bits. Gambit is an omega class mutant when at his peak. He can literally kill everything on the planet by just realeasing all his stored energy.
Didn’t know that. Thanks a lot! Okay, New Son Gambit wins, the won with the chip looses, IMHO.
Unfortunatly all Marvel characters are at the whims of their writers. Back in the old Marvel Universe book in the 80s, Wolverine’s strength was said to be at Captain America’s level, now he’s way above that. Things change. Gambit’s been getting punked a lot lately. First he was turned into a battery, then he lost his powers, he got them back recently but then he did his blind man routine for a while, the ol’ Jim Lee Bad Ass Gambit is long gone. He may be getting a secondary mutation of seeing into the future, this happened recently in Uncanny.
EDIT: I wonder after the Khan/Madripoor deal how much of Gambit’s ‘New Son’ powers he retains when he got his powers back. He was really drained in that story and left with no powers. Hasn’t done too much since he got his powers back other than charge a few items and stuff. Perhaps that’s what his low rating reflects. Anything going on in his own series regarding his powers since I’m not reading it?
EDIT #2: In the Encyclopedia books, Gambit has shown up three times, always with the same rating. They’ve had three oppurtunities to change it at seperate intervals and have still kept it the same. In the New Marvel Woman of 2005 Encyclopedia, they changed Rogue’s Rating. All twos except for fighting ability, there she got 4. So Marvel will change ratings if they feel it’s warranted.
The rating system is why I don’t take Marvel that seriously anymore. Not only because the stats don’t match their comic performances, but the ratings themselves don’t make any sense.
They put the Punisher’s fighting abilities at 6 while his intelligence is at a mere 2. What the hell is that?
Marvel measures intelligence on school smarts, or those who have smarts as powers, for the most part. That’s why Punisher gets normal. Kingpin’s not educated, but he psykes out Daredevil, Punisher and Spider-Man all the time. I believe he’s pretty high. Punisher’s… insane. That may stop him from going above normal.
Ratings don’t bug me, seems like writers can go with it or not. And for Gambit right now, they seem to be going with it to me. What bugs me about Marvel is how screwed up thier continuity is right now (but they are getting better, a little bit, at least they’re more aware of it now) and they need to stop bringing dead people back. With all it’s problems, I still prefer Marvel to DC though.
They need to change the whole category from intelligence to education then. Doom’s unquestionably the most brilliant man on Earth, but that can only get him so far with the way he conducts himself. For a guy who’s intelligence is considered “normal”, Punisher makes everyone else on the same level look like a dunce.
Isn’t it funny too that intellligence is so interwoven with psychic ability? Mind reading is nice, but if you don’t have the power to grasp the concepts you’re reading in somone’s head, none of it should matter.
Not true. Wolverine’s always been capped, on paper, as being able to press a maximum of 800 lbs (same as Captain America i.e. human being limit). And even then, I can’t recall one occasion of him ever lifting anything similar to that kind of weight, writers don’t even acknowledge that.
On a sidenote, though according to that Marvel ratings scale a character such as Gouki or Ryu would only scale as a five in comparison to someone like Cap (seven), but in terms of sheer martial arts technique, skill, and experience, the SF’ers just totally eclipse the Marvelites (withholding the concepts of chi manipulation which is much more enabled in the SF universe than that of the Marvel universe). I mean, these are guys who’s very lives revolve around the concept of martial arts as an end, not a means.
The Marvel Universe books I’m referring to go back to the eighties, it’s one of the side bars where they listed strength ranges. But as it worked in ranges, people get compiled totether and it was even more simplified than what Marvel’s doing today since it was one page on the entire subject. No, they didn’t say in that book that Wolverine and Cap were equally strong, they were just in the same range, which could mean lots of things. Spider-Man was above both in the next range. But in the new range that works 800 lbs to 25 tons, Wolvie and Spidey are in the same range, even though Spidey’s stronger. Cap is now lower at 3, able to lift twice his own body weight. So write now on paper, Cap’s not the same. Things change.
Doesn’t make them unnoficial or non canon. Having gone to the School of Visual Arts, I know of people who interned at Marvel, fellow students. They don’t get responsibilities like that. You can find out who wrote any given encyclopedia by oh, I don’t know, opening up the book to the part where it tells you.
And the people I know who interened at Marvel minus one girl are big Comic Book Geeks, when they had conversations about the characters with writers and editors, they knew more about them then current Marvel did. But this was a good 3 years ago or so.