When you start to play the game by Jonathan Fernand 05 Jun 2008
When you start to play the game, you start with a number of 26 characters. To get all of the 56 characters you need to buy them. To buy them you need to win money, by winning the money, you need to fight your oponents and win. They will start to give the cash to you.
And that is how you gain characters.

Marvel vs Capcom 2 Dreamcast Info by joshpjoshp joshpjoshp from North Carolina United States
29 Mar 2005
Hi? To start it off I would like to say that ever since Marvel vs capcom 2 came out on arcade I have been playing it. I even purchased it for dreamcast and I just recently purchased it on X-Box.This is one of the only fighting games where the moves and the real-time action overall are very fluid.Once the combos and help buttons are used correctly this becomes a very competitive game. It is one of those games where if you press the button it will do exactly what you told it to do.There are many characters to pick from and the good thing about each character is that they all have there own strategy and personality. The more characters that a game has will conclude the more interesting it will be. When two players are evenly matched this game can almost seem that a person is fighting in real life but that is only if they understand there characters to the maximum potential. The only difference is that you are pushing buttons to do certain things instead of trying to do them yourself in real life. The bad thing about the game is that out of 56 characters i still have a yearning to know about 56 more characters. Other than that the game is the best competitive figghting game to ever come out. If I could I would like to demand a Marvel vs capcom 3 and add alot more characters and a few bonus rounds and it wioll do swell. From Joshp Akuma,Spiderman,Guile the squad