Black Panther, Blade, And Doctor Octopus Were Considered For Ultimate Marvel Vs Capcom 3.

Todd Jefferson: Of course! Characters like Blade and Black Panther were on the list in the early stages of the game's design. When we got into the mechanics of the characters many dropped off for one reason or another.
For Blade, his abilities were almost identical to Deadpool's, and Pool's characterization, teleportation and ability to break the fourth wall won out.

Black Panther -- a favorite of mine ever since "Secret Invasion" -- was ruled out because characters like Taskmaster already duplicated a lot of what Black Panther would do on screen. Building the right character roster is tricky work, but in the end, I feel that we put together a broad spectrum of old and new characters for both versions of the game.

The choice of who makes it into the game is a shared decision between Capcom and Marvel. The list of "Who do we want in the game?" starts off pretty big -- monstrous, even -- and gets culled down based on a number of different factors. We may want a character that aligns perfectly with the game's mechanics, like Taskmaster or She Hulk, in which case he or she definitely makes the roster. Conversely, there were characters like Dr. Octopus that both sides wanted and in the end proved to not be feasible from a technical standpoint.