Tat­sunoko takes on Cap­com in Wii brawl

Every­one who reads GI knows that I’m an otaku. I’m also a big fan of clas­sic ani­me that has set the stan­dard for today’s ani­me. Most of the awe­some-lev­el ani­me old and new has came from Japan’s world-renown Tat­sunoko Pro­duc­tions. So, when I heard that Cap­com was reviv­ing its “Ver­sus” series, I thought that Cap­com was run­ning out of gam­ing ideas. That was until it was announced that Tat­sunoko would play a major role. I thought it was a joke, but I was in shock when the rumors were true and thus the ques­tion came about: What would hap­pen if Cap­com’s heroes met Tat­sunoko’s heroes in a gam­ing for­est? Tat­sunoko vs. Cap­com: Ulti­mate All-Stars for the Wii answered that ques­tion for me.

Devel­oped by Eight­ing and pub­lished by Cap­com, Tat­sunoko vs. Cap­com is a 3D game that places var­i­ous char­ac­ters from both com­pa­nies’ top-sell­ing series into a exclu­sive fight­ing game treat. Inspired by the Mar­vel vs. Cap­com series, TvC allows duos from either Cap­com’s or Tat­sunoko’s ros­ters to fight against oth­er char­ac­ters with the win­ning team going on to face Yami from Cap­com’s adven­ture title Oka­mi. If you like to mix a Cap­com char­ac­ter with a Tat­sunoko char­ac­ter, that’s also pos­si­ble as a way to give the game­play more vari­ety. In addi­tion to the orig­i­nal arcade mode, there are sur­vival and time attack modes that allow you to test your skills via lim­it­ed health regen­er­a­tion and defeat­ing your oppo­nents in the short­est time pos­si­ble. An addi­tion­al fea­ture includes a mini-game shoot­er called “Ulti­mate All-Shooters.”

Con­trol is han­dled with three but­tons, which great­ly sim­pli­fies the learn­ing curve. It’s sim­pli­fied even more thanks to the Wii’s Clas­sic con­troller, Game­Cube con­troller, third-par­ty arcade sticks and the reg­u­lar Wii remote. You will love the char­ac­ter ros­ter con­sist­ing of each com­pa­nies’ top fran­chis­es such as Street Fight­er, Rival Schools, Viewti­ful Joe, Lost Plan­et, Darkstalkers/Vampire and Mega Man for Cap­com while Tat­sunoko is rep­re­sent­ed by Karas, Tekka­man, G‑Force and Yat­ter­man. There are oth­er char­ac­ters that can be unlocked via use of mon­ey (Zen­ny) earned in each game, which also will allow pur­chase of alter­nate end­ings, cos­tume changes and oth­er unlock­able surprises. 

The music is top-notch in each stage, but the intro and end­ings songs are fun to sing and dance to. In par­tic­u­lar, the Gesellschaft (Clear Skies) and the Dai­go Tem­ple (Cher­ry Blos­som) stages are favorites.

Tat­sunoko vs. Cap­com: Ulti­mate All-Stars is an answered prayer for fans of fight­ing games and ani­me. As a first-time con­nois­seur of this type of crossover, TvC is delight­ful game expe­ri­ence. As an otaku gamer, Cap­com can work on my damn nerves at times with their no-thought deci­sions, but in this case, they worked with a renown ani­me com­pa­ny to bring a qual­i­ty prod­uct to a sys­tem that was in SORE need of well-round­ed games. Now only if Cap­com can make amends with Kei­ji Ina­fu­ne. They might be respect­ed once more.

2UP EVALUATION

All of the raz­zle daz­zle hype aside, Tat­sunoko vs. Cap­com is some­thing I want to play. I’m already a fan of most Cap­com fight­ing prop­er­ties, and I love the Ver­sus series, so I’m going to play what­ev­er they come up with next to join forces with and cre­ate mag­ic. In this case, it’s ani­me relat­ed as well, so there’s a win­ning com­bi­na­tion all the way around.

I did­n’t know much about Tat­sunoko before play­ing the game, but after spend­ing a lit­tle time immersed in the super sen­tai world, I learned that it’s some­thing that’s com­pelling to return to time and time again. Nice mechan­ics, an inter­est­ing ros­ter and gor­geous atten­tion to detail with the envi­ron­ments and sound­track make it a nice pack­age. My only gripes are that the sto­ry does­n’t real­ly make a whole lot of sense (real­ly, Yami from Oka­mi, Cap­com? That’s it?), and that not know­ing that much about Tat­sunoko actu­al­ly works against me. Oth­er than that, there’s isn’t a rea­son why I would­n’t play this con­stant­ly, even if it is a Wii exclu­sive. That’s just anoth­er rea­son to go out and buy the now-defunct console.

TvC triv­ia

* The orig­i­nal title for TvC was Tat­sunoko vs. Cap­com: Cross Gen­er­a­tion of Heroes.

* While the game devel­op­ers had the OK to add any char­ac­ter from Tat­sunoko or Cap­com, Tat­sunoko did deny some choic­es because of licens­ing issues; orig­i­nal­ly, Phoenix Wright was sug­gest­ed, but was pulled because of dif­fi­cul­ties with find­ing prop­er attacks for him.

* Most video game review­ers such as G4’s Adam Sessler and IGN’s John Tana­ka were doubt­ful about an out­side-of-Japan release because of Tat­sunoko’s final approved ros­ter of char­ac­ters. They were licensed in oth­er coun­tries, despite being owned by Tat­sunoko, and the lev­el of recog­ni­tion of some char­ac­ters was a concern.

* As of 2012, Cap­com USA senior vice pres­i­dent Chris­t­ian Svens­son has stat­ed that Cap­com could no longer sell the game in phys­i­cal or dig­i­tal form because licens­ing rights with Tat­sunoko expired.