Review | Tatsunoko Vs Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars
Format: Wii | Genre: Fighting | Publisher: Capcom | Developer: Eighting | Release date: 29/01/10 | RRP: £29.99
Tatsunoko Vs Capcom exists for a specific kind of audience, and that’s the type who will go “my God, that sounds like something from Gunstar Heroes” when listening to the music on the game’s character select screen. It really does.
Capcom’s Vs series has been dormant for some time. Tatsunoko Vs Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars’ closest relative is the hyperbolic Marvel Vs Capcom 2, now a decade old. No doubt spurred on by the success of Street Fighter IV, this second iteration of the game – the first, Cross Generation of Heroes, was released in Japan at the end of 2008 – has been deemed suitable by the executive penny-pinchers for a Western release. This is A Good Thing.
Because this is the 21st Century – and 2D fighters the likes of BlazBlue are few and far between – the game is the first of the Vs series to be rendered entirely in 3D. It looks good, too, with bold palettes and thick black lines darting across arenas exploding with rainbow colours. The engine keeps up with the fast-paced nature of the Vs series, but being forced to create everything in 3D is likely one of the reasons the roster stands at a comparatively meagre 26, looking oddly thin when stacked up against Marvel Vs Capcom 2’s gargantuan 56.
But whereas the average bout of MvC2 has been reduced over the years to choosing which of the 54 characters should go alongside Sentinel and Magneto, Tatsunoko Vs Capcom’s selection is fresh enough to tickle your fancy with masses of potential variety. Unless you’re the average person I’ve met online, in which case you’ll just pick Ryu and Zero and spam shoryuken attacks.
Capcom’s roster brings out the squealing nerd in anyone who’s been knocking around videogames for a while. Batsu from Rival Schools shows up and Viewtiful Joe is in, along with Frank West and a PTX-40A from Lost Planet. There’s even an appearance of Saki Omokane, from 90s Japanese dating sim Quiz Nanairo Dreams. Okami’s nemesis Yami also shows up as the game’s final boss, obeying Capcom’s usual design mechanic of aggravating multiple final stages. There’s also Ryu, Chun-Li, Morrigan and Street Fighter III’s Alex.
On the other side you’ve got the Tatsunoko bunch, with the immediate reaction being “what’s an Ippatsuman?” With many of these characters coming from venerated seventies anime, most will be unrecognisable to even the most passionate Tokyopop subscriber. Of the 13 characters, with Tekkaman Blade and Joe the Condor new in the Western release and Daimou failing to cross the pond, the three from Space Ninja Team Gatchaman – which you might have seen on Bravo the other year as Battle of the Planets – are probably the only ones likely to ring a bell.
PUSH THE BUTTON
The unfamiliarity works to the game’s credit, however, and the roster reshuffle has forced Capcom to be creative. And it definitely helps that the niche Tatsunoko team is matched by 
an equally cult Capcom side, which actually makes this the freshest and most intriguing line-up seen in a fighting game for absolutely ages. Controls will never be a problem, either, seeing as its general movements have been hard-wired into the psyche to anyone born in the eighties: down, down-forward, forward + punch.
Much like Street Fighter IV was designed to pull in new followers, TvC pares back MvC2’s mechanics to make the daunting series a little more approachable. 3v3 combat has been scaled back to 2v2 and, more importantly, the game is played with four buttons as opposed to six. Three buttons (A, B and C) make up light, medium and heavy attacks, with the fourth (P) dedicated to partner moves. Simple? Sort of.
The idea is to knock someone into the air, with each character having a ‘launcher’ attack mapped to down-forward+C, and by then holding up you can follow them into the skies and unleash the best combo you’ve got memorised. Air attacks can also be jump cancelled (stay with me) into further combos, a fundamental tenet of the Vs series that encourages mastering the air game. Other complex features, which revolve around sacrificing the super meter to allow you to cancel an enemy’s attack or reset damage scaling, will eventually need to be taken into consideration, too. But, more than anything else, top-tier play is dominated by repeated use of the Baroque Cancel, which sacrifices your red life meter for the ability to combo with no recovery time. It really hurts to be on the receiving end of that.
The biggest flaw is that online play is rubbish. It’s too laggy, and it’s a real shame that the game couldn’t use the respectable netcode Capcom developed for Street Fighter IV.
It’s also a bit depressing that the Wii is undoubtedly the worst platform for the game. Few people going to have the arcade sticks to support it, and the Wiimote is terrible for serious play. It’s not all bad, however: Capcom have included a simplified control scheme for the waggle-stick which turns everything into a fun party game that’s supplanted Super Smash Bros Brawl in my heart.
Tatsunoko Vs Capcom is a fighter that neatly balances the need to memorise complex combos with fundamental accessibility. It’s bright, flashy and a lot of fun. For people looking to cut their teeth on the genre, I can’t think of a better place to start. By Martin Gaston
8/10
