So once again somebody is picking a fight with Capcom and this time its epic. Tatsunoko vs Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars was developed by Eighting and Capcom and developed for the Wii. It’s the 7th in the ’VS’ series and features characters from Capcom’s top games as well as characters from Tatsunoko’s animation studios. We are actually lucky to get this game as there were a few problems localizing the game outside Japan as developers were worried the Tatsunoko characters wouldn’t appeal to a non-Japanese audience and the rights to most of Tatsunoko’s characters belong to different countries in north America so thank you!
The rounds take place on a 2.5 plane with 3D rendered backgrounds which is a first for the VS series. The rounds are a two on two fights and finish when both characters on either teams health bars are depleted. The game has a variable assist feature allowing you to shout your partner for an assist which involves you partner jumping in and performing an attack to get you out of a jam. Be careful though as assisting characters can take damage if you call an assist at the wrong time. The game has the classic arcade mode where you battle through the stages until you reach the boss Yami (Okami). The game features a time trial mode which involves speeding through the game in the fastest time and a classic survival mode which limits health regeneration as the stages progress. For the multiplayer modes there’s the chance to fight two on two simultaneously like street fighters dramatic battle mode and a four player mini game to boot. The intro song is called across the border and is sung by Asami Abei.
The games plays similar to Marvel vs Capcom, but here are a few of the combat systems new and old. The variable attack system allows you to swap characters and jump in with an attack. Variable counter is when a counter attack is performed during a changeover of characters which allows the swapping out character to swap back in with an attack. “Snapback” system forces the opponent to swap character should you hit. The aerial rave system allows you to swap characters in mid-air and an interesting feature that I wasn’t aware of at euro gamer was the “mega crash” system which is a defensive manoeuvre and allows you to escape an opponent’s attack while sacrificing part of his or hers life and few stocks of the level bar. Baroque cancel is something I accidently activated which gave me an edge in my fight against this guy in a beanie which uses the red part of the life bar and causes you to glow a rainbow of colours and allows you to string together faster combos and increased attack power depending on how much red is sacrificed. This mode stops when the red portion is used up or a hyper is performed . . . and yes I beat the guy in the beanie.
The game adopts a simple 3 button attack system “weak” “medium” and “heavy” which is derived from street fighter and previous vs titles since it’s developed for the Wii. The moves are pretty basic and nowhere near as complicated as the classic street fighters. I think Leon will remember the blister on my thumb when street fighter alpha 3 was released! To perform the hyper moves it’s simply the hadoken movement on the d-pad or joystick and tapping two buttons at the same time. The hyper bars build up quite quickly and the facts these moves are easy to pull off they don’t do quite as much damage which makes the battles more immense. I pulled of three successful shinku hadokens with Ryu in one fight which really heated up the battle but my opponent was still fighting back with a third of his health.
You will see an interesting range of characters; from Capcom’s Ryu to Frank West, and Tatsunoko’s Eagle Man to Lightan, there are also several cameo characters such as Casshan’s dog Freinder and Soki’s ally Jubei from Onimusha 4. There are only two characters in the game which fight alone and they are Tatsunoko’s Lightan and Capcom’s Lost Planet mech PTX-40A, this means they can’t pull off the dual hyper combo like the team based characters can.
At the Eurogamer this year this was my favourite game. The Eurogamer display had just one screen and two joysticks and what appeared to be ‘winner stays on’ system so I joined the queue. When I sat down I managed to take out the winner who had one 5 previous rounds and stayed on through 3 rounds then retired with my hat-trick as the queue was pretty big and I had to let Leon have a pop at this one. Was nice to see they did a good job with Ryu since I haven’t seen one since Capcom vs SNK 2. After a nice win we left as we had what we needed and now I’m just waiting for it to hit the shelves in Europe next January. With Plenty of new and old interesting characters, new hyper moves, first time 3D backgrounds, epic battles and the game critics award for “best fighting game” E3 2009 this game is at the top of my list!
-Ray
