Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All Stars Preview
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All Stars is the seventh game in the venerable Versus series, which has included games such as the acclaimed original Marvel vs Capcom and its sequel, Marvel vs Capcom 2: New Generation of Heroes. Due to licensing issues involving the Tatsunoko characters, it was doubted that the game would get released outside Japan. However, right before this year's E3, Capcom revealed the game would be coming over to North America and Europe. We got some time with one of the representatives from Capcom to explain some of the finer points of the game during E3.
Like the other Versus games, you have your three varying attacks: weak, medium, and strong. Each player comes in with two characters, and can switch between them during battle (on the ground or in mid-air). Like in Marvel vs Capcom, you have preset combination attacks, called Variable Assists. These allow you to deal major damage to your opponent, although you lose some of your level stock (which is powered by attacking the enemy). Various other techniques also available, such as a way to get out of an opponent's attack, or even cancel your own attacks in mid-combo to deal more damage with more combos (at a risk to your remaining life).
If this sounds complicated (which for non-fighting fans, it should), the game has an option to play with the Wii Remote and Nunchuk, which uses a simplified control scheme. The only downside is that many of the advanced techniques are unavailable using this configuration, so players will eventually need to move to either using a joystick, Classic Controller, or a Nintendo GameCube controller to get the full experience.
From what we played, the game seems to hit a nice balance between being approachable to gamers who haven't played a fighting game before and to gamers who are veteran fighting game fans and want access all of those hidden techniques that extend the learning curve of the game. With rumors of new characters and an online mode that was not present in the original Japanese release, it looks like Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All Stars will be a well-recommended buy for Wii owners come this Winter.
You may also be interested in:
