I have to confess that until the original Tatsunoko vs. Capcom title was released in Japan last winter, I had no idea what Tatsunoko was, nor did I have any clue about the characters they would bring to Capcom’s fabled VS series. Even with the surge in interest in anime, manga and Japanese culture in the United States, I don’t expect many of you to know about Tatsunoko’s brand of heroes either. What you should know is that the American release of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom Ultimate All-Stars builds on the sound base of Capcom’s previous team-based fighters and provides Wii owners with a challenging and exciting way to throw down with their friends.

TvC includes everything you might expect from one of Capcom’s VS fighting games. There is a varied cast of fighters to choose from, each with their own unique fighting styles, special moves and super attacks that are drawn from a rich history of video games, TV shows and comic books. Players form teams of two characters for each battle, with one fighter controlled by the player at a time, while the other lurks in the background, waiting to provide an assist attack or switch in and become the active fighter. So fans of the previous VS series titles like Marvel vs. Capcom 2 and Capcom vs. SNK should feel right at home when they boot up the disk.

Fortunately for everyone else, Capcom and developer Eighting have made TvC accessible to just about anyone by simplifying the controls and slowing down the break-neck pace just enough for most gamers to grasp. Eschewing the traditional six-button approach to combat, a remnant from the arcade-dominated 90s version of fighting games, TvC uses only three buttons for attacking: weak, medium and hard. A fourth button allows the player to call for a teammate assist or to switch characters during battle. This simplified approach to the controls should allow more players to get into the action without making the combat shallow at higher levels of play.

Players can use a variety of Wii controller options to play the game, including just a regular wiimote turned sideways. Using just the wiimote simplifies the controls even more, so players with any taste for competition will probably want to stick with the classic controller or a Wii arcade stick when they play. However, the wiimote only option, which does basic attacks with one button, specials with another and supers by pressing both at once, will let completely green players hop in and feel like they are accomplishing something right away.

For the hardcore fighting game fans among you, a Wii arcade stick will probably be the favored option for competition. Capcom teamed up with MadCatz to create an official stick for TvC, featuring character art from both Tatsunoko and Capcom, that costs eighty dollars to pick up. This is thirty dollars more than Hori’s Fighting Stick Wii that has been out for a few years, but the MadCatz controller offers more bang for you buck. The joystick and buttons are Japanese-made parts that fighting fans will appreciate and the cover has a matte finish that won’t leave the controller looking and feeling greasy after each session. It’s also heavier and seems to be more durable, which is great if you are planning to get a lot of mileage out of your eighty-dollar purchase. I’m sure some of you, like me, swore off MadCatz products years ago due to low quality or strange designs, but I’ve been forced to reconsider my position and so should you. If you are a big fan of fighting games, the official TvC Arcade Fightstick is a worthy purchase.

For the rest of you who enjoy playing fighting games but aren’t interested in plunking down an additional eighty dollars to play your new game, the Classic Controller is probably your best option. It has the best combination of controls out of the normal Wii controllers for comfortable and controlled play. I played the original Japanese version of this game with the classic and never had any problems with my controls.

The game allows players to select from 26 characters, including 13 from each side of the versus title. Capcom is represented by Ryu, Chun Li and Alex from the Street Fighter series, as well as a nice selection from some of their other popular franchises. The Mega Man Legends version of the Blue Bomber appears in the game and is joined by Roll from the original games and, new to the international release of TvC, Zero from Mega Man X. Also familiar to American gamers is Viewtiful Joe, who makes a fun addition to the fighting roster. The boss of the single player game is Yami, from the much beloved Okami.

The Tatsunoko side is populated by superheroes from their various television shows that have mostly been aired in Japan. Bird-themed heroes from Gatchaman, Tekkaman the Space Knight and the zany time traveling characters from Yatterman are some of the series that anime fans might be familiar with, but for the uninitiated, all you need to know is that these characters are fun and worth giving a shot. I know many players will be drawn to the familiar Capcom characters first, but if you never give the Tatsunoko characters a try, you will miss out on a lot of the fun the game has to offer.

Players can also opt to play two giant robot fighters that do not get to partner up with a second fighter for combat. Gold Lightan, which looks like it might be made from millions of yellow Legos, is the Tatsunoko contribution to this unique feature. Capcom included PTX-40A from Lost Planet: Extreme Condition. These characters are a fun diversion from the traditional play and have their own special and super moves to try out. They are big, powerful and fun to pummel the computer with, but be prepared for friends to moan about selecting them in friendly matches. They bring an entirely new dynamic to the game that some players won’t like.

While the pace of the game isn’t quite what fighting fans remember from the blistering combat in Marvel vs. Capcom 2, it certainly ramps up to fast and exciting quickly once you get comfortable with the controls. Players can string together huge combos that can start on the ground and launch up into the air for more abuse. Comboing into a super attack is incredibly satisfying as well, but be warned that your opponent has means of escape. The “Mega Crash” technique allows a player to sacrifice some of their life and two bars of their super meter to create a burst that ends the combo and knocks the aggressor back. This is really helpful for escaping long combos against experienced players.

Other features in the game add to the depth of the fighter as a vehicle for competitive play, but probably won’t impact casual players much at all. For instance, “Baroque Cancel” allows a player to sacrifice their slowly recharging red-bar of health to go into a glowing mode that increases damage and extends combos. Another technique, the “Snapback” is an attack that forces the opponent to switch characters if it lands. One trick that everyone should learn is what the game calls the “Hyper Variable Combination.” This is a fancy way of saying “both characters on your team do their super attack at the same time.” All players need to do to active this is to do another super move input while the first one is happening, which should be simple enough after a little bit of practice. It really adds to the damage at the end of a good combo and if you are lucky, will cause your friends to throw up their hands in frustration while their characters get batted around in the air.

If you don’t have any friends to play with, TvC offers a passable online mode that will give you a chance to make strangers cry instead. Depending on your Internet connection, latency issues and traffic, you might experience some significant lag. I was pretty disappointed my first night online due to some lag issues, but after speaking with quite a few other players about it, this doesn’t seem to be a widespread problem. You can play in ranked or unranked random battles and choose whether to search locally or challenge the globe. Battles with friends are always better though, since you don’t have to wait between matches for the network to pair you up with someone. Sadly, the game doesn’t support Wii Speak, so you won’t be able to dish out trash talk while competing online.

Despite my periodic lag issues, my biggest frustration with the online mode was the menu system. Getting online and playing a match requires you go through two series of menus, register and name and then pick the modes you want to play. Players have to log off Wi-Fi to register a friend code, but then log on to check to see if the code worked and if their friend is online. If it didn’t work, you have to back out to the offline menu and try again. Want to check the online leaderboards? Be prepared to wait. Selecting that option forced me into a loading screen and wouldn’t let me back out or change to a different view while the game retrieved the scores. So while actually playing the game online can be a lot of fun, getting there can be frustrating based on the weak menu design.

In fact, I wasn’t impressed much at all with the menus throughout the game. While the text on the main menu is mostly readable, the game uses a scrolling system that doesn’t let you see all the options at once. The menus are also populated by nearly seizure-inducing flashy effects and uninspired music that can start to grate on your nerves. Selecting a character from a spinning wheel, which doesn’t let you see all the options at once, also probably falls under bad design. It works, but it might turn off casual players who want to see all their options.

Fortunately, the game’s graphics are great. Utilizing the now popular “2.5” style system for fighters, the backgrounds and characters are rendered in 3D, but only compete along a 2D plane. This makes for some great environments for battle and really makes the characters and their special attacks pop on the screen. The color and special effects in the game are good, with nothing from the foreground getting washed away by the backgrounds. Eighting did a fantastic job tweaking this game to look brilliant on the Wii.

Capcom is already looking for ways to extend the fun too. Rumor has it that Phoenix Wright and a few other popular characters could be making their way to TvC as downloadable content if Nintendo feels there is enough interest to warrant allowing it onto the Wii. Another missing franchise that could get some DLC love could be the Samurai Pizza Cats, another Tatsunoko property that gained some traction in the US during the ‘90s. Hopefully if sales are strong and people keep asking, Nintendo and Capcom will team up to find a way to make downloadable content updates happen.

With a low barrier to entry but enough depth to keep fighting fans jamming away on arcade sticks for hours, Tatsunoko vs Capcom has a lot to offer to Wii owners who are looking for a fun fighting experience. The game isn’t so relevant that I can recommend it to everyone, but if you enjoy fighting games already or are interested in picking up a good multiplayer experience, this is a game that will pay for itself in entertainment.

Jason Rice is a freelance game design, writer and multiplayer addict based in Raleigh, NC. He can be reached at jasonthinks [at] gmail [dot] com.