Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All-Stars [Wii, 2010]: Morrigan/Yatterman-2 Arcade Run (4* Diff.)
8Footage taken from the Dolphin Emulator.
Before there was Marvel vs Capcom 3, there was Tatsunoko vs. Capcom. Back when Street Fighter 4 was just hitting the arcade markets in 2008, Capcom was slowly getting themselves back into regular fighting game development after a 4 year hiatus from their last actually new fighting project (Capcom Fighting Jam/Evolution), and nearly 10 years after the release of Street Fighter III: Third Strike. One of these projects spawned a very Mahvel-esque game that was exclusive to the Nintendo Wii in Japan, named Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Cross Generation of Heroes: a 2-vs-2 fighter starring the many heroes & villains of the Japanese animation studio and the select starts of Capcom at the time, some of which, still to this day, have not officially been in a Marvel vs. Capcom game (got bless the modders). At the time, the original version of the game was intended to only be in Japan due to Western licensing of the Tatsunoko IPs being owned by a wide array of companies, overall being a nightmare. However, massive positive fan feedback and outreach made Tatsunoko & Capcom work together and pull off an updated international release; adding online multiplayer. While the game lost one Tatsunoko character (Hakushon Daimaō from "The Genie Family") and the actual individual character music themes, it compensated by adding 5 new characters (Zero from Mega Man X, Frank West from Dead Rising, Tekkaman Blade from his self-titled series, and Yatterman-2 from Yatterman). I still own my original disc of this game, but since my Wii is long since out of commission, emulating it makes the best sense (also from what I know, the game is now super rare even for games of it's era, since it went out of print eons ago).
Gameplay wise it uses 3 main buttons (light, medium & heavy: something MVC3 would carry over), and a Partner button in which you use to call assists and Variable Combinations with. While the gameplay is indeed similar to it's later successor MVC3, TvC has quite a few unique mechanics. In this game, nearly everyone has a double jump instead of just a few characters, plus an universal air-dash. Next, the Baroque cancel, which lets you purposely sacrifice your active character's red life in order to reset their combo stature to neutral (similar to Guilty Gear's Roman Cancels), with the amount of damage increased depending on the amount of red life burnt. And lastly, the Mega Crash, usable by pressing all 4 buttons at the same time to act as a combo breaker (like the Burst mechanic in Guilty Gear and BlazBlue)
Also, along with the main cast, each side has one "Giant" class character that can only fight on their own (the PTX-40a from Lost Planet for Capcom, and Gold Lightan for Tatsunoko), and while they have have certain perks like the inability to be normally thrown, having heightened defenses and Super Armor constantly they are typically slow and have noticeably lag on their attacks to compensate. Each one serves as the mid-boss (depending on whom your 1st character is). The final boss is a treat in my eyes, and is certainly the best final boss in a Capcom vs. game that takes after Marvel-style: Yami from Okami (which makes it odd that Amaterasu missed this game and wound up in MVC3 as well). To me, Yami is indeed a much better finale than the likes of Galactus in MVC3, Ultron-Sigma in MVCI and ESPECIALLY Abyss from the previous MVC2: every form, especially the 2nd & 3rd ones, is a constant threat, so if you're caught off-guard you might just wind up throwing the match.
In this run, I'll be using Morrigan Aensland (Darkstalkers, of course) and Yatterman-2 (Ai Kaminari, or Ai-Chan for short), though I'm intending on doing a few runs of this game since it's such a fun and classic gem from the Wii era, and worth the revisit. One such run I'm intending on doing Yatterman-2 again, though with her boyfriend in tow, Yatterman-1, since it just feels right to do that...
..and yes, it does feel weird revisiting this game after remembering Dead or Alive 5 had a whole costume set off of this company some years later.