Releasing a 2D fighting game on the Wii was a strange choice, but Tatsunoko vs. Capcom manages to succeed on almost every level. Very similar in play style to Marvel vs. Capcom 2, TvC uses a simplified control system and mixes high-speed attacking with tag team action. The intent was clearly to try to appeal to both fighting game veterans and newcomers, and it does manage that to some extent. Its real triumph is in its flexible engine and variety of characters, which elevate this from being more than just a competent fighting game; it is genuinely fun.

While some of the cast are recognizable from Street Fighter, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom has only modest similarity to that series. Characters in this game are far more mobile, able to double-jump, dash in mid-air, and use an intuitive combo system that easily lets you scale up from a light attack to a medium one, then a heavy one into a special move, and often closing with a flashy super attack. Long-time fans of the genre can hook up a Classic Controller or arcade stick to get the full experience, while new players will find they can be reasonably competent using just the Wiimote held sideways since the scaled back controls mean you only need three or four buttons.

The major attraction are the characters, which draw from a wide variety of Capcom games and various Tatsunoko anime productions. Some of them will be instantly recognizable to nearly everyone (at least three characters are from Gatchaman, also known as G-Force in the U.S.), while others are quite obscure but nonetheless creative additions to the roster. Just about every play style is covered, with Ryu and a few others offering obvious balanced performance to learn the game with. From there, you could learn mentally-oriented characters like Doronjo and Frank West who can summon various minions to trap the enemy, or power hitters like Soki from Onimusha, or even someone like Polimar who can barely move normally and instead uses his special moves to get around, packing quite a punch if you know what you’re doing. There should be something for just about everyone here, and only a few of the game’s nearly two dozen characters seem like wasted choices; everyone else offers something interesting.

Tatsunoko vs. Capcom’s game engine deserves credit too. It shares much in common with how Marvel vs. Capcom 2 plays, but benefits from ten years of lessons from that game and offers several new engine features. The most important of these is the Mega Crash, which is similar to Guilty Gear’s or Blazblue’s Burst; it has some restrictions on when you can use it, but it generally lets you escape most combos and that’s important for getting out of the infinites that players will likely discover over the next few months. Most of the other features are the same as the previous game (such as summoning Assists, comboing one character’s super attack into another character’s to tag out while still dealing damage, etc.), but one other addition stands out: Baroque. Using Baroque gets rid of all of a character’s ’red life’ (life they would have recovered while they’re tagged out), but immediately cancels the animation for whatever your character is doing at the time. It has obvious defensive uses in letting you end a slow move quickly if you’re going to miss, but Baroque can also be used to build longer combos.