While all of that may make it sound like Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is a hardcore fighting game and only those with a decade of experience with the genre need apply, that’s not true. There are various little touches meant to lighten things up, such as an unlockable mini-game that is something of a vertically scrolling shooter, albeit using characters like Ryu rather than ships or commandos or so on. It’s pretty fun, though admittedly a little hard to unlock unless you beat the game with Roll; her method is much easier than the others. There are also various nods to both famous shows and games from the companies involved, and the folks at Capcom clearly had fun making a few jokes about some of their devoted fans. There are also a few characters clearly included for random fun with your friends, such as giant robots Gold Lightan and PTX-40A; they take a lot of effort to be viable in serious matches, but that’s fine; they’re clearly just meant for letting you stomp around with a character as tall as the entire stage and it is pretty fun for its own sake.

The only major flaw Tatsunoko vs. Capcom has is that it requires you to do multiple runs through the arcade mode (against the AI) to unlock just about everything. Extra art, hidden characters, new colors for your characters... you’re easily looking at dozens of runs through it, and this can take upward of 10-15 minutes even if you set the damage scale to maximum and give yourself a full super meter to start each round. It’s not fun at all, and they should have either unlocked everything to start with or reduced the amount of time needed to do this. Nonetheless, it can be lived with since the rest of the game is quite good.

Online play deserves a special mention. Playing by your wireless connection can work, and I’ve played dozens of matches that while they clearly had some lag, were at least acceptable for casual play and experimenting with new characters. I’ve also had cases where the game was unacceptably laggy, but that can easily be explained by opponents doing stupid things like running peer-to-peer downloads while playing. I suspect a wired connection can solve some of this, and a USB-to-Ethernet adapter might be a good idea if you plan to play Tatsunoko vs. Capcom online frequently.

Overall, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom should appeal to a variety of players. Tournament-level fighting game fans will probably find much to like here thanks to the creative roster and deep engine, plus you’ll get good shelf life out of it; TvC was recently announced as one of the games to be used in the Evolution 2010 Championships. Casual fans will also appreciate the variety of characters, and the simplified controls mean even a pair of total amateurs can play seemingly at random and still do lots of flashy combos and super attacks. Matters of character balance will likely be sorted out by players over the next several months, and the only immediately obvious flaws are the ’unlocking grind’ and moderate problems with online play. But once you get past those, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is a well made fighting game that will probably do more than just satisfy you; it will probably make you genuinely happy while playing it.