One of the biggest and best announcements to go under appreciated at this year’s E3 was the localization of Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom, a solid, beautiful fighting game pitting Capcom’s best against characters from Tatsunoko animation! After huge fan outcry to see this title on US shores and a complicated battle to collect all of the US character rights the game is finally heading to North America. I caught up with Capcom Community Manager Seth Killian and shot him a few questions about Tatsunoko VS. Capcom, it’s localization, and rumors about what changes have been for the US version.
What can you tell us about the process of getting this game to the US? I understand you faced some serious legal obstacles.
Yes, um, there is no short answer to this question - it was accomplished by hard work… and uh… we have a great partner in Tatsunoko in Japan so they were very helpful in pointing us in all the right directions and opening the right doors. It is a bit of a licensing mess but they cracked the case.”
Do you know about how many companies had the Tatsunoko properties over here?
In some cases it wasn’t as bad as we initially feared because some of the licenses kind of expired in the west, there were properties that people weren’t doing things with, as it happens.
They didn’t even know they expired?
Yeah, I’m not sure anybody knew! Because some of these characters are from older Japanese animation.
Was anybody really stubborn about giving permission?
I’m not involved at all in that, and I don’t want to throw anybody under the bus. At the end of the day, it’s great the game and it’s coming out here and that will be awesome.
There is a rumor going around that retracted press release stated the US version is going to have a Wi-Fi battle feature not in the Japanese version, and five exclusive American Characters.
Uh, that is something that team is exploring and something we’d love to be able to do, so whatever form that takes we… we added the tagline ultimate all stars and we really do want this to be the ultimate version of the game. Even people that were so excited about this that they imported it on Japanese Wiis, I think are going to be very curious about wanting to buy the game all over again because we are going to make it that much better.
They are looking at new characters and if we were to add new characters we would keep them balanced between the tatsonoku and hte capcom side.
Is there any chance of bringing in characters from a third property specific to the American market?
No, We’ve already been through a big licensing circus! (laughs)
A lot of American gamers aren’t familiar with Tatsunoko properties, are you guys concerned about this?
I have to thank the fans, because pointing to all the people were able to import the game and pointing to enthusiasm around the Internet was really able to make people pay attention. Some people thought this game was too weird, American audiences don’t know what it is, so that was definitely a major concern to us… but again, thanks to the fans for being cool enough to learn about Tatsunoko or not even care – these could be all new characters for you and are still really fun to play. For me it’s even more fun because you can check into Anime history and be like ‘why is this crazy rich girl like, riding a three person bicycle over my face, and there’s an answer: because that’s what happens in the cartoon. …If you want fighting game action, this is the place to go. Stay optimistic, people said this game couldn’t happen and it’s happening – set your expectations high and you’ll be happy.
Marvel Vs. Capcom 2?
Coming out on the Wii? I think currently the build size for Marvel Vs. Capcom 2 is not compatible for Wii downloads.