Trivia / Tatsunoko vs. Capcom

• Acclaimed Flop: The game was critically acclaimed, but sold far less than other Capcom vs. games in the States, largely due to the Tatsunoko brands not being very well-known over there compared to Marvel or SNK. Exclusivity to the Wii also didn't help its sales, since that console had little appeal to the fighting game community.
• Acting for Two:
  • Ken the Eagle and Tekkaman have the same seiyuu - Katsuji Mori.
  • Toshiyuki Morikawa closely averts this it in Ultimate All-Stars. He had voiced Ryu in past games (Street Fighter Alpha 3, Marvel vs. Capcom, Marvel vs. Capcom 2) and also voiced Tekkaman Blade himself. While he reprises his role as Tekkaman Blade in this game, Hiroki Takahashi took over as the voice of Ryu, as the latter actor previously played him in Street Fighter IV.
• Awesome, Dear Boy: One of the reasons why this game exists in the first place is because Capcom (a Japanese company) needed to give Japanese players something to be excited about/something they could relate to, rather than using characters from American comics.
• Beam Me Up, Scotty!: For some reason, a lot of fans think that the Daigo Temple is named after famous Street Fighter player Daigo Umehara. Kinda shows that a lot of fans didn't play Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams, because it is actually based on the real temple.
• Creator-Driven Successor: This series is pretty much a follow-up to the Marvel vs. Capcom series.
• Feelies: Do you live in Japan or do you want to import Ultimate All-Stars? You might want to check out this, which includes both the game and a bonus Audio CD containing 4 songs — 2 new for this game (English versions of "Across the Border" and "Kaze Yo Tsutaete") and 2 songs from the previous version (Japanese versions of those two). Still want more loot? This one contains not only those two, but also Capcom's Secret Files, a collection of arcade flyers and promotion materials. This one is Volume 27th, containing game stuff.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Capcom’s license to Tatsunoko’s characters expired in 2012. As such, the game is now long out of print, and good luck trying to find a copy for cheap, especially if you are trying to get the original version that was only released in Japan. If you live in the US, you might be lucky enough to find a GameStop store that still sells used copies of this game, but that’s it.
• Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": Surprisingly, and as far as America goes, Ippatsuman is the only Tatsunoko character to fall in this trope. To recap on the others: Gatchaman was brought over too many times to count^note The most important ones being Battle of the Planets, G-Force: Guardians of Space and Eagle Riders, Casshan and Polimar had their 90's OVAs licensed, Yatterman debuted in America as Takashi Miike's Live-Action Adaptation for a limited theatrical run, Tekkaman the Space Knight got an extremely campy dub, Gold Lightan's toys were/are available internationally, Karas received a proper DVD release, Tekkaman Blade became Teknoman, and Hakushon Daimao is now a non-entity. The same can even be said for the European countries, as nearly every Tatsunoko anime was dubbed there save for a few (like Ippatsuman).
  • Hakushon Daimao actually had a brief television run in the US (courtesy of Saban Entertainment) as Bob in a Bottle, along with another, complete run in Mexico. Still, other than the cast of Gatchaman, nearly all of the Tatsunoko characters are extremely obscure in the U.S. albeit not so much in Europe and Latin America.
• No Export for You: Successfully and surprisingly defied, as unlike nearly all anime crossover game developpers, Capcom went out of their path to personally deal with the featured anime's international licensees (That, and they were Pandering to the Base). If you wanna get technical though, it's only the Updated Re-release Ultimate All-Stars that made the cross overseas; the original version (Cross Generation of Heroes) is still locked to Japan. ^note This is only significant when concerning Hakushon Daimaoh, who'll remain exclusive to that version, as well as the character-specific songs (which are replaced by generic BGM for the stages). But otherwise, no biggie. Besides, we get Tekkaman Blade, Frank West, Zero, Joe Asakura, and Yatterman-2 a.k.a. Ai-chan. Funnily enough, Japan wasn't supposed to get the re-released version. However, thanks to the fans wanting it, as well as the development team asking for it, Capcom decided to release Ultimate All-Stars in Japan as well.
  • Even funnier is the fact that Phoenix Wright was not included BECAUSE the game was going to be translated. He would have attacked with his Catchphrase in a word bubble. The problem being is that due to the words "Igiari!" (the Japanese version) and "Objection!" (the American version) being so different in length, they would have had to change the size of the speech bubble, resulting in an unavoidable American-sized attack. Because of this, they couldn't include other characters from the series, Franziska in particular who would have used her whip. Funny enough, when Phoenix was brought over into the Updated Re-release of Marvel vs. Capcom 3, the "Objection!" attack was changed to a similarly small-sized attack that were universal between both English and Japanese, getting over the weaknesses that prevented him from appearing here.
• Network to the Rescue: Did anyone expect Tatsunoko vs. Capcom to be localized and published in North America? Capcom USA deserves a big thanks for going through enough licensing hell to pull this off.
• The Other Darrin:
  • TJ Rotolo does not reprise his role as Frank West, and is instead replaced by Peter von Gomm - likely due to being an English-speaking VA that Capcom could easily access due to being based in Japan. Coincidentally, von Gomm voiced X in Mega Man X7.
  • The same applies to a good portion of the Tatsunoko characters. Casshern, Polymar, and Ippatsuman are respectively voiced by Daisuke Ono, Kunihiko Yasui, and Masayuki Kato instead of the original voice actor or the voice actor from the various OVAs.
  • In the case of Viewtiful Joe, while there was no English localization (and thus no Dee Bradley Baker), Tomokazu Seki (his Japanese voice actor from the anime) did not reprise the role of Joe (instead, he was voiced by Shinji Kawada).
  • Alex is Darrin'd from Michael X. Sommers (in Street Fighter III and 2nd Impact) and Patrick Gallagan in 3rd Strike to Hiroki Yasumoto... and yes, there's a lot of Gratuitous English. Appropriately enough, Yasumoto also had a lot of Engrish to speak as Guile in Street Fighter IV.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: While most of the legal issues regarding the Tatsunoko side were resolved in time for Ultimate All-Stars, Hakushon Daimao and the themes to the Tatsunoko shows faced more problems than expected and were subsequently axed. The latter is possibly what also led to the rest of the character themes being axed and adding in stage music instead, since it would otherwise be unfair on the Capcom characters' part (outside of Yami since they're the boss).
• Shown Their Work: If you only knew that a lot of people in Capcom's (Japanese) offices were Tatsunoko fans (as Seth even explained, their accountants squealed when they saw Yatterman-1). In fact, the games have so much stuff in it that gives various references to its old shows. In fact, this blog shows how much dedicated the team was when making the characters.
• What Could Have Been: Phoenix Wright and Franziska von Karma were intended to be in the games. While the latter wouldn't have been hard to put in due to her whip, the developers had trouble with Phoenix. Though it is understandable why - especially since the game would feature worldwide match-up, and having two versions of his attack (Objection!/Igiari!) would really be screwy. A developer once mentioned that adding Phoenix Wright to the American version would have been a game breaker- almost literally. "Objection" would have added a few more hits (OB JE CT IO N!) to his attack compared to "IGIARI!" from the Japanese version. Not only would this have made him too powerful, but would have been hard to program. They eventually settled for a different implementation of "Objection" (in a single unbroken word) to make Phoenix work in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3.
  • This page lists all the other characters who were cut from Cross Generation of Heroes. The fun bit is that Joe The Condor and Yatterman-2 were the only ones who made the cut over that list for UAS.
  • A more elaborate example would be this◊. Plans to put Nurse Witch Komugi, Muteking the Rollerblade Hero, Phoenix Wright, Ingrid, and a stage based from Ghosts 'n Goblins were revealed.
  • It's also been revealed that if it wasn't for the licensing issues, the Samurai Pizza Cats would have made it in. There was also consideration for Speed Racer and Dante.

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