After you complete Arcade Mode, there’s a mini-game that you play during the end credits with Yatterman villain Doronjo, and you have to ride across a series of bumpy hills on a bicycle with her and her henchmen in order to collect all of the gold letters that are placed in the credit names (they spell out “THANK YOU FOR PLAYING”). Accomplish this, and you unlock another mini-game called Ultimate All-Shooters, which is a fixed-scrolling shooter (kinda like Commando) where you control Ryu, Ken the Eagle, Tekkaman Blade, or the PTX-40A mech suit and shoot down Akrids (the beasties that infest the Lost Planet universe) and other bug-like creatures through four stages. So far, I’ve beaten it with Tekkaman Blade, but I’m not sure how the path selection works, so I guess it’ll be a while before I achieve 100% completion in that mode.

My next goal is to finish Arcade Mode with all of the secret characters (Frank West, Zero, Joe the Condor and Tekkaman Blade – the last one I think I already finished with) in order to unlock Yatterman-2, Yatterman-1’s girlfriend and partner-in-buttkicking. This journey should be…interesting, to say the least.

And all I had to do was answer some trivia to win this...

This figurine (called a Trexi, after the company that distributes them) was given to me yesterday as a prize for a trivia question I answered on Gamespot when Dark Void was released two months ago. I don’t even remember whether I answered it correctly…The e-mail that I was sent notified me to expect my prize within two weeks. It also came as a pre-order bonus for anyone who bought the game. Since I didn’t (and probably won’t, because I wasn’t very impressed with the demo), scoring this figurine didn’t cost me a thing.

The figurine is supposed to be Will in the jetsuit that he uses throughout the game…though with the round head and stubby arms, it could easily be mistaken for a miniature Strong Bad. The head, arms, and legs can rotate, although they’re a bit too stiff to be used for advanced poses. I think these Trexis are meant to be collected rather than played with (note the “This is not a toy” warning on the bottom of the box). Figurines like it sell  for about six to eight dollars – I don’t know whether that’s in U.S. dollars or Singaporean dollars, so it probably won’t go up in value. On the bright side, it’ll go nicely with the Ryu figurine I got when I pre-ordered Street Fighter IV.

Yeah, I’m aggravated by it, but I’m not getting too worked up about it. I do have a few other consoles, after all, so I’ll just keep playing with them until the smoke clears. The  SonyPlayStation Twitter is posting updates, and recommending that all users of pre-Slim PS3s (myself included) not turn on their consoles until a solution is found.

The reason I bring this up is because I’m still playing through Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, and a few players have asked why these guys hadn’t appeared in the game. Heck, I didn’t even know this series was a Tatsunoko property until I looked it up on Wikipedia. It’s funny how far a little research goes.

Most video game fans will surely recognize many of the characters on Capcom’s side of the line-up. You have Ryu, Chun-Li and Alex from the Street Fighter series, Mega Man (Legends version) and Roll from the Mega Man series, and a couple of others you probably wouldn’t expect to see in a Capcom crossover (why hello there, Soki…it’s been a while since Onimusha: Dawn of Dreams, hasn’t it?) The Tatsunoko roster may not be quite as accessible to any but the biggest anime fans, as their series are a bit older, and some of these characters are making their first appearances in the U.S. Ken the Eagle and Jun the Swan from Science Ninja Team Gatchaman headline the Tatsunoko team, with Yatterman, Ippatsuman, Tekkaman (none of them rejected Mega Man baddies) and others joining the fray.

Familiarity with the source material aside, Tatsunoko vs. Capcom plays a lot like many of the other Capcom vs. titles. Each play selects two characters, and they fight until either side has reduced both characters’ health meters to zero. The requisite special moves and super attacks are present for every character, and they can (with a few exceptions) call on their partner to dish out a few extra hits for them during the match, or to switch places with them. The three-attack-button control scheme (seen in other Eighting-developed fighting games such as Bloody Roar) is easy to use, yet allows for complex combinations and all kinds of crossover attacks for fighting game veterans to use. The computer AI is challenging, and never seems like it’s trying to cheat you out of a win. You can also take your battles online and challenge players over Nintendo Wi-Fi, and while the game is good about finding opponents with strong connections, it often takes a while for it to find an opponent to begin with. The Friend Code system is still there, but thankfully you aren’t forced to use it in order to find an opponent (it’s mainly used for keeping track of friends and players that you fight often).

The game sports a 3D look that’s a lot like Street Fighter IV. While the fighting takes place on a 2D plane, the characters and their backgrounds are shown in three dimensions, all while the game runs at a smooth 60 frames per second. The special attack animations are also suitably flashy and over-the-top, as befitting of a series with half of its roots in animated action series. Though there aren’t quite as many memorable tunes as there were in previous installments, the game’s soundtrack is decent, and the voices of the characters calling out their various attacks don’t drown out the music or distract from the action.

Because of the licensing issues that usually come with making crossover products, it can be hard for some of them to even get released in certain markets (which is why there won’t be any U.S. release for Jump! Ultimate Stars, likely one of the biggest and best such fighting games in the Nintendo DS library). Capcom took a big chance by putting together this release, and it turned out to be one of the most polished and fun entries in the Vs. series yet. This game is worthy of a 5-star rating (out of 5).

Pros: easy to pick up and play, excellent art and animation, can be taken online with little hassle
Cons: the Tatsunoko-side characters will probably be unfamiliar to a lot of players

That last one isn’t likely to happen any time soon, but one can dream…Oh, well…there’s always MUGEN…

There are still some gamers out there who will insist that TvsC will sell better if they had been released on the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360. Of course, the games would then be drowned out by the likes of Bayonetta and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 instead of New Super Mario Bros. Wii, and people would still complain about them not selling well enough. I still say, “Let’s just be glad that this game’s even coming to the U.S. at all, and enjoy!”

Having only watched Gundam 00 in its entirety, I felt compelled to go back to the original MS Gundam to see where it all began. I know, it’s more than three decades old, but in order to know the history of the franchise, it’s best to start at where it got its roots. There are only 43 episodes of this series, because one was taken out of circulation by its creator, and it got cancelled with six episodes to go due to low ratings. Best get this while you can, because they’re only going to be up on ANN for two more months until the next batch comes in (Gundam Wing and Gundam Seed Destiny).