4Players: Tatsunoko Production as well as Capcom has a giant set of characters. How did you choose which ones of those get into your game and which don't?
Ryota Niitsuma: The character roster has been changing ever since we started the development of the game. In fact, the one you mentioned, Gold Lightan, is the only one that has been there from the start and survived until the end. But ultimately we have picked one character per franchise, with the exception of the Street Fighter series.
4Players: Are there any characters you wish you could have included but couldn't for whatever reason?
Ryota Niitsuma: (long pause of thinking, a lot of whispering with the translator) Hmm, if I mention this you know that this character will not be added to
Tatsunoko vs. Capcom is full of bizarre characters. Sadly some of the even more strange didn't make it in the final game.
the game... hmmmmm... well, I can tell you that we had to pull Akuma from Street Fighter, Sir Arthur from Ghosts'n'Goblins and an Ace Attorney character.
4Players: Oh that's a shame. Imagining a fighter laying waste to his enemies with a fatal »OBJECTION!« attack sounds really fun.
Ryota Niitsuma: As a matter of fact exactly this was very close to getting reality.
4Players: Really?
Ryota Niitsuma: Really. We did actually go quite far with Ace Attorney characters and one special move was in fact »Objection!«. »Objection« in Japanese is »Igi ari«, a four character sentence which would be moving towards the opponent. But localized it would consist of nine letters, that would have been too long! So sadly we couldn't implement it.
4Players: That's a pity. How did you get to work with Tatsunoko in the first place?
Ryota Niitsuma: Tatsunoko Productions offered Capcom their licenses for a game. At the same time I had a plan for a fighting game, so these two incidents merged and became Tatsunoko vs. Capcom.
4Players: Is this just a one-time cooperation or do you have any plans for further games in the future? Maybe even in different genres, not only fighting games.
Ryota Niitsuma: That will largely depend on how well the game will do on the western market. And to answer your second question: Currently we don't have such plans but since Tatsunoko characters have such high affinity towards games it definitely is possible.
