Ryota Niitsuma, producer of the upcoming Tatsunoko vs. Capcom, sheds some more information on the game. Some of the information might have already been covered in his interview with VideoGamer.com, but in this interview with Siliconera he touches upon the licensing issues for characters outside of Japan along with the game's online component and possible sequels to the game.

At Comic-Con I spoke with Ryota Niitsuma, Producer of Tatsunoko vs. Capcom: Ultimate All Stars, armed with a bunch of reader submitted questions and a few of my own. During the interview we covered online play, licensing issues, and what Niitsuma wants to do with the series in the future.

Can you tell us about the licensing issues and the challenge of bringing Tatsunoko vs. Capcom to North America?

Ryota Niitsuma, Producer: It was extremely difficult. Basically, we had to go through one character at a time and get the proper licensing for each of them. Obtain one character, check it off, and go to the next one.

Then we had problems with each region that had characters we could use and couldn’t use. It’s OK in Japan, but not in America. It’s OK in America, but not in Europe. That sort of thing.

Hakushon Daimao wasn’t in the Tatsunoko vs. Capcom build I saw at E3. Is he the missing character?

I guess it’s OK to tell everyone this now. He’s not in the game. We had some licensing issues with him so we weren’t able to obtain him for the American version. The original Japanese version had twenty two characters, minus him. In place of that we’re going to add some new characters so it will be more than the original roster.

What can you tell us about these new characters? Are they going to be split evenly between the Tatsunoko and Capcom sides?

In the end we want to have a good balance between the Tatsunoko side and the Capcom side, a split down the middle with characters on both sides. We’re still working on which characters to add and ones to put in so I can’t give you any specifics on that.

Right now I’m looking at around three to four, maybe more. Nothing has been finalized yet. We will be making an announcement very soon about how many characters and who they are.

McClubbin via siliconera.com »