DC/WB and NetherRealm Studios have promised to bring us an epic fighting game next year called Injustice: Gods Among Us. I'm not pretending I didn't find it cool and exciting to look at, especially with Solomon Grundy's character design, but I find myself puzzled by the linear fighting system inherited from Mortal Kombat.
I think DC/Warner Bros can do better - they have done better, in fact, with Rocksteady, but the Arkham games are a completely different style of gameplay. Without side-tracking any further, here's the direction I suggest they take with a Justice League fighting game.
I'm not married to that roster, but the basic suggestion is that the game use a similar engine to Super Smash Bros, but with the Justice League, and with a more in-depth story.
Clearly, Super Smash Bros Melee has a ton of replay value, particularly in the multiplayer aspect. When I was in high school, a friend would bring his GameCube and we would go at it during lunch (we had an open lunch period, and some teachers were really cool with letting us use their rooms). The sheer amount of competitiveness was off the charts, and not owning a GameCube back then, I was a guaranteed loser.
What is immensely attractive is the environments and the freedom to move around places and use it to your advantage - Hyrule Temple being the prime example.
Another big attraction, which I somewhat alluded to was the cooperative/competitive gameplay known as Team Melee, allowing up to four players to play against each other either 2 vs 1, 3 vs 1, or good old-fashioned 2 vs 2.
I look at specs and test footage from "Injustice" and think that after 12 years of technical advancements, it will still be immensely inferior to Super Smash Bros Melee.
Imagine what DC/WB could do with the engine HAL Laboratory created.