If you're familiar with Photoshop or GIMP, its really easy to make a background like that. Its only 3 layers.
1. Red Layer
2. Render Solid noise (clouds) and apply a transparent to black gradient on top of it.
3. Render a grid pattern over it. In this case I used 3x3 cm.
Thats it. Takes about 10 minutes to create those layers. As for the CP, I was thinking about putting a "VS" right in between the 1 and 2 player starts, but I'm still not sure about the bottom. I agree that it still needs something, but I dont really want to put a collage of characters down there.
Any other ideas?