Japan’s Weekly Famitsu shared an extensive discussion about Pokkén Tournament, which was revealed by The Pokémon Company last week.
That saw The Pokémon Company CEO and president Tsunekazu Ishihara, Tekken series chief producer Katsuhiro Harada, and Soulcalibur producer Masaaki Hoshino share their thoughts behind the project’s conception, Mega Evolution, if Tekken characters will appear, and whether it could join the competitive Pokémon World Championship arena.
“I believe that this project’s most entertaining and refreshing aspect is about being able to move your own Pokémon and watch them react and pull off moves in full-frame, and the freshness of real-time. We’re working on making those aspects as enthralling and fun as possible,” Ishihara said about the game’s appeal before the conversation moved on to Mega Evolutions.
“Yes, Mega Evolutions are implemented in the game,” Hosino confirmed. “I believe you might be able to tell just by watching the trailer, but when Lucario changes forms, that’s the Mega Evolution. And that’s not all, we’re also adding things that would fit in well with this game’s characteristics.”
Harada continued, “When you think about Mega Evolution, there are those [Pokémon] that do Mega Evolve and those that don’t, so you might wonder what happens to the ones that don’t. We’ve already thought of plenty of things like that since the early planning stage, in order to make it more like a Pokémon game.
“That’s how we’re thinking of shaping this game into one with an emphasis on Pokémon’s way of playing, along with many of the game’s own ideas as well.”
Famitsu then asked how many Pokémon players can expect to see populate the game’s roster, to which Harada responded with a laugh: “Over the 700 total Pokémon… is what I’d like to say, but the development wouldn’t be done on time by the time we decided. We expect it to be a little more limited.”
Hoshino continued, “That said, I believe that the general direction that current fighting games are trending towards having more characters. I also believe that getting a grasp of how to play as all the characters is a big part of the fun, and as far expanding that goes, we’re thinking of starting with Pokémon that are easy to understand, and with a nice range of movements and ways to play.”
Tekken characters aren’t even being considered for inclusion, although that doesn’t mean that they may not sneak in any references to Bandai Namco’s long running fighting series.
“This time, it’s a battle that takes place in the world of Pokémon, so we’re not thinking about having Tekken characters appear. However, once you play it, then there might be some sort of hidden elements that could bring a smile to fans of the Tekken series,” Hoshino answered.
He clarified that Pokkén Tournament’s development is 30 percent complete and they are taking their time to complete work on implementing a new fighting system. Harada says that they will work throughly on the game through the remainder of the year, and that the first demo will arrive in 2015.
Ishihara closed with his hope that they could include Pokkén Tournament as part of the Pokémon World Championship, the perfect accompaniment to the mainstay Pokémon video games used in the international competition.
“As far as it being an arcade game goes, my strongest hope is for it to be a high-end game where players can experience getting to play as Pokémon in full motion,” he said. “Again, the Pokémon World Championship that is held each year that focuses on players going against each other in Pokémon games, and I’d like to see Pokkén be added as one of the important titles to those Pokémon battles.”
Pokkén Tournament is currently scheduled to release in arcades across Japan in 2015.
[Thanks Siliconera]
Pokkén Tournament development is 30 percent complete
