The most recent episode of Imagine-Nation in Japan featured Bandai Namco’s Pokken Tournament. The show featured interviews with the President of the Pokémon Company Tsunekazu Ishihara and Bandai Namco’s Katsuhiro Harada. Harada said during the episode that goal behind Pokken Tournament was to create a game where the player would be able to manipulate the Pokémon directly. Stating…
“Players want to move around with a great deal of freedom and do a wide range of things, but the operability needs to be smooth as well. That’s probably the most important point. To be frank, with both Tekken and Soulcalibur, I’ve worked for the past 20 years on the pursuit of how to best organize copious amounts of animation into a product that can be animated smoothly and comfortably by players. That work has led to where I stand now, meaning I’ve given everything I’ve got to pull this off.”
In regards to the possibility of Pokken Tournament being released outside of Japan. Ishihara had this to say about the possibility…
“I think the possibility definitely exists. Basically, as an arcade game we would like to push the boundaries of combining familiar Pokémon characters with new and unexpected ones in battle. We want to show people different kinds of Pokémon characters that they can actually use.”
This is pretty likely to happen as the Pokémon Company released a Trailer for the game last year that was distributed by it’s U.S. division.
