Japanese Pokemon fans have been riding the hype train for a few almost a year now, ever since the announcement of Pokken Tournament, a collaboration between the developers of the Pokemon and Tekken franchises. Recently announced for the game was the introduction of the newest playable Pokemon, Blaziken.
Blaziken, being a fighting-type with a fighting style utilizing martial arts, has been a long-expected fighter by fans of the series. Blaziken is a perfect fit for the 2.5D fighter style of game.
If this is the first you’ve heard of Pokken, it’s a 2.5D fighting game featuring pokemon from the classic series. The game pulls from all the Pokemon content, and features the most recent versions of the familiar characters, even mega-evolutions.
Check out the first trailer released, below, via the GamesHQ YouTube channel.
Besides Blaziken, seen in the video, there are a slew of other pokemon to play as, and the roster keeps growing with time. So far Pikachu, Lucario, Machamp, Gardevoir, Weavile, and Suicune have been confirmed, and Charizard and Gengar were each announced with a gameplay trailer similar to Blaziken’s featuring their mega-evolutions (X for Charizard). It all looks rather impressive in the Tekken engine, as well.
The most frustrating about all of this is that the game has yet to be confirmed for release on the Wii U. As it stands, Pokken Tournament is solely an arcade game, but many fans feel there’s reason to hope. As stated in a related Prima Games article, Tekken developer Bandai Namco, the studio developing Pokken Tournament, hasn’t followed the large list of third-party developers turning their back on the Wii U. Fans all over the world have been voicing their desires to have the game ported to the Wii U, and Nintendo has shown in the past with titles like Earthbound that they are willing to hear out the consumers and bring them what they will surely pay for.
Regardless, the truth of the matter is that Pokemon fans won’t be able to play this beauty outside of Japan for quite a while.