Bandai Namco on how Pokken Tournament evolved into more than just a Tekken engine game
Pokken Tournament’s connection to Tekken is known. The game does take some elements from that series, but the two are very much different.
Speaking with IGN, Bandai Namco’s Katsuhiro Harada said that the project began as “a Tekken engine [game] with some Pokemon characters.” Yet with the introduction of the Field Phase, a new rendering engine, and an “entire new battle system,” Pokken Tournament became its own unique title.
Harada’s full words:
“(Pokken Tournament started life as a Tekken engine [game] with some Pokemon characters. As we worked on it. We knew we wanted to show off the Pokemon, and that led to implementing the [free movement] Field Phase, and we just really realized quickly in that prototype phase that we needed to just kind of create this whole thing from scratch. We even built an entire new rendering engine, and kind of came up with and entire new battle system for it. But it really is just built from the ground up for this entirely new type of fighting game.”
