Tekken Tag Tournament more or less destroyed my first year of college, so it came as quite a delightful surprise when we discovered a Tekken Tag Tournament 2 prototype arcade cabinet tucked in the back of Namco-Bandai’s space on the E3 show floor. A small privileged crowd from Namco’s fan community had gathered to exploit the machine (which also meant that my feeble appreciation of Yoshimitsu and Anna was dispatched in a matter of moments), but I still cherished the opportunity to be one of the first to play the latest iteration of my favorite fighting franchise.
While there we also saw a trailer for Tekken Hybrid, a blu-ray disc of the new Tekken 3D CG film, Blood Vengeance, that comes bundled with a high definition port of the original Tekken Tag Tournament. Namco was cagey on whether or not Tag HD would be sold separately as a downloadable title, but I wouldn’t expect it not to pop up on PSN or Xbox Live Marketplace eventually.
Tag 2 looked fantastic, but arguably more impressive was the Tekken tech demo running on 3DS hardware. While it was more of a model viewer and gameplay demonstration and an actual interactive piece, it had Tekken running at a full sixty frames per second in full 3D mode; a notable accomplishment given its peers have to knock the frame rate down to thirty when 3D is engaged.
Even more exciting was our slightly impromptu interview with Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada, interpreted on the fly by a very friendly gentleman (whose name I failed to catch, but thank you) transcribed below:
Digital Chumps(regarding the 3DS Tekken demo): Is this a general tech demo or will it eventually be based on a certain entry in the Tekken franchise?
Katsuhiro Harada: We want to get the product out to the players as soon as possible but we’re still not that far along. We’re trying to get the basics of what we need for Tekken to be a good game on the 3DS because it’s the first time on this platform. We don’t want to make Tekken, plain ‘ol Tekken with 3D, there’s some other stuff we can do with the game as well as the package itself. There are some kind of cool things that have never been done before that could please the players, so we’re still thinking about stuff like that.
Also at that same Nintendo conference we had Tekken for Wii U, then we had Tekken x Street Fighter and Street Fighter x Tekken that we’re still working on with the guys at Capcom.
DC: There seems to have been a renewed interested in Tekken from Namco. Tekken used to come out every three or four years and now there are multiple Tekken products in development simultaneously. Was there recently a renewed interest in Tekken? Did Tekken 6 sell exceptionally well?
KH: Previously with Tekken, the older installments in the series have always typically done well. We’ve sold four or five million copies, lifespan, for each installment. Tekken 6 really exploded, and not just in sales but in fans. Lots of different countries, in Europe especially, really became interested in the game and in the franchise (along with) the characters in the world and the setting. It spread throughout France, Italy, and Spain, but then even farther into a lot of countries where we didn’t (previously) know that Tekken was popular. If you look at the demographics for all of these different areas where we have Tekken fans, it’s quite different. The way that they play games, their economic conditions…what kind of set up they have, or whether it’s on a console or they have an arcade. Since we have a wide and varied fan base, the best reason that we can give is that we wanted to have Tekken available for all of these people who wanted to play the game, regardless of their conditions.
DC: The popularity in Europe, was that due to what Tekken’s always been, the one on one fighting, or Tekken 6’s story mode, which was deeper than any Tekken before it, was the draw?
KH: Europe really started to stand out after Tekken 3. I think Tekken 3 was the first game, not just fighting game, but game in Europe to break a million (sales) at the time. A lot of that was (because) the PlayStation really took off. At the time we were really close to the people at Sony, so we did really well with them.
But it’s not just that. When we say Europe we obviously mean Great Britain, Italy, Spain and Germany, but after that, more recently for Tekken 5 and 6, it started to branch off in different countries throughout Europe. Why? We’re not exactly sure, and we’re looking into that, whether be through our sales staff our through interviews with media in Europe.
DC: (referring to the Tekken Tag Tournament 2 arcade machine in the room) What build is this?
KH: This is about 80% done and it will be out in fall of this year at arcades in Japan.
DC: Is the roster finalized?
KH: Yes. We haven’t shown off the boss character yet, but the characters that you can actually control is final.
DC: (feigning disappointment) I was just curious, amongst my friends we always wonder “Where is Kunimitsu?” I don’t know if you guys get that (question) a whole lot but I had to ask
KH: (laughs) Characters that aren’t included aren’t there because they’re not popular, but they have some people that just love them to death, and those people will say “they’re the most popular character in the game!” In arcades in Japan, we can get the data from the network and it tells us how much people are playing each character. It’s not like we just imagine it, we look at the data and see how much people are using each person. And even before we had the network, the usage rates were in the (hardware) boards as well.
Some people will say “oh, that’s because Kunimitsu was weak,” but that’s not true! There are characters who are considered weak but still quite popular as a character. There are quite a few people who want new characters, so you always have to balance the characters.
DC: Regarding mechanics, “bounding” was the big (change) to Tekken 6. Is there anything that is going to have that much affect on the gameplay, aside from tagging, for Tekken Tag 2?
KH: One huge difference here from the previous Tag game is that you can have four people on screen at once, even though in Tag you could swap out it was always one on one, now that you can have four people on screen at once it allows for new gameplay mechanics where you can call out your partner to come on screen at the same time and do a combo simultaneously against your opponent. Also with the tag throws, you can throw someone and they will come in. There are a lot of different things, it’s quite different than anything we’ve done so far.
DC: Have you guys had a chance to observe the Tag 2 machine on the show floor? It’s kind of tucked way back in a dark corner like a secret.
KH: We’ve pretty much been doing in here all day, but when we did get a side break to go see it there was some people there from before the floor even opened this morning (laughs). We’ve had people out there, quite a crowd and a few people trying to film and getting as much footage as they can of their favorite characters. It’s surprising. We didn’t originally plan to put it out there but we did just want to give people a chance to put their hands on it
DC: Regarding the tag moves, I’m sure certain characters like Anna and Nina will have moves together, but are there special moves for each character, or are their only moves that certain combinations of characters can do?
KH: There is one tag throw that is kind of similar for all characters and there is a special one between certain characters. Although not every single character in the game has one with somebody, there is quite a large variation between them. It’s a lot more than in the original.
DC: When I was playing out back it looked like somebody countered one of my throws using their tag partner, can you talk a little bit about that?
KH: Since we’re able to technically have four characters on the screen at once we wanted to see some cool things we could portray with that. So if somebody wants to use a tag throw and you want to escape it, your partner comes out to help you out, and the animations for the characters are quite different.
Not only that, there is another feature that is not in this build. We’re kind of testing it out; once a match you can have someone launch you in the air and you’re about to die, but if your partner is still quite healthy you can end their combo by having your partner jump in and save you. It’s something new we haven’t done yet and we don’t know if it will make it in the final version, but, so far, we all like it.
DC: Okay, thank you. Tag 2 looks great and I wish I were better at it.
(laughs)
Tekken Hybrid will be available in the fall and Tekken Tag Tournament 2 also hits arcades in Japan this fall.
