With that said, when Tekken Revolution was announced, people were skeptical about it. Why would Namco Bandai offer up one of its best titles for free? It’s a good question and one that was answered quite well for us.
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Admittedly, we hadn’t reviewed Tekken Revolution, but were intrigued by it. Namco Bandai and Tekken’s creator Katsuhiro Harada took time with us to explain a few things about his team’s Tekken Revolution model and how it worked. Here’s what we came away with:
– Harada’s team went into TR with an arcade mentality. You put in the coin and you play the game. For those of you old enough to remember the bronze/silver/gold days of arcades, you understand the concept immediately. Each player earns coins through playing and logging into Tekken Revolution. The more coins you earn, the more times you play the game. The more you play, the more you get.
– TR also has a ‘premium coin’ option that allows players to keep fighting until they lose. Again, it’s an arcade concept and it’s the point in the ‘free-to-play’ where you’re paying a small fee to get these specific coins. In other words, this is the monetary portion of the game. The coins come in sets, kind of like if you entered a $1/$5/$20 into a change machine to get coins. It’s not a bad concept and the creator has specified that the coins (which start in a set of four) are less than a $.25 a piece. For us arcade addicts out there, that’s a steal of a deal.
– Regardless if you use premium or other coins in the game, you still have a chance to unlock goodies and come away with more characters. When you reach a certain level in the game, you get a gift character. Each player has a randomly selected gift character, so there is no pattern to the gifts (yay).
– The game also features a level tree for those hardcore fighters out there. You can adjust the strength/defense/etc. of your specific characters. When you level up your characters, you’re put in groups that are similar to your overall power. So, for you novice players, you’ll be placed in a novice groups. For you experts, you’ll be with experts.
Love it or hate it, the concept of ‘free-to-play’ well-known fighting games has begun with Tekken Revolution. If it works, I’m sure we’ll see others start to crop up from other big publishers. It seems to be well thought out after talking with Mr. Harada. They’re so confident in the model that we even got a taste of what is planned next… RIIIIIIIIDGGGE RACER!
All they could tell us about this is that you select your vehicle and the monetary portion of the play comes with repairing it. Not terrible, but there’s too much mystery to make a solid judgement of it.