see deal Pokken Tournament - Nintendo Wii U $49.97 on Gamestop

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“As we worked on it,” began development director and producer of the Tekken series Katsuhiro Harada, “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.”Rather than create a fighting game based on extreme skill and knowing combos in advance, Harada explained, the team wanted to make something more like the core Pokemon games — accessible and approachable but with its own kind of depth.“What we really wanted to do with the Pokken Tournament game was to reduce that skill and knowledge [element of fighting games] to a minimum and let players focus entirely on the strategy element of the game,” Harada said. “So really have the strategy in mind and be able to execute that without a lot of challenge or a lot of knowledge in advance and really enjoy that back and forth you get in fighting games.” Pokken Tournament was announced for Wii U at the 2015 Pokemon World Championships, and pro fighting game players were invited to a mini-tournament at the event.“The two things that every single one of [the pro fighting game players] told us was that the game was a lot deeper than they thought,” Harada said, “and also that it’s totally different than Tekken. Everyone was very surprised, coming from the name of Pokken. They thought it would be very similar.“They said it was exactly what we had aimed for: being able to have this approachable fighting game you can really quickly get into.”

Kallie Plagge is a host of IGN Anime Club and is IGN's resident Poké Kid. Follow her on Twitter @inkydojikko for cute things, FPS adventures, and more.