‘Tekken Revolution’ Will Give Namco The Chance To Try New Things

Tekken Revolution will give Namco a chance to try new things.

Tekken was that fighting game back in the day that embraced the 3D arena right off the bat, becoming Virtua Fighter’s most powerful competitor until Street Fighter IV proved that Capcom finally got it right.

Tekken’s roster included nearly every fighting game stereotype there was. It had the Bruce Lee character with Marshall Law, the Russian cyborg Jack, the borderline psychotic Japanese karate family Heihachi Mishima and sons, and even the resident “hot chick” Nina Williams.

The fighting game attempted to keep the gameplay realistic, even if it couldn’t keep from introducing animal, alien, and downright silly characters.

After a while, Tekken almost faded to irrelevance as fellow fighting games such as Soul Calibur stayed mostly true to their origins – give or take a nonsensical cameo – as Tekken kept getting more and more outrageous.

In the wake of the announcement of Tekken Revolution, the EVO 2013 fighting game championships gave Tekken Tag Tournament 2 another chance to share the spotlight with the heavy hitters. This may have reminded a lot of gamers that Namco’s fighting game series was still around, and given the developers new ideas to try out with the new game.

The free-to-play fighting game is letting Namco see what they can get away with as fans choose between even more outlandish characters such as a salmon and a praying mantis. Yes, you read that right.

Series producer Katsuhiro Harada said of Tekken Revolution:

“Because Tekken is a long-running franchise, there are expectations from the players. This is just an example, if there were a Tekken 7, that would be the next real installment and people would expect the canon story to be continued and tie up loose ends. We would have to have all the characters they expect [in that game]. Throwing in a salmon or alien or something like that might make certain people unhappy. It might not fit into the story. It’s been great to be able to try some new things like this.”

Tekken Revolution shows no signs of sticking to its less and less realistic roots as it continues to take advantage of having no story to be faithful to, and so the silliness commences.

What do you think of the future of Tekken Revolution and the series in general? Is Namco doing the right thing?