Pokken Tournament Confirmed for Wii U Release Next Year

Nintendo have confirmed that the fighting game spin-off of the Pokemon franchise, known as Pokken Tournament, will be making its way to the Wii U early next year; and more importantly is that it will receive a worlwide release.

It’s an announcement everyone expected Nintendo to make at some point; and yet its still surprising to see the game getting a worldwide release so quickly – especially seeing as the game itself was only released into Japanese Arcades earlier this year.

But what exactly is Pokken Tournament? Well it’s a Pokemon fighting game that was developed in conjunction with the Tekken creator Katsuhiro Harada and uses in the infamous Tekken game engine for graphics and combat mechanics.The game has proved to be quite popular in arcades and it even uses a traditional gamepad as opposed to an arcade fightstick – such as those seen on Tekken and Street Fighter cabinets.

The game itself will see numerous Pokemon, such as Pikachu, Charizard, Lucario, Machamp and more fighting each other in small arenas in traditional “fist to fist” combat while smaller Pokemon, such as Snivy, Torchic and Oshawott can be summoned for support attacks.  Further gameplay and release details will be confirmed in due time; but for the time being at least Nintendo have released an announcement trailer which contains a fair amount of gameplay.