The game is plainly-and unapologetically-a 3D fighter in which you make cherished Pocket Monsters beat each other senseless for hours at a time, and at first blush this doesn’t actually seem too far out of place in the Pokémon universe.

On its surface, Bandai Namco’s Pokkén Tournament seems like the type of game that fits perfectly into Pokémon ’s ever-expanding tableau of genre experiments. Pokémon is no longer a holy trinity of videogames, card games, and an anime-it’s a detective film, an augmented reality simulation, a series of roguelike dungeon crawlers, a film franchise, an entire marketing universe unto itself, and now, an arcade-style brawling game. But on its 20th anniversary, the franchise has ballooned into something with a farther reach and a much more convoluted message than it ever had in its early period. At its core, the series is still driven by that curious desire to observe, to collect, and even to befriend the fauna that surround us. It’s a fun bit of trivia now, but Pokémon originally grew out of its creator’s simple, childlike sense of awe toward the bugs in his backyard. Playing video games, watching TV, Ultraman with his capsule monsters-they all became ingredients for the game.” – Satoshi Tajiri in an interview with TIME Magazine, 1999 Everything I did as a kid is kind of rolled into one-that’s what Pokémon is. When I was making games, something clicked and I decided to make a game with that concept.

“Kids play inside their homes now, and a lot had forgotten about catching insects.

Pokken tournament