Pokken Tournament gets Japanese release date and confirmation of Charizard

We haven’t heard much about the new collaboration between The Pokemon Company and Bandai Entertainment, Pokkén Tournament. However, we’ve finally got confirmation that not only are Charizard and Weavile confirmed characters, there’s also an official Japanese arcade release date- July 16th. No word yet on a console release, but it’s pretty likely, especially given the depressing lack of traditional arcades outside of Asia. Whether it’ll be a Wii U or a NX release remains to be seen, however.

The game itself is set to be similar to the Bandai workhorse, Tekken, while utilizing various Pokémon with the added twist of using console style controllers, rather than the more standard joystick and button combo we usually see in arcade fighting games. This is another hint that this might just be a trial run before a proper console launch, so fingers crossed.

Currently, there are eight officially confirmed characters for the game: Lucario, Machamp, Suicune, Gardevoir, Pikachu, Gengar, Weavile, and Charizard with additional support characters in the forms of Emolga, Fennekin, Snivy, Frogadier, Eevee, Lapras, Whimsicott and Jirachi, with more to follow.