The Bandai Namco and Nintendo developed fighting game, Pokken Tournament came out on the Wii U this past Friday and a there’s something about these stages that I just can’t put my Pokèball on. It seems like these stages are copy-paste edits from previous entries in the Tekken series of games.
Taking a look at the Magikarp Festival stage, you can notice several similarities between it and the Bountiful Sea Stage, which is one of the stages in Tekken Tag Tournament 2, available on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii U. The overall layout and design of the stage is the same; however, the flags, boat markings and fish that were in the original Tekken Tag Tournament stage are replaced with Magikarp and Pokemon themes. Note, it’s not the only one that has direct similarities
Dragon’s Nest, a Rayquaza themed stage in Pokken Tournament, is a direct rip of Tekken 5‘s Dragon’s Nest stage. The large stone dragon is replaced with a colored statue of Mega Rayquaza, and the floor of the arena is decorated with colored Pokemon-themed adornments.
While I’m not too off-put by the copy-paste nature of Pokken Tournament‘s stages, it is upsetting that in a mix of unique stages created for the game, Bandai Namco couldn’t at least find a way to make the stages not look like their older games, especially since most of their older Tekken games have never made an appearance on a Nintendo home console until 2013 with Tekken Tag Tournament 2.