14 DAY TRIAL // A well-known gaming site claims to have heard from sources close to Namco that Tekken is coming to the iPhone in a similar way Capcom’s Street Fighter IV is being ported to Apple handsets. Namco is mum on the matter, although it did confirm that no Tekken material whatsoever would be featured at GDC next week.
Claiming it is “putting speculation to rest that Namco Networks has been considering a touch-enabled version of Tekken,” gaming site Pocket Gamer “can confirm today that the Iron Fist Tournament is indeed coming to iPhone and iPod touch,” a recent report reads. “A source close to Namco speaking to us on the condition of anonymity tells us the game is far along in development and looking good,” it claims. This person’s exact words allegedly were, “The game is being finished up and it plays rather nicely,” according to the website.
The gaming site makes a connection between Capcom’s recently announced Street Fighter IV and Namco’s Tekken, saying it’s only logical for the latter to hit the App Store as an iPhone port. An update to the same news piece includes a statement from Namco that has confirmed that Tekken won’t be featured at this year’s Games Developers Conference (GDC). “We are NOT showing anything at GDC with regards to Tekken. We will be previewing new stuff, but it will NOT involve the Tekken brand whatsoever,” the company allegedly told the site, emphasis included.
Softpedia note
When Softpedia learned that Capcom was porting Street Fighter to the iPhone, we were reluctant to believe that the title’s control scheme would work well for the gamer. We still are, so we don’t regard Tekken for the iPhone any differently either. As a fan of the fighting game, yours truly can confirm that an iPhone port of Tekken would have to leave out many of the players’ special moves, particularly those that require momentum. Then again, it will also have a lot less characters than, say, the latest iteration (Tekken 6) and, so, it will probably be a completely stripped-down version of the game. An iPad port, however, would have sounded a lot more attractive.