Tekken 6 is making it’s North American debut this week at the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) Expo in Orlando, Florida. We here at High-Score and our good friends at SD TEKKEN were on hand to get some first hand info and hands on impressions from the latest king of the iron fist tournament installment!

MARK JULIO

We would first like to take the time to thank Jason Arney of Namco for showcasing Tekken 6 to us and giving us all the information regarding the US arcade release. So big thanks to Mr. Jason Arney! The following impressions and information is based on a product work in progress and may not be representative of the final product. Please keep that in mind as you read along!

Tekken 6 has to be the best looking 3D fighter ever, easily. It trumps both Sega’s Virtua Fighter 5 and Tecmo’s Dead or Alive 4 in the pretty department, a feat that is actually a sight to see. The music tracks are very energetic and upbeat, similar to those found in Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection and Tekken 5. The in game sounds are remarkable and the effects vary based on where in the stage you are located. The sounds also change when the character is put into ‘rage’ mode!

While the console version of Tekken 6 is quite a while away, we did get some new information on the arcade release of Tekken 6. The game is going to cost roughly $10,000 USD and will only be sold as a dedicated cabinet. Namco will be selling directly to consumers and will not be mass producing these units like previous Tekken games. Tekken 6 will be a scarce arcade machine unless many arcades decide to purchase it. There will be no kit version as Tekken 6 will only run on high-resolution monitors. Those of you looking to purchase a supergun and play on your TV will be sad to hear that Tekken 6 will not support standard JAMMA signals, only HD. The arcade board is rather unique this time around as everything connects on the PS3 power based arcade board using USB. That’s right, USB connects everything from controls, to the main motherboard, and everything else in between.

The US version of Tekken 6 will be made available to consumers who wish to order by as early as the end of December to early January. Here are some pictures from the show and early shots of the US prototype design for the Tekken 6 arcade unit…

The cabinet design is pretty much finalized. As you can see this machine is decked out with the latest in arcade hardware and gaming technology. Using the PS3 based arcade board in conjunction with high resolution monitors running in 720p, Tekken 6 will fully display the true next gen power of the fighting genre. Please enjoy this sample video we took from the show floor… (Note this video is from a work in progress game, final product may change.)

Namco had already customized each character for the playable version at the show. They are not representative of the final outfits/customizations. Some interesting things of note about the item customizations, is that Namco plans on doing item upgrades throughout the course of Tekken 6’s arcade life. Another interesting thing to know is that each character model is essentially naked under the different item layers and each item is skinned/layered out individually. The detail on the items and how they mesh with the character models looks amazing.

Over the next few days we will be putting up exclusive videos from the event, so please check back often! We’ll have more reports as the show continues.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2007 at 2:32 am and is filed under Preview, SDTEKKEN.COM, TEKKEN 6, namco. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.